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PurposeThe objective of this study was to examine how high-social and low-social virtual live streamers affect consumers' experiential value (utilitarian value and hedonic value) and the mechanism and boundary conditions behind the effect.Design/methodology/approachThe research consisted of four laboratory experiments.FindingsThe results showed that socialness has a positive significant effect on experiential value. Social presence mediated the effect of socialness on utilitarian value and hedonic value. In the relationship between socialness and experiential value, the moderating effects of communication style and situation were significant.Practical implicationsThis study provides managerial implications for online stores about the use of virtual live streamers.Originality/valueThe finding of this paper extends the literature on virtual humans or avatars, enriches the literature on the characteristics of virtual humans and tests the explanatory power of social response theory.

The study’s primary goal is to investigate the relationship between different aspects of mindfulness which were carved out by a systematic literature review on sustainability through possible mediators. The relationship between different aspects of mindfulness (acceptance, acting with awareness, decentering, inner awareness, outer awareness, insight) and sustainable attitudes and behavior under the consideration of mediating variables (congruence of attitudes and behavior, values, well-being, connectedness to nature, disruption of routines, pro-socialness) was investigated in 337 participants. The results showed the diverse relation of mindfulness to sustainable attitude and behavior. In a mediation model, sustainable attitude and sustainable behavior were positively predicted by outer awareness and insight via connectedness to nature. Moreover, sustainable attitude and behavior were positively predicted by inner awareness, outer awareness, and insight via pro-socialness. There were no direct effects from any other aspect of mindfulness on sustainable attitude or behavior. Our study hints that connectedness to nature and pro-socialness are the relevant mediators between mindfulness (awareness and insight) and sustainable attitude and behavior. However, further intervention studies should test whether these mindfulness aspects are the most important for changing sustainable attitudes and behaviors.

PurposeColor psychology theory reveals that complex images with very varied palettes and many different colors are likely to be considered unattractive by individuals. Notwithstanding, web content containing social signals may be more attractive via the initiation of a social connection. This research investigates a predictive model blending variables from these theoretical perspectives to determine crowdfunding success.Design/methodology/approachThe research is based on data from 176,614 Kickstarter projects. A number of machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques were employed to analyze the listing images for color complexity and the presence of people, while specific language features, including socialness, were measured in the listing text. Logistic regression was applied, controlling for several additional variables and predictive model was developed.FindingsThe findings supported the color complexity and socialness effects on crowdfunding success. The model achieves notable predictive value explaining 56.4% of variance. Listing images containing fewer colors and that have more similar colors are more likely to be crowdfunded successfully. Listings that convey greater socialness have a greater likelihood of being funded.Originality/valueThis investigation contributes a unique understanding of the effect of features of both socialness and color complexity on the success of crowdfunding ventures. A second contribution comes from the process and methods employed in the study, which provides a clear blueprint for the processing of large-scale analysis of soft information (images and text) in order to use them as variables in the scientific testing of theory.

Abstract Abstract concepts frequently refer to socialness, i.e. knowledge about interactions between people. Grounded cognition theories propose that such social concepts are represented in brain circuits involved in processing social interactions. The present event-related potential study investigated the time course of electrical brain activity in response to abstract social concepts compared to abstract control concepts presented during a lexical decision task. Analysis of estimated volume source activity revealed increased activity to social concepts in the left insula with an onset of 216 ms and somewhat later in frontal brain areas (292 ms). These regions are associated with empathy and mentalizing, respectively. Social concepts also enhanced activity in the left anterior temporal lobe (292 ms), a heteromodal semantic hub supporting semantic integration. Later (438 ms), social concepts activated a fronto-parietal brain network typically engaged during social interaction. Early activity increases in social cognition brain networks (<300 ms) most probably indicate access to conceptual features, while later activity increases may reflect semantic elaboration. In accordance with hybrid models of conceptual cognition, processing of abstract social concepts is grounded in brain regions associated with empathy and social interactions, complemented by semantic integration processes in heteromodal semantic hub areas.

Multiple representation theories propose that social experience plays an important role in grounding abstract concepts. However, it is less clear how social experience influences the processing of abstract concepts, especially whether this influence is modulated by emotional experience and task demands. To address this question, we orthogonally manipulated the socialness (high vs. low) and emotional valence (positive vs. negative vs. neutral) of abstract words in a lexical decision task (LDT, Experiment 1) and an emotional Stroop task (Experiment 2). Results show that the role of socialness in abstract concept processing was modulated by the concept’s emotional valence, with different patterns between the two tasks. Specifically, positive high-socialness (HS) words elicited slower responses than positive low-socialness (LS) words in the emotional Stroop task, but no such difference was observed in the LDT. In both tasks, however, faster responses were found for negative HS than for negative LS words, and no response differences were observed for neutral HS and LS words. These results provide behavioral evidence for the importance of social experience in the processing of abstract concepts and suggest that concept knowledge derived from social experiences interacts with concept knowledge derived from emotional experiences during lexical–semantic processing. This finding clarifies the heterogeneity of abstract concepts, with positive and negative social words constituting distinct subcategories, and confirms experience-based abstract concepts are inherently flexible, selectively combining with other associated embodied experiences based on task demands, thereby dynamically influencing abstract concept processing.

PurposeThe growth in social content such as video facilitates consumer exposure to social information at e-tail settings. Research has recommended enhancing the e-store socialness. Focusing on focal consumer outcomes (flow and purchase intentions), the current research delineates a boundary condition, proposing that e-tail socialness improves outcomes when the consumer interdependent self, rather than the independent self, is activated.Design/methodology/approachThe experimental approach is employed to test the research thesis. Two experiments (N1 = 303 Females 42.4%; N2 = 387 Females 51.4%) that used different manipulation for socialness and sample frames (USA and Canadian) are performed. Analysis of variance was applied.FindingsThe results generally support the research thesis, suggesting that e-tail socialness enhances consumer flow and purchase intentions when the interdependent self is activated. The effect, however, is marginal for segments with high brand preference.Practical implicationsAs more information increase overload and reduce decision quality, e-tail practitioners should focus on providing social information predominately for consumers whose interdependent self is activated. This recommendation is particularly relevant for segments with low brand preference.Originality/valueSo far, studies recommend enhancing the e-store socialness, or increasing the social volume, to achieve better outcomes. Such research stream is giving rise to the “social is better in e-tail” conventional wisdom. The current work contributes by delineating a boundary condition based on consumer self-construal. This work suggests that the use of online socialness is fruitful predominantly for interdependent consumers.

Website designers are beginning to incorporate social cues, such as helpfulness and familiarity, into e-commerce sites to facilitate the exchange relationship. Website socialness elicits a social response from users of the site and this response produces enjoyment. Users patronize websites that are exciting, entertaining and stimulating. The purpose of our study is to explore the effects of website socialness perceptions on the formation of users' beliefs, attitudes and subsequent behavioral intentions. We manipulate website socialness perceptions across two different online shopping contexts, one for functional products and the other for pleasure-oriented products, and draw from the responses of 300 Internet users. Our findings show that website socialness perceptions lead to enjoyment, have a strong influence on user intentions and these effects are invariant across shopping contexts.

A number of issues related to vaccines and vaccinations in society are discussed in this paper. Our purpose is to merge an analysis of some recent changes in the vaccine market with social science research on the relationship between citizens and authorities. The article has two empirical parts. The first shows how the vaccine market, which for many years has had immense financial problems, nowadays seems to becoming economically vitalized, mostly due to the production of new and profitable vaccines. However prosperous the future may appear, certain reactions from the public regarding vaccination initiatives offer insight into inherent problems of vaccine policies in many Western countries. In the second part of the article, these problems are exemplified with the recent controversy over the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine. We conclude that in spite of the improving profit-margins, the vaccine market remains vulnerable and insecure. Vaccines are permeated by society, even more so than pharmaceutics that are used to cure or alleviate illnesses. Radical changes in financial conditions with promises of a more profitable market will not, we argue, solve other even more fundamental problems.

Respecting its subject matter and its methodological framework, the sociology of religion should solely study the influence of society on religion and that of religion on society. In this process, sociology of religion is much more interested in the results of both influences, which are separated only for analytical reasons, on the group behavior of people – for instance, starting from marital and family life, over other primary and secondary, partial and global groups, all the way to society as a whole – than it is interested in their results on individuals. Sociologists stress that the primary role of the sociology of religion is not to penetrate the “essence of the sacred”. They rather insist on the study of its more mundane ministry. And this earthly substance is that which may be reduced to “socialness”. The sociologically viewed socialness of religion is embodied in the religious community (whether we should technically call it a religious body, group, organization, institution… this is of lesser importance) – which, in terms of development, may be a cult, sect, denomination and church. In it, as an embodied and actual reality, people live their religiosity. If it wishes to be “successful” and behave “appropriately” to its believers, the religious community should address them in a “sociologically intelligible language”. We wish to say that – although it is difficult to distinguish between the transcendental and the mundane ministry of religion – in this author’s view, the sociological understanding of the language of religion is not anything but its “translation”, direction at and accordance with (also) contemporary, even topical, burning issues of the universe, the concrete society, and concrete people being addressed. The responsibility lies with every individual religious organism.