Kristin Diehl

Consumers lose more weight when they log their food consumption more consistently, yet they face challenges in doing so. We investigate how the modality of food logging—whether people record what they eat by taking photos versus writing text—affects their anticipated and actual logging experience and behavior. We find that consumers are more likely to adopt and anticipate better experiences with photo-based food logging tools over text-based tools. However, in a weeklong field study, these expectations reveal themselves to be inaccurate; once participants start logging, they find taking photos (versus writing text) to be more difficult, log less of what they eat, and are less likely to continue using the logging tool. These findings contribute to existing research on how people track goal progress, as well as persistence with and dis-adoption of products. Moreover, our findings provide insights into what might increase the use of products that encourage healthy eating.

The impact of technology on mindfulness is theoretically and practically important. We propose that photo-taking can naturally promote mindful attention to visual aspects of experiences. Such mindful photo-taking can increase enjoyment of and memory for experiences, generate positive mood, and heighten life-satisfaction. When people adopt a social or temporal outward-focused perspective, threats to mindful photo-taking may negate these positive consequences. A social outward-focus can arise when considering others’ evaluations of shared photos. A temporal outward-focus can arise with the principal objective and outcome of photo-taking: creating durable visual representations of experiences. Ultimately, reviewing photos provides visual memory cues, can improve memory, and allows people to reminiscence, although these benefits depends on the stock of accumulated photos.

Social media may encourage novel ways of signaling that involve different purchase types (experiential vs. material), signaling frequencies (multiple vs. single signals) and other features unique to social media (e.g., hashtags). This work examines how purchase signals are received on social media and how these signaling variations affect signal receivers’ perceptions of the authenticity of social media posts as well as the overall impressions receivers form of the signal sender. Data collected across six experiments shows multiple material purchase signals lead to more negative impressions compared to multiple experiential purchase signals. Signal receivers perceive multiple material purchase posts as less authentic, which dampens their impressions of the signal sender. In line with this mechanism, the impression premium of experiential purchase signals disappears when receivers use other cues (monetary mentions, other users’ comments, and marketer associations via hashtags) to infer a signal’s lack of authenticity. Additional data also documents downstream consequences on engagement. This work contributes theoretically to research in both signaling and social media and improves the understanding of substantive situations in which consumers’ objectives of curating a positive image and creating engagement with their posts, collide with marketers’ objectives of encouraging user-generated content and word of mouth.

The role of duration in the evaluation of experiences has been a topic of great interest. Extensive research finds “duration neglect,” defined as the duration of experiences exerting only a negligible direct effect on overall evaluations of experiences over that of key moments, usually peak and end. In contrast, we argue that the temporal location of key moments that are embedded in an experience affects how people experience these key moments. Thus, duration enters overall evaluations indirectly through the experience of key moments. Seven studies, as well as three supplementary studies, employing diverse designs and analyses find that temporal location affects the evaluation of peak and end, and consequently duration has a significant indirect effect on overall evaluations, while also replicating duration neglect. Establishing duration-dependent key moments in the evaluation of experiences, our account also uniquely predicts, and we subsequently test, that the temporal location of key moments matters for evaluations of experiences.

In this chapter we examine the role and use of memory pointers—objects or photos that people believe will help them remember a particular experience—in how people establish and verify their identities. People’s experiences are central to their identities (e.g., attending college, special trips), but it is not only the actual experiences one has; possibly more important are the memories of these experiences. Since people generally believe in the importance of experiences to their identities over time, people purposefully invest in memory pointers, tangible reminders that will help them cue these memories later on, both for themselves and to be shared with others. People believe that memory pointers are more effective at triggering memories when they are specific to a particular experience or setting (e.g., a shirt with the dorm logo versus a shirt with the college logo), and thus they are better able to verify and shape one’s identity. This demand for specificity may explain why people take so many photos, as photos are inherently linked to the particular time and place when they were taken. Taking photos as memory pointers can further yield the added benefit of increasing engagement with the experience that is being photographed, which amplifies positive experiences and also heightens one’s visual memories of the experience. When memory pointers are acquired with the intention to share them with others, people select different types of pointers than if they intend to use these memory pointers only for themselves. For example, photo albums to be shared may include more staged pictures of people who are smiling, while albums for oneself may include more candid moments. As a whole, this chapter highlights the importance of memory pointer acquisition and usage in people’s desire to verify their identities over time.