Does the mere crowdedness of the environment affect people's choices and preferences? In six studies, the authors show that social crowdedness not only leads to greater accessibility of safety-related constructs but also results in greater preference for safety-oriented options (e.g., preferring to visit a pharmacy to a convenience store), being more receptive to prevention-(rather than promotion-) framed messages, and being more risk averse with real money gambles. In support of the authors' underlying avoidance motivation perspective, these effects are mediated by participants' net prevention focus and are attenuated when the crowd in question consists of in-group members. The authors close by discussing the practical and theoretical implications of the results.

This article is about social space and material objects for sale within that space. We draw primarily on Goffman’s (1971) concepts of use space and possession territories to predict that as the social density of a given space increases, inferences of the subjective social class and income of people in that space fall. Eight studies confirm that this is indeed the case, with the result holding even for stick figures, thus controlling for typical visual indicators of social class such as clothing or jewelry. Furthermore, these social class inferences mediate a relationship between social density and product valuation, with individuals assessing both higher prices and a greater willingness to pay for products presented in less crowded contexts. This effect of inferred class on product valuation is explained by status-motivated individuals’ desire to associate with higher-status people. To the best of our knowledge, this research is the first to reveal the link between social density, status inferences, and object valuations. As such, it makes a novel contribution to what has come to be known in sociology as the topological turn: a renewed focus on social space.

A product’s front face (e.g., a watch face or car front) is typically the first point of contact and a key determinant of a consumer’s initial impression about the product. Drawing on evolutionary accounts of human face perception suggesting that the face width-to-height ratio (fWHR: bizygomatic width divided by upper-face height) can signal dominance and affect its overall evaluation, this research is based on the premise that product faces are perceived in much the same way as human faces. Five experiments tested this premise. Results suggest that like human faces, product faces with high (vs. low) fWHR are perceived as more dominant. However, while human faces with high fWHR are liked less, product faces with high fWHR are liked more as revealed by consumer preference and willingness-to-pay scores. The greater preference for the high fWHR product faces is motivated by the consumers’ desire to enhance and signal their own dominant status as evidenced by the moderating effects of type of goal and of usage context. Brand managers and product designers may be particularly interested in these findings since a simple design feature can have potentially significant marketplace impact, as was also confirmed by the field data obtained from secondary sources.

Neuroscientific research suggests that the brain has evolved specific capabilities enabling automatic social judgments of others to be made based on facial properties alone. However, little research in marketing has considered the consequences of how facial imagery is automatically processed. We explore automatic perceptions of familiarity by using morphing software to digitally combine unfamiliar faces with those of Tiger Woods and George Bush. Despite a complete lack of conscious recognition, trustworthiness ratings of the composite faces are clearly influenced by the celebrities in question. This appears to be due to implicit recognition being sufficient for individuals to automatically access their own summary valence judgments of either Woods or Bush. Alternative explanations based on a perceptual-fluency account, or implicit recognition sufficient to perceive specific trait ratings, are ruled out. These findings suggest that the marketing practice of digitally manipulating the attractiveness of facial imagery risks overlooking the important influence of familiarity.H uman faces are arguably the most important visual stimuli we perceive. They are quite staggeringly complex and represent an exceptionally rich source of social information, which we have evolved to be extremely adept at decoding (Engell, Haxby, and Todorov 2007). For example, faces not only reveal a tremendous amount of information about our underlying emotions, but the mere adoption of certain facial expressions is sufficient to moderate the underlying physiology and subjective experience of emotion (Ekman 1992). Furthermore, we begin to mimic facial expressions soon after birth (Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Rapson 1993), infer movement traRobin J. Tanner is assistant professor of marketing,

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