Mass-Communicated Prediction Requests: Practical Application and a Cognitive Dissonance Explanation for Self-Prophecy

Abstract

Marketers often promote socially beneficial actions or discourage antisocial behaviors to the benefit of their firms, target markets, and society as a whole. One means by which marketers accomplish such influence is a technique referred to as the “self-prophecy effect,” or the behavioral influence of a person making a self-prediction. Researchers have yet to establish the efficacy of self-prophecy in influencing large target markets. In addition, the theoretical mechanism underlying the effect remains in question. The authors report two field studies that demonstrate successful application of self-prophecy through mass-communicated prediction requests. Furthermore, in three laboratory experiments, the authors provide theoretical support for a dissonance-based explanation for self-prophecy, and they discuss practical implications for marketers interested in influencing socially normative behavior.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 119 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.