Products as Pals: Engaging with Anthropomorphic Products Mitigates the Effects of Social Exclusion
Open accessAbstract
Feeling left out has been shown to trigger primal, automatic responses in an attempt to compensate for threats to social belongingness. Such responses typically involve reconnection with other human beings. However, four experiments provide evidence that exposure to or interaction with anthropomorphic consumer products (i.e., products featuring characteristics of being alive through design, interaction, intelligence, responsiveness, and/or personality) can also satisfy (at least partially) social needs, ultimately mitigating previously documented effects of social exclusion. Specifically, interacting with anthropomorphic (vs. nonanthropomorphic) products following social exclusion reduces (1) the need to exaggerate the number of one’s current social connections, (2) the anticipated need to engage with close others in the future, and (3) the willingness to engage in prosocial behavior. These effects are driven by a need for social assurance, rather than positive affect. Moreover, an important boundary condition exists: drawing attention to the fact that an anthropomorphic product is not actually alive (i.e., the product does not provide genuine human interaction) limits its ability to fulfill social needs. Thus, in a time when consumer products are becoming increasingly anthropomorphic in design and function, the results reveal potentially important consequences for human-to-human relationships.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The null effect of perceived anthropomorphism on perceived value is contrary to previous research.
“This result is contrary to previous research (Mourey et al., 2017; Touré-Tillery and McGill, 2015).”
From Understanding user switch of information seeking: From search engines to generative AI (2026) · cites this paper as Mourey et al., 2017
Cites
Russell, J. A. (1980) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/h0077714 · Cited by 16,334 · see citing works
Leys, C., Ley, C., Klein, O., Bernard, P., & Licata, L. (2013) · Journal of Experimental Social Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2013.03.013 · Cited by 4,147 · see citing works
On seeing human: A three-factor theory of anthropomorphism
Epley, N., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2007) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.114.4.864 · Cited by 4,069 · see citing works
Cyberostracism: effects of being ignored over the Internet
Williams, K. D., Cheung, C. K. T., & Choi, W. (2000) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.79.5.748 · Cited by 2,276 · see citing works
Harlow, H. F. (1958) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/h0047884 · Cited by 2,022 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Similar observations have been made among nonhuman primates, where a nonsocial object (i.e., a soft piece of terrycloth) provides comfort to infant monkeys raised without mothers (Harlow 1958).”
Loneliness: human nature and the need for social connection
(2008) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.46-1765 · Cited by 1,572 · see citing works
Measuring belongingness: The Social Connectedness and the Social Assurance scales.
Lee, R. M., & Robbins, S. B. (1995) · Journal of Counseling Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-0167.42.2.232 · Cited by 1,484 · see citing works
Social exclusion impairs self-regulation
Baumeister, R. F., DeWall, C. N., Ciarocco, N. J., & Twenge, J. M. (2005) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.88.4.589 · Cited by 1,401 · see citing works
Social exclusion decreases prosocial behavior
Twenge, J. M., Baumeister, R. F., DeWall, C. N., Ciarocco, N. J., & Bartels, J. M. (2007) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.92.1.56 · Cited by 1,271 · see citing works
Is That Car Smiling at Me? Schema Congruity as a Basis for Evaluating Anthropomorphized Products
Aggarwal, P., & McGill, A. L. (2007) · Journal of Consumer Research · doi:10.1086/518544 · Cited by 1,078 · cited 1× · see citing works
“…the preferences of materialistic consumers (Kim and Kramer 2015), lead consumers to act in brand-consistent ways (Aggarwal and McGill 2012), and lead people to attribute human qualities and more favorable evaluations to consumer products (Aggarwal and McGill 2007; TouréTillery and McGill, 2015).”
Getting a cue: the need to belong and enhanced sensitivity to social cues
Pickett, C. L., Gardner, W. L., & Knowles, M. (2004) · Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · doi:10.1177/0146167203262085 · Cited by 862 · see citing works
A cognitive-behavioral model of compulsive hoarding
Frost, R. O., & Hartl, T. L. (1996) · Behaviour Research and Therapy · doi:10.1016/0005-7967(95)00071-2 · Cited by 853 · see citing works
Shaw, L. H., & Gant, L. M. (2002) · CyberPsychology & Behavior · doi:10.1089/109493102753770552 · Cited by 778 · see citing works
Manago, A. M., Taylor, T., & Greenfield, P. M. (2012) · Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0026338 · Cited by 657 · see citing works
Epley, N., Akalis, S., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2008) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02056.x · Cited by 632 · see citing works
Dissonance and the pill: An attribution approach to studying the arousal properties of dissonance.
Zanna, M. P., & Cooper, J. (1974) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/h0036651 · Cited by 577 · see citing works
Forest, A. L., & Wood, J. V. (2012) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0956797611429709 · Cited by 547 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Novak, T. P., & Hoffman, D. L. (2019) · Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science · doi:10.1007/s11747-018-0608-3 · Cited by 332 · see citing works
Conversational commerce: entering the next stage of AI-powered digital assistants
Balakrishnan, J., & Dwivedi, Y. K. (2024) · Annals of Operations Research · doi:10.1007/s10479-021-04049-5 · Cited by 301 · see citing works
Someone out there? A study on the social presence of anthropomorphized chatbots
Konya-Baumbach, E., Biller, M., & von Janda, S. (2023) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2022.107513 · Cited by 283 · see citing works
Alabed, A., Javornik, A., & Gregory-Smith, D. (2022) · Technological Forecasting and Social Change · doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2022.121786 · Cited by 233 · see citing works
Voice assistants and older people: some open issues
Sayago, S., Neves, B. B., & Cowan, B. R. (2019) · Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Conversational User Interfaces · doi:10.1145/3342775.3342803 · Cited by 97 · see citing works
Understanding user switch of information seeking: From search engines to generative AI
Zhou, T., & Li, S. (2026) · Journal of Librarianship and Information Science · doi:10.1177/09610006241244800 · Cited by 70 · see citing works
Wang, X., Wong, Y. D., & Yuen, K. F. (2021) · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · doi:10.3390/ijerph18020404 · Cited by 64 · see citing works
Saffarizadeh, K., University of Texas at Arlington, Keil, M., Georgia State University, Boodraj, M., Boise State University, Alashoor, T., & University of Navarra (2024) · Journal of the Association for Information Systems · doi:10.17705/1jais.00839 · Cited by 41 · see citing works
- Authors
- Mourey, J. A., Olson, J. G., & Yoon, C.
- Affiliations
- DePaul University (US)
- University of Kansas (US)
- University of Michigan (US)
- Corresponding author
- Mourey, James A.
- Venue
- Journal of Consumer Research
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2017-01-23
- Pages
- ucx038
- ISSN
- 0093-5301 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5277
- OpenAlex
- W2582957527
- Cited by
- 226
- References
- 17
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 33 · 2024: 31 · 2023: 35 · 2022: 35 · 2021: 27 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 3
- FWCI
- 25.23
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- papers.ssrn.com
- Locations
- Journal of Consumer Research (publishedVersion)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Keywords
- social exclusion, social belonging, prosocial behavior, social connectedness, consumer goods, human-human relationship
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
