P

THE SCIENCE OF EXTRAORDINARY BELIEFS

Does Endowing a Product with Life Make One FeelMore Alive? The Effect of Product Anthropomorphismon Consumer Vitality

FANGYUAN CHEN, JAIDEEP SENGUPTA, AND RASHMI ADAVAL

ABSTRACT While most research in the area of product anthropomorphism examines how making products more

humanlike can influence subsequent consumer reactions to those products, the present research examines how the act

of anthropomorphizing products can influence consumers themselves. We propose that when consumers have an in-

sufficient sense of either connectedness or competence, anthropomorphizing a product satisfies these deficiencies and

increases vitality. Furthermore, this enhanced vitality has positive implications for individuals’ capacity to exert self-

control in unrelated domains. A set of three studies provides support for these hypotheses. By demonstrating the

positive effect of anthropomorphism on consumer vitality and self-control, this research illuminates the nature of an-

thropomorphism. In doing so, we also connect two streams of literature: one on anthropomorphism and the other on

vitality, which share an inherent connection that has not been explicated by past research.

roduct anthropomorphism has received consider-able attention in recent years. However, while themajority of research in this area has focused on how

the act of treating products as humanlike entities affects con-sumer evaluations of those products (e.g., Delbaere et al.2011; Aggarwal andMcGill 2012), the current inquiry exam-ines how engaging in anthropomorphizing affects the indi-vidual doing the anthropomorphizing.

We propose that engaging in product anthropomorphismcan increase consumers’ psychological well-being by promot-ing their vitality—namely, their subjective sense of energy.This prediction is arrived at by merging current premisesabout anthropomorphism (e.g., Epley, Wyatz, and Cacioppo2007;Mourey, Olson, and Yoon 2017), which suggest that in-dividuals engage in anthropomorphism to fulfill certain fun-damental needs (such as the need for connectedness and theneed for competence), with those of self-determination the-ory, which suggest that heightened connectedness and com-petence are two key antecedents of improved vitality (RyanandDeci 2008). By integrating these two different literatures

Fangyuan Chen (fychen@polyu.edu.hk) is an assistant professor of marketing atKong. Jaideep Sengupta (mkjaisen@ust.hk) is Synergis-Geoffrey Yeh Professor ofagement, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hketing at Carl H. Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnainsightful comments on this manuscript. This research is based in part on the fiauthors. Financial support from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (HKUSTto Fangyuan Chen. Financial support to the first author from the Hong Kong P

JACR, volume 3, number 4. Published online July 26, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/1© 2018 the Association for Consumer Research. All rights reserved. 2378-1815

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we hypothesize that for consumers with either a deficientsense of connectedness or of competence, the act of productanthropomorphism helps restore these unmet needs and in-creases the vitality they experience. Further, we predict thatsuch anthropomorphism-induced vitality will exert positiveconsequences, such as better self-control performance, evenin domains completely unrelated to the initial anthropomor-phism context.

In examining these predictions, this inquiry provides newinsights into how anthropomorphism can benefit individu-als. We not only confirm extant research on the motives un-derlying anthropomorphism (e.g., a need for connectednessand a need for competence; Epley et al. 2007) by showing thatthe act of anthropomorphism indeed restores these needsbut also show that the restoration of connectedness and com-petence leads to a high-level psychological benefit for individ-uals: improved vitality. In doing so, our work sheds somelight on why product anthropomorphism is so prevalent inconsumers’ lives. In addition, our theoretical platformmakesexplicit the conceptual links between the literature on an-

Faculty of Business, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hum, HongBusiness, and chair professor of marketing at School of Business and Man-ong Kong. Rashmi Adaval (adavalri@ucmail.uc.edu) is a professor of mar-ti, OH 45221-0145. The authors thank Sara Kim and Bob Wyer for theirrst author’s dissertation, conducted under the guidance of the other two/GRF 640011) is gratefully acknowledged. Correspondence should be sentolytechnic University (Start-up Fund 1-23-ZE75) is greatly acknowledged.

0.1086/698493/2018/0304-0087$10.00

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504 Does Endowing a Product with Life Make One Feel More Alive? Chen, Sengupta, and Adaval

thropomorphism and that on self-determination theory. Al-though the connection is inherent to the two streams of lit-erature, it has not been identified in past research.

CONCEPTUAL OVERVIEW AND DEVELOPMENT

OF HYPOTHESES

Anthropomorphism refers to individuals’ tendency to at-tribute humanlike characteristics or behaviors to nonhumanentities (Epley et al. 2007). Recent years have witnessed agrowing interest in both the antecedents and the conse-quences of anthropomorphism.

Consequences of AnthropomorphismPast research shows that anthropomorphized entities elicitboth positive and negative effects on subsequent reactionsto those entities. For example, Gray et al. (2007) find thatwhen nonhuman characters such as animals and robots areperceived to resemble humans, they are valued more, andpeople are less likely to harm them. A corresponding findingin the consumer context shows that people are more reluc-tant to replace products that they have anthropomorphized(Chandler and Schwarz 2010). On the other hand, anthropo-morphized brands suffer from more blame when they mal-function (Puzakova, Kwak, and Rocereto 2013) as they aredeemed to possessmore volitional intent (Morewedge 2009).

Of relevance to the current inquiry is research that has ex-amined the consequences of anthropomorphism on the indi-viduals themselves. In particular, Mourey et al. (2017) findthat exposure to an anthropomorphized product can satisfysocially excluded people’s need for connectedness, which thenreduces their desire for further interpersonal interaction. Thecurrent work furthers this perspective by proposing that en-gaging in product anthropomorphism can benefit consumers’psychological well-being, with favorable downstream implica-tions for their later behavior. We start our exploration of thisissue by examining why people engage in anthropomorphismto begin with.

1. Empirical support for the link between a lack of control and needfor competence was obtained through a post-test (see the appendix), aswell as the process measures in study 2.

Antecedents of Anthropomorphism:A Motivational PerspectiveEpley and colleagues have argued that people anthropomor-phize nonhuman objects to fulfill two types of needs (Epleyet al. 2007, 2008b). One of these is the sociality need, whichrefers to the innate need to establish and maintain mean-ingful social relationships and to feel a sense of connected-ness (Baumeister and Leary 1995). Epley et al. (2007, 2008a)argue that when the sociality need is not being satisfied by

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human relationships (e.g., when one is isolated from others),people are likely to turn to nonhuman entities to fulfil the un-met sociality need. In support, Epley et al. (2008a) found thatpeople who were inclined to believe that they would end upbeing alone in their life rated their pets as beingmore human-like, compared to those who believed that they would havemany rewarding social relationships.

The second driver of anthropomorphism is the effectancemotive, which refers to the desire to be a competent agentvia a sense of having exerted control over one’s environment(White 1959). The effectance motivation has also been termedthe “competence motive” and the “control motive” (see Deciand Moller [2005] for a review). In this research, the term“competencemotive” is used to refer to the desire for perceivedcontrol over the environment (White 1959; Amoura et al.2014). Just as the sociality motive is activated when an indi-vidual feels an insufficient sense of connectedness, the com-petencemotive is activated by a loss of perceived control (e.g.,when one is feeling helpless and a lack of control).1 In suchcases, people are motivated to restore their sense of compe-tence—even if thismay sometimesmean forming illusory be-liefs of one’s ability to control random events (Langer 1975).

Epley and colleagues argue that because people tend to bemore familiar with how humans (vs. nonhumans) behave,the simple act of anthropomorphism serves to render theseobjects seemingly more predictable and therefore controlla-ble, ultimately increasing one’s perceived competence in in-teracting with these objects. In support, past work has shownthat people high in the competence motive (e.g., those whofeel a temporary lack of control over the object they interactwith) are more likely to anthropomorphize nonhuman enti-ties, such as robots, gadgets, and animals, compared to peo-ple low in this motive (Waytz et al. 2010).

In sum, the motivational framework of anthropomor-phism suggests that sociality and competence are two fun-damental human needs. When people feel either lonely orhelpless, their sociality or competence needs are thwarted,and they are motivated to repair it. Anthropomorphism af-fords them ameans of accomplishing this goal. Merging thispremise with findings from a different field of inquiry, self-determination theory (Ryan and Frederick 1997), we pro-pose that the act of anthropomorphizing products shouldincrease consumers’ psychological well-being, as manifestedin heightened vitality.

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Self-Determination Theory and VitalityWe all have experiences of good days when we feel “alive”and “vital” and bad days when we feel “dead” and “drained.”Self-determination theory captures this dimension via theconstruct of vitality, which refers to the subjective feelingof being alive, enthusiastic, and having energy (Ryan andFrederick 1997; Deci and Ryan 2000).

Past research has shown that high vitality, among itsother benefits, enhances regulatory strength, which then hasa positive influence on subsequent self-control. In a recentstudy, participants who exhibited greater vitality after con-suming intrinsically enjoyable “want” products versus ex-trinsically rewarding “should” products performed better onsubsequent self-control tasks in unrelated domains (Chenand Sengupta 2014; see also Muraven et al. 2008; Laran andJaniszewski 2011). Thus, vitality can be seen as the counter-force to depletion: experiencing a state of ego depletion im-pairs the ability to exert self-control later on (Baumeisteret al. 1998), whereas experiencing high vitality enhances sub-sequent self-control.

The positive consequences accruing from vitality haveled scholars to examine its causes. Self-determination theory,which offers the most comprehensive articulation of this is-sue, holds that vitality is enhanced by activities that satisfybasic psychological needs (Ryan and Deci 2008), includingneed for connectedness (Baumeister and Leary 1995) andneed for competence (White 1959). A heightened sense ofcompetence and a heightened sense of social connectednessboth nurture subjective vitality (Ryan and Deci 2008).

Research on self-determination theory provides supportfor these antecedents of vitality. It shows that individualswho tend to feel high social connectedness, either chroni-cally or temporarily, experience higher vitality than thosewho feel low social connectedness (Ryan, Bernstein, andBrown 2010). Similarly, situations/tasks that facilitate com-petence also promote vitality. Thus, doing a task at whichone is skilled and thus feels in control of the outcome (e.g.,a practiced cellist playing the cello) enhances vitality (Shel-don, Ryan, and Reis 1996). In short, people experience highvitalitywhen they possess either a strong sense of social con-nection or feel competent and efficacious.

Engaging in Product Anthropomorphism BenefitsConsumer VitalityA natural connection (although hitherto unexplored) thusemerges between the antecedents of vitality and those ofanthropomorphism—namely, the need for connectednessand the need for competence.

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As noted earlier, the motivational perspective of anthro-pomorphism posits that experiencing loneliness thwartsthe sense of connectedness people generally desire and acti-vates a need for sociality. Likewise, feeling helpless thwartstheir natural desire for control/competence and activates aneed for competence. In a world in which people are typicallysurrounded by products, one way of restoring these needs isto anthropomorphize salient products. For instance, a childwho does not have any friends might confide his troublesto his favorite soft toy, thus treating it as a surrogate friend.Product anthropomorphism can thus be viewed as a form ofgoal-directed activity, with the goal being the fulfillment of athwarted need (i.e., achieving the desired state of connect-edness/competence). Because goal-directed activity, by def-inition, is functional (Shah and Kruglanski 2003; Förster,Liberman, and Friedman 2007), an implication of this viewis that anthropomorphizing should enable the individualto achieve the corresponding goal. Thus, lonely consumerswho are experiencing insufficient levels of connectednessshould feel greater connectedness after anthropomorphiz-ing a product. Similarly, helpless consumers experiencinginsufficient levels of competence should regain a sense ofcompetence following anthropomorphism. Crucially, as thepreceding discussion of vitality argues, an enhancement ineither connectedness or competence leads to increased vi-tality. By integrating these conceptual links, the current re-search therefore posits that lonely and helpless consumerswill experience higher vitality after engaging in a productanthropomorphizing task than after engaging in a neutraltask.

In sum, this research shows the connection between twotheoretical perspectives—self-determination theory andmotivated anthropomorphism—to hypothesize that lonelyconsumers who are experiencing insufficient levels of con-nectedness and helpless consumers who are experiencinginsufficient levels of competence should be motivated toanthropomorphize a product. Further, since motivated prod-uct anthropomorphism stems from the functional objectiveof restoring the sense of connectedness and competence,we predict that lonely consumers will experience greater vi-tality after engaging in product anthropomorphism (as op-posed to engaging in a neutral task). Similarly, those with aneed to restore their sense of competence will experiencegreater vitality after engaging in a product anthropomor-phism task relative to a neutral task. Finally, in keeping withpast research on the beneficial impact of vitality, we arguethat the predicted improvement in vitality as a function ofanthropomorphism is consequential, in that it should mani-

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506 Does Endowing a Product with Life Make One Feel More Alive? Chen, Sengupta, and Adaval

fest in improved self-control in subsequent tasks. We conductthree studies to test these hypotheses.

STUDY 1

Study 1 tested our basic hypothesis that motivated productanthropomorphism promotes consumer vitality. We manip-ulated sociality and competence motivation separately andalso had a control condition in which motivation was notmanipulated. Then participants in all three conditions weregiven an opportunity to anthropomorphize a product versuscomplete a non-anthropomorphizing task (evaluating a mag-azine’s layout). We predicted that people with activated soci-ality and competence needs should experience greater vital-ity after engaging in an anthropomorphizing task than aftera non-anthropomorphizing task, whereas task type shouldmake no difference to vitality in the baseline condition.

Methods and ProcedureThis study used a 3 (motivation: sociality vs. competence vs.baseline)� 2 (intervening task: product anthropomorphismvs. non-anthropomorphism) between-subjects design. A to-tal of 178 participants (95 females,Mage 5 36:39 years) re-cruited from an online survey panel (Amazon MechanicalTurk [MTurk]) participated in the study for a small payment.

Motivation Manipulation. Participants first completed themotivation manipulation. Following past research (e.g., Ad-aval 2001; Bargh and Shalev 2012; Chen, Lee, and Yap 2017),participants in the socialitymotivation condition were askedto describe a past experience that made them feel lonely (i.e.,a time when they felt rejected by others). Those in the compe-tencemotivation condition were asked to describe an experi-ence that made them feel helpless and a lack of control. Par-ticipants in the baseline condition wrote about a normal dayin their life, a neutral task that induced neither sociality norcompetence motivation. A separate test verified that writingabout a lonely (vs. helpless) life experience successfully acti-vated sociality (vs. competence) motivations (details are inthe appendix, available online).

Manipulation of the Opportunity to Anthropomorphize.Next, participants turned to a purportedly separate studyin which the opportunity to anthropomorphize was manip-ulated. Those in the anthropomorphism condition were toldthat a new food blender would be introduced to the con-sumer market, and the company was interested in testingthe positioning of this product. On this pretense, partici-pants read an advertisement for the product and indicated

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the extent to which they considered the food blender ashaving human characteristics, using five items adaptedfrom Aggarwal and McGill (2007; i.e., “seem humanlike,”“seems alive,” “has its own emotions,” “has its own inten-tions,” and “has its own personality”) on 5-point scales thatranged from 1 (not at all ) to 5 (definitely). Participants alsorated the food blender along several personality dimen-sions as part of the anthropomorphism manipulation. Par-ticipants in the non-anthropomorphism condition did notperform this task. Instead, they were led to a magazineevaluation task and were told that the researchers wantedto collect consumers’ responses to different magazine lay-outs. Participants evaluated a fictitious magazine page onits headline position, font size, color scheme, and overalldesign. This task was chosen because it was unlikely to in-duce anthropomorphism.

Measures: Vitality. Our key dependent measure was par-ticipants’ reported vitality following the product anthropo-morphism versus non-anthropomorphism tasks. This was as-sessed by a short version of the standard subjective vitalityscale (Ryan and Frederick 1997) with five items: “I feel aliveand vital at this moment,” “I don’t have energy and spirit atthis time” (reverse coded), “I feel alert and awake,” “I look for-ward to each new day currently,” “I don’t feel energized rightnow” (reverse coded), along scales that ranged from 1 (notat all true) to 7 (very true). Responses to the five items were av-eraged to form an index of subjective vitality (a 5 :87). Fi-nally, as a manipulation check, participants indicated the ex-tent to which they felt lonely and had no control over theirenvironment while they were completing the life event writ-ing task at the beginning of the experiment from 1 (not at all)to 7 (very much).

Results and DiscussionMotivation Manipulation Check. The manipulation checkconfirmed the effectiveness of our motivation manipulation.A 3 (motivation) � 2 (task) ANOVA on participants’ feelingswhile performing the writing task revealed main effects of mo-tivational state on both (a) felt loneliness (F(2; 172) 5 44:09,p < :001) and (b) felt a lack of control (F(2; 172) 5 63:82,p < :001). Participants reported greater loneliness after writ-ing about a lonely event (Msoc 5 5:09, SD 5 1:80) versus aneutral event (Mbase 5 1:81, SD 5 1:38) or a helpless event(Mcomp 5 3:75, SD 5 2:21; both p < :001). On the otherhand, they experienced a greater loss of control if they hadwritten about a helpless event (Mcomp 5 5:35, SD 5 1:95)versus a neutral event (Mbase 5 1:60, SD 5 1:24) or a lonely

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one (Msoc 5 4:10, SD 5 2:09; p < :001). No other effectswere significant (all p > :10).

Anthropomorphizing Tendency Manipulation Check.Next, we averaged responses to the five product anthropo-morphizing items to form a general anthropomorphizingtendency score (a 5 :85). As expected, participants engagedin greater anthropomorphizing when they experienced aneed for sociality or a need for competence (Msoc 5 1:94,Mcomp 5 1:96) compared to the baseline (Mbase 5 1:51,p < :05).

Subjective Vitality. Our key prediction involved thevitality comparison for anthropomorphism versus non-anthropomorphism conditions. We argued that providinglonely or helpless consumers with an opportunity to an-thropomorphize a product should result in a vitality in-crease versus those who did not have such an opportunity.However, no such difference in vitality should be observedfor individuals in the baseline condition (i.e., participantswho wrote about a neutral event). Note that we do not havean a priori prediction as to the vitality comparison for base-line versus the two motivation conditions (sociality andcompetence). In the latter conditions, initial levels of vital-ity are presumably low because of the lack of connectedness orcompetence respectively; it is an empirical question as towhether the product anthropomorphism task, even thoughit should enhance vitality, restores it to baseline levels.

Indeed, a 3� 2 ANOVA revealed a main effect of motiva-tion type, such that participants in the baseline condition re-ported a significantly higher level of vitality (Mbase 5 5:41,SD 5 1:18) than those who had been induced to feel lonely(Msoc 5 4:52, SD 5 1:31) or helpless (Mcomp 5 4:72,SD 5 1:27; F(2; 172) 5 7:14, p < :01). Thus, even after re-ceiving the opportunity to anthropomorphize a product,those initially made to feel lonely or helpless still did not feelas vitalized as those in the baseline condition where theseneeds had not been thwarted in the first place. The 3� 2interaction was not significant (F(2; 172) 5 1:39, p 5 :25).

Our key focus, however, consisted of the improvementin vitality for sociality- and competence-deficient participantsas a function of the two different tasks: anthropomorphizingtask versus non-anthropomorphizing task.We predicted thatfor both sociality- and competence-deficient participants, thereshould be an increase in vitalitywhenparticipants engaged in aproduct anthropomorphizing versus non-anthropomorphizingtask. Thus, these two motivation conditions (sociality andcompetence) were pooled after contrasts showed no differ-

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ences between these two conditions (cf. Jonas, Diehl, andBröme 1997; Sengupta and Johar 2002). Then a 2 (moti-vation: activated vs. nonactivated) � 2 (task: anthropo-morphism vs. non-anthropomorphism) ANOVAwas carriedout, and results revealed a marginally significant interac-tion (F(1; 174) 5 3:04, p 5 :083). Planned contrasts showedthat individuals for whom either a sociality or competencemotive was activated by writing about a lonely or helplessexperience, subjective vitality was heightened after engag-ing in a product anthropomorphism task (Manthro 5 4:93)versus a non-anthropomorphism task (Mnon‐anthro 5 4:38;F(1; 174) 5 5:97, p 5 :016). In contrast, the planned com-parison in thebaselinemotive revealed similar vitality acrossanthropomorphism (Manthro 5 5:33, SD 5 1:20) and non-anthropomorphism task conditions (Mnon‐anthro 5 5:47,SD 5 1:17; F < 1). This suggests that the vitality change insociality and competence motivation conditions was notdriven by task-based differences (e.g., one task being moreinteresting than the other). Overall means of all conditionsare reported in the appendix.

Thus, study 1 showed that for people whose sociality orcompetence needs are thwarted performing a product an-thropomorphism task replenishes consumers’ vitality morethan performing a neutral task. These results are consistentwith our underlying premise that product anthropomor-phism serves as ameans of need fulfillment and consequentlyboosts vitality. However, given that the result in this studywas marginal, we provide additional evidence in study 2.

The findings of study 1 are also worth considering in thecontext of recent research (Mourey et al. 2017), which showsthat lonely consumers who are given the opportunity to in-teract with anthropomorphic products (such as a vacuumcleaner depicted in a humanlike way) as opposed to non-anthropomorphicproducts are subsequently less likely toen-gage in social behaviors (such as spending time with friends).The two investigations offer complementary insights: whileMourey et al. (2017) focus on how the fulfillment of a soci-ality need through anthropomorphic products reduces one’sdesire for real social contact (i.e., fulfilling the salient social-ity goal through onemeans reduces the attractiveness of an-other means to the same goal), the current research focuseson a positive consequence of anthropomorphism-based needfulfillment: namely, increased vitality. The two inquiries dif-fer in several other significant aspects as well: (a) Moureyet al. (2017) focused exclusively on the sociality motive,whereas the current research examines the effects of anthro-pomorphizing products when people have a sociality motiveor a competence motive; (b) a different downstream conse-

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508 Does Endowing a Product with Life Make One Feel More Alive? Chen, Sengupta, and Adaval

quence of such anthropomorphism-induced revitalization isexamined in study 3 (i.e., improved self-control).

STUDY 2

Study 2 sought to replicate the findings from study 1 withtwo major additions. First, study 2 provided insights intothe underlying process by assessing participants’ sense ofbelonging and competence both after the initial manipula-tion of loneliness/helplessness and then again after a producttask in which participants anthropomorphized or did not.According to the proposed conceptualization, a productanthropomorphism task should assuage participants’ ini-tial sense of low belonging/competence more than a non-anthropomorphism task. Second, in this study all partici-pants were exposed to the same product. However, in onecase they were encouraged to anthropomorphize it and inthe other they performed a different task with the same in-formation. This created greater equivalence between the an-thropomorphism and non-anthropomorphism conditions bykeeping the information participants received constant.

Methods and ProcedureThis study used a 2 (motivation: sociality vs. compe-tence) � 2 (intervening task: anthropomorphism vs. non-anthropomorphism) between-subjects design. A total of295 MTurkers (170 females, Mage 5 41:29 years) partici-pated for a small payment.

Motivation Manipulation and Measure of the Sense ofBelonging/Competence at Time 1.We manipulated social-ity and competence motivation as in study 1. That is, par-ticipants wrote about an experience that had made themfeel lonely or helpless, respectively. Next, those in the soci-ality condition reported the extent to which they felt low inbelonging at that moment, whereas participants in thecompetence conditions reported the extent to which theyfelt incompetent at that moment along scales that rangedfrom 1 (not at all ) to 7 (very much). These items served asa premeasure of belongingness and competence; the sameitems were also administered later, as described below.

Manipulation of the Opportunity to Anthropomorphize.The second study involved completion of a product task inwhich the instructions either facilitated the tendency to an-thropomorphize or detracted from it. Specifically, all partic-ipants were exposed to an information flyer about a newcar. The flyer was composed of a photograph and attribute

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descriptions of the car. Participants in the anthropomor-phism condition were told to imagine the car coming to lifeas a person and were asked to describe their thoughts aboutthat “person” (Aggarwal and McGill 2012). In contrast, par-ticipants in the non-anthropomorphism condition were toldto focus on remembering the product attributes with thegoal of recalling them afterward. The memorization focuswas expected to hinder the tendency to anthropomorphize.Following the product task, participant responded to an an-thropomorphizing tendency measure using two items (“thecar seems like a person,” “the car seems alive”; g 5 :91) ona 7-point scale anchored at 1 (not at all ) and 7 (a lot).

Measure of Vitality and the Sense of Belonging/Compe-tence at Time 2. Participants then indicated howmuch vital-ity they were experiencing by responding to three items(“I have energy and spirit at this time,” “I feel alive and vitalright now,” “I feel energized at this moment”) along scalesanchored at 1 (not at all true) and 7 (very true). After this,participants in the sociality condition indicated how muchthey felt they were not belonged, whereas those in the com-petence condition indicatedhow incompetent they felt usingpostmeasures that were identical to the premeasures takenearlier. Finally, participants were reminded of the producttask they had engaged in and asked to report the amountof effort they spent on that task and how tiring they foundit along scales that ranged from 1 (no effort/not tiring at all)to 7 (tremendous effort/very tiring). They then provided de-mographic details, were thanked, and paid.

ResultsMotivation Manipulation Check. Two judges (blind to theassigned conditions) independently read participants’ life ex-periences and rated them to determine the level of lonelinessand helplessness the participants had expressed, along scalesthat ranged from 0 (not at all) to 10 (very much). An analysisof their averaged ratings showed that stories written by par-ticipants in the sociality condition were rated as more lonelythan those in the competence condition (M 5 5:89 vs. 1.53;F(1; 291) 5 810:49, p < :001), whereas the latter wrote sto-ries that seemed to reflect more helplessness than theformer (M 5 6:27 vs. 2.42; F(1; 291) 5 496:76, p < :001).These results suggest that the motivation manipulationwas successful.

Anthropomorphizing Tendency Manipulation Check. Asexpected, participants in the anthropomorphism condition

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viewed the car as more humanlike (Manthro 5 4:86, SD 5

1:68) than those in the non-anthropomorphism condition(Mnon‐anthro 5 1:94, SD 5 1:29; F(1; 291) 5 272:60, p <:001, d 5 :48).

Vitality. Replicating the findings of study 1, an analysis ofthe vitality index as a function of motivation and task typerevealed that participants in the anthropomorphism condi-tion reported greater vitality (M 5 4:91, SD 5 1:43) thanthose in the non-anthropomorphism condition (M 5 4:37,SD 5 1:70; F(1; 291) 5 8:73, p 5 :003, h2p 5 :03). Thiseffect was not contingent on motivation type (F < 1) andheld for both sociality-motivated people and competence-motivated people. A regression analysis also provided sup-port for the beneficial effect of anthropomorphism: acrossconditions, the greater the degree of anthropomorphism,the higher the vitality participants experienced (b 5 :26,p < :001).

Pre/Post-Task Assessment of Belongingness. Recall that preand post measures of belongingness were assessed for par-ticipants who received the sociality manipulation. For theseparticipants, the extent to which the belongingness need wassatisfied as a function of task typewas assessed by a repeated-measures ANOVA with task-type serving as the indepen-dent variable. A marginally significant two-way interaction ofmeasurement time and task type (F(1; 161) 5 2:90, p 5 :09,h2p 5 :02) was obtained suggesting that the task they per-formed had an effect on their feelings of belongingness. Spe-cifically, within-subjects comparisons showed that lonelyparticipants’ initial feeling of low-belongingness was allevi-ated to a greater extent when they had completed the anthro-pomorphism task (Manthro‐post 5 2:67 vs.Manthro‐pre 5 3:21;F 5 22:11, p < :001) than when they had completed anon-anthropomorphism task (Mnon‐anthro‐post 5 3:08 vs.Mnon‐anthro‐pre 5 3:29; F 5 2:34, p 5 :13).

Pre/Post-Task Assessment of Competence. A similar analysiswas conducted on the pre and post measures of competencefor those respondents who received the competence motiva-tion, which revealed a significant two-way interaction ofmeasurement time and task type (F(1; 130) 5 17:49, p <:001). Specifically, within-subjects comparisons showed thathelpless participants’ initial feeling of low-competence wasalleviated more when they had completed the anthropo-morphism task (Manthro‐post 5 2:38 vs. Manthro‐pre 5 3:53;F 5 30:07, p < :001) than when they had completed the

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non-anthropomorphism task (Mnon‐anthro‐post 5 2:78 vs.Mnon‐anthro‐pre 5 2:67; F < 1).

In sum, engaging in product anthropomorphism allevi-ated lonely/helpless consumers’ initial lack of connection/competence, as compared to an equivalent product taskthat did not facilitate anthropomorphism. It is also worthnoting that ancillary measures showed that the two prod-uct tasks did not differ in terms of effort spent on the taskor on how tiring it was (p > :22).

DiscussionStudy 2 replicated the effects of anthropomorphism onconsumer vitality and showed that the effect was not dueto any idiosyncrasies in the content of the information par-ticipants received since they all received the same productinformation. The only difference was what they did with it.

The additional process measures in study 2 (i.e., the pre-and postmeasures) illuminated why engaging in productanthropomorphism has these beneficial effects. In line withthe proposed conceptualization of goal fulfillment, resultsrevealed that product anthropomorphism satisfied funda-mental underlying needs of competence and belonging.Those experiencing initially low levels of belonging or com-petence experienced a restoration of these states when theyengaged in anthropomorphism than when they did not.

An alternate account would suggest that, when peopleare lonely or helpless, engaging in product anthropomor-phism improves their overall mood, and that vitality en-hancement is simply a manifestation of this improvementin overall mood, rather than arising from an alleviation ofthe specific needs of sociality and competence. This alter-nate could be ruled out, however, if a different task (onethat does not involve anthropomorphism) were to improvemood but not vitality. We used this reasoning to test thealternate account in a follow-up study, which is reportedbriefly here in the interests of space (full details availablefrom the authors). Student participants first wrote aboutan experience that made them feel helpless (only the com-petence motive was examined in this study). Then they re-ported either their overall mood or vitality as the depen-dent variable. The same measure was administered onceagain after participants had engaged in either a task involvingproduct anthropomorphism or alternately a mood-upliftingword association task (a commonly used positive mood induc-tion method in prior literature; Isen, Daubman, and Nowicki1987). Results showed that overall mood improved over timeacross task type (Mpre 5 3:69, Mpost 5 4:07; p 5 :03). Fur-

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510 Does Endowing a Product with Life Make One Feel More Alive? Chen, Sengupta, and Adaval

ther, this change in overall mood was equivalent for theproduct anthropomorphizing task (Manthro‐pre 5 3:72,Manthro‐post 5 4:12, Mdiff 5 0:40) and the positive word-association task (Mposword‐pre 5 3:66, Mposword‐post 5 4:02,Mdiff 5 0:36; F < 1). Interestingly, however, engaging inthe product anthropomorphism task increased vitality(Manthro‐pre 5 4:46, Manthro‐post 5 4:64, Mdiff 5 0:18)whereas engaging in the mood-uplifting word associa-tion task actually decreased vitality (Mposword‐pre 5 4:62,Mposword‐post 5 4:04, Mdiff 5 20:58; F(1; 111) 5 8:57,p < :01). Note that the word association task actually affectedvitality negatively (Mdiff 5 20:58 was significantly lowerthan zero; p 5 :02), although it affected mood positively.These results strongly suggest that mood and vitality aredifferent constructs, as past research on self-determinationtheory also indicates (Nix et al. 1999). Thus, the positive in-fluence of anthropomorphism on vitality in our studies isunlikely to have resulted from a simple improvement inoverall mood. Rather, consistent with self-determinationtheory, satisfaction of the specific needs of competenceand sociality is required to enhance vitality. Product anthro-pomorphism appears to do just that.

STUDY 3

The previous studies have shown that anthropomorphizinga product has beneficial effects on consumers. Specifically,those who are low in sociality or competence experiencean increase in vitality after they anthropomorphize a prod-uct. Is this vitality improvement consequential? Past re-search shows that experiencing a state of vitalitymakes peo-ple feel capable both mentally and physically (Ryan andFrederick 1997). Thus, people with high vitality tend to copebetter with stress, be less vulnerable to illness (Penninx et al.2000), and possess greater regulatory strength (Laran andJaniszewski 2011). The final study examined one of the pos-itive implications of vitality, which is particularly relevant toconsumer behavior: improved self-control (Chen and Sen-gupta 2014). We predicted that for lonely and helpless people,the replenished vitality arising from the process of productanthropomorphism should increase consumers’ self-controlin a subsequent task.

Methods and ProcedureA total of 290 American MTurkers (199 females; Mage 5

41:59 years) participated in study 3, which used a 2 (moti-vation: sociality vs. competence) � 2 (intervening task:product anthropomorphism vs. non-anthropomorphism)between-subjects design.

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As in studies 1 and 2, participants first completed a recalltask to activate different motivations. They were then intro-duced to the second study in which they were either given atask that allowed them to anthropomorphize versus one thatdid not. Participants in the anthropomorphism condition wereintroduced to a courier service provider named Sendy. Theywere told to imagine that Sendy had come to life as a personand were asked to think of the sort of “person” Sendy wouldbe (Aggarwal and McGill 2012). They then rated the extentto which Sendy “seems alive” and “feels like a person” alongscales anchored at 1 (not at all) and 7 (a lot). Responses tothese two itemswere averaged to form an index of the extentof anthropomorphizing (g 5 :95). They also rated the brandSendy along several personality dimensions as part of theanthropomorphism manipulation. Participants in the non-anthropomorphism condition did not perform this task andwere instead asked to type out a short passage taken froma biology journal. This passage was chosen because it wasneutral and unrelated to anthropomorphism.

After completing the second task, participants reportedtheir vitality as in study 2. They also completed a food choicetask that served as the measure of self-control. Participantswere told to imagine that theywere hungry and had to choosebetween a fruit salad (healthy option) and a chocolate cake(indulgent option). They indicated their inclination to chooseone or the other snack from 1 (definitely cake) to 9 (definitelyfruit salad). A greater inclination to choose the salad reflectsgreater self-control (Sengupta and Zhou 2007).

Given that the primary dependent variable pertained tofood and the fact that the study was conducted using anonline panel in which participants completed the study ina self-administered manner at different points of the day,fatigue could have influenced their choice of calorie-richfood. Therefore, a premeasure of fatigue along a scale an-chored at 25 (very tired ) and 5 (very energized ) was takenat the beginning of the experiment and used as a covariatein all the analyses reported below.

Results and DiscussionNineteen participants were excluded from the sample be-cause they completed the study on cellphones and couldnot see a proper display of the food stimuli (n 5 7) or failedto complete the writing tasks as instructed (n 5 12). Thisleft us with a final sample of 271 participants.

Manipulation Check for Motivation. As in study 2, twojudges independently read participants’ life experiencesand rated them to determine the level of loneliness and

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helplessness expressed along scales from 0 (not at all ) to 10(very much). As expected, stories written by participants inthe sociality condition were rated as expressing more lone-liness than those in the competence condition (M 5 6:14vs. 1.79; F(1; 269) 5 704:62, p < :001), whereas the latterwrote stories showing more helplessness than the former(M 5 6:56 vs. 2.61; F(1; 269) 5 488:35, p < :001).

Product Anthropomorphism. An analysis of the anthropo-morphism conditions showed that sociality-motivated partic-ipants and competence-motivated participants did not differin their general anthropomorphizing tendency (M 5 4:94vs. 4.86; F(1; 135) < 1). Importantly, both were significantlyhigher than the scale midpoint (3.5; t > 3:92, p < :001).

Subjective Vitality. For both sociality- and competence-deprived individuals, a task that involves anthropomorphismshould restore vitality levels more than a neutral task. Ananalysis of motivation and task type (controlling for partici-pants’ fatigue) yielded a significant main effect of task type(F(1; 266) 5 18:35, p < :001, h2p 5 :07). Participants re-ported higher vitality after engaging in a product anthropo-morphism task (M 5 4:99) than a non-anthropomorphismtask (M 5 4:38). This effect was not contingent on motiva-tional state (F(1; 266) 5 1:43, p 5 :23), suggesting that in-creases in vitality-induced anthropomorphism were evidentfor both sociality and competence-motivated participants.

Self-Control Performance. Participants in the anthropo-morphism condition indicated a higher intention to choosesalad (healthy option) over cake (indulgent option) thanthose in the non-anthropomorphism condition (M 5 5:92vs. 5.20; F(1; 266) 5 3:55, p 5 :06, h2p 5 :01) reflectingbetter self-control. This effect was not contingent on mo-tivational state (F < 1), and held across both conditions.Moreover, a mediation analysis using boot-strapping proce-dures (Hayes 2013) found a significant indirect effect of vi-tality (indirect effect 5 0.08, SE 5 0:05; 95% CI, .01, .20).

Thus, study 3 replicated the findings of previous studiesand showed that individuals with a deficient sense of soci-ality or competence (i.e., those who felt lonely or helpless)experienced a greater replenishment of vitality after engag-ing in a product-anthropomorphizing task than after a neu-tral task. Moreover, this increase in vitality had a beneficialconsequence in a subsequent task, as evident in greater re-sistance to tempting food (i.e., improved self-control). Me-diation analyses showed that the improved self-control wasdriven by heightened vitality.

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GENERAL DISCUSSION

Evidences from three studies show individuals with a defi-cient sense of sociality or competence (i.e., those who feltlonely or helpless) experience greater vitality after engagingin a product-anthropomorphizing task than after a neutraltask (studies 1–3). Such restorative effect of anthropomor-phism on vitality is due to the fulfillment of the need for so-ciality for lonely people and the need for competence forhelpless people (study 2). Furthermore, the enhanced vital-ity enables consumers to exert better self-control in a sub-sequent task (study 3). These findings make three specificcontributions.

First, these results contribute to the psychology litera-ture by providing evidence for critical assumptions underly-ing the motivational view of anthropomorphism. Thus,while the research conducted by Epley and colleagues (Epleyet al. 2007, 2008a, 2008b; Waytz et al. 2010) has been ofenormous value in identifying the motives that drive an-thropomorphism (the need for sociality and the need forcompetence), the current work provides the logical nextstep in examining whether anthropomorphism does indeedfulfill these needs and, if so, the consequences thereof. Ourinquiry shows that anthropomorphism does actually restoreinitially deficient states of connectedness and connected-ness, supporting the motivational account. Further, suchrestoration then benefits the anthropomorphizer’s psycho-logical well-being, in the shape of improved vitality.

Second, this research contributes specifically to the con-sumer literature on anthropomorphism.Research in this areahas focused on how the act of anthropomorphism influencesproduct attitudes and perceptions (Aggarwal and McGill2007; Puzakova et al. 2013; Hur et al. 2015). Only recentlyhave researchers started to look at how consumers might beaffected through anthropomorphism (Mourey et al. 2017).By drawing on the motivational view of anthropomorphismand its emphasis on the antecedent needs that drive this be-havior, the current work documents the vitality benefit thatlonely and/or helpless consumers can obtain from anthro-pomorphizing their products. Product anthropomorphismthus serves to heighten consumers’ general sense of well-being, lending support to the broad argument that, in a ma-terialistic world, a possession takes on a relationship-basedrole that transcends the purely functional (Belk 1988).

Third, the current research contributes to the literatureon self-determination theory and vitality. We document anovel antecedent of heightened vitality; namely, individualswho are currently feeling insufficient connectedness or com-petence can regain vitality simply by engaging in product

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512 Does Endowing a Product with Life Make One Feel More Alive? Chen, Sengupta, and Adaval

anthropomorphism. Indeed, we hope that our focus on vi-tality drives further interest in this area; the construct of vi-tality has been largely underrepresented in the consumer lit-erature (for a recent exception, see Chen and Sengupta 2014).This neglect is particularly surprising given the many positiveconsequences associated with vitality, such as task persis-tence, creativity, and even better health (Ryan and Frederick1997; Penninx et al. 2000; Chen and Sengupta 2014). Thus,an interesting avenue for further research lies in investigatingthese additional benefits of product anthropomorphism—

consumers do seem to engage in anthropomorphism quiteoften, suggesting that there are multiple benefits in doing so.

Other opportunities to extend the implications of the cur-rentwork areworthnoting. For example, future research couldinvestigate when increases in vitality are more likely via prod-uct anthropomorphism. One possible boundary condition isthe type of product being anthropomorphized. Our concep-tualization of howproduct anthropomorphism influences vi-tality suggests that the effect emerges from a form of goal-directed action that enables currently deprived needs to befulfilled through anthropomorphism. However, not all typesof product have the capacity to fulfill the needs. If the targetproduct is deemed ineffective in fulfilling the activated need(whether that be sociality or competence) consumers shouldbe less likely to anthropomorphize the product. As a result,the anthropomorphism-induced vitality increase should beabsent.

We report two supplemental studies in the appendix(studies 4A and 4B) that support such a conjecture. We findthat chronically lonely people, whose desire for social connec-tion is high are more willing to anthropomorphize a clockthat is positioned as being friendly (vs. unfriendly) and thispositioning confers the expected vitality advantage. Simi-larly, chronically helpless people, whose desire for control ishigh, are more willing to anthropomorphize a fitness trackerthat seems to be easy to control (vs. difficult to control), andvitality is indeed higher in the former condition than in thelatter. In sum, consistent with the principles ofmotivated be-havior, the positive impact of anthropomorphism on con-sumer vitality is evident only when the product to be anthro-pomorphized fits with the anthropomorphizer’s activatedneed. It would be interesting to examine other theoreticallyderived moderators for the effects presented here.

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