Fort McMurray workers' collective refusal of overtime an illegal strike, Alberta labour board finds

Jamie Malbeuf -

The Alberta Labour Relations Board has decided that workers in Fort McMurray, Alta., who banded together to try to pressure their employer for higher pay and more time off, must stop collectively refusing voluntary overtime because they are engaging in an illegal strike.


AlumaSafway Inc. filed an application with the Alberta Labour Relations Board last week, saying some employees violated the provincial Labour Relations Code.© Shutterstock / sirastock

AlumaSafway Inc. filed an application with the Alberta Labour Relations Board last week, saying some employees violated the provincial Labour Relations Code.

An anonymous letter was circulated to scaffolders working for the company, urging them to refuse voluntary overtime in order to get better pay and working conditions. Workers refused overtime on Aug. 22, marking a "significant decline from normal circumstances," the labour board's decision says.

The board found the action constituted an illegal strike that went against the collective bargaining agreement.

Eric Adams, a University of Alberta law professor with a focus on labour and employment law, said the letter and the eventual refusal of overtime turned what is supposed to be an individual's decision to refuse overtime into a collective action.

"That can be a fine line," Adams said.

"Collective workplace action can and should happen, but only in very constrained circumstances when collective bargaining is ongoing, when a collective agreement has ended and certain conditions have been met."

The labour relations board directed the union, United Brotherhood of Carpenters Local 1325, to inform its members of its decision and for AlumaSafway employees to stop engaging in an illegal strike.

It also directed workers to disengage from a group effort to put pressure on AlumaSafway to change the terms of the job, unless it's a permitted strike.

"The guys are no longer refusing to work the overtime," said Derrick Schulte, executive secretary treasurer of the Alberta Regional Council of Carpenters and Allied Workers, which serves four union locals, including United Brotherhood of Carpenters Local 1325.

Under the collective bargaining agreement, workers should not refuse overtime without recognizing a valid reason, such as being unable to find child care, he said.

Adams said there's nothing in the labour relations board's decision that could compel workers to accept overtime.

Employees also still have the individual authority to refuse overtime, depending on their individual circumstances, he added.

Union working with worksite owners, contractors

The AlumaSafway workers felt they worked excessive hours, weren't given enough time off and weren't being compensated enough for the amount of time spent away from their families, Schulte explained.

He was unaware of those complaints until last week, but "they had been going on for a period of time," he said, adding employees last received a raise in November 2019, earning 47 cents more an hour.

The union is now working with the contractors and owners of the worksites — CNOOC Long Lake, Syncrude-Mildred Lake and Suncor — to make sure they're aware of the issues, and they're working to resolve the issues raised during the hearing.

AlumaSafway "fully supports the success of its employees and works positively to address worker concerns," a company spokesperson said in an email.

Adams said the changes AlumaSafway employees want require collective bargaining.

The labour relations board's decision will be submitted to the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta. Anyone violating the directives will face civil or criminal penalties, including contempt of court, the decision says.

In a case such as this, employees who violate their collective agreement could receive any workplace punishment, including suspensions or termination, Adams said.

End sexist scheduling of major sporting events to boost gender equality, urge experts

Women’s match finals invariably considered ‘warm-up’ for men’s Sends message that women are second class citizens/athletes despite progress in gender equality in sport

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMJ

Despite progress in gender equality in sport, ‘structural sexism’ is alive and well in the scheduling of major mixed-sex sporting fixtures, with women’s match finals invariably considered the ‘warm-up event’ for men’s, argue experts in an editorial published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

This not only sends the message that women are second class citizens and athletes, but may also put off women and girls from embracing sports and a physically active lifestyle, they say. 

It’s time to end this traditional scheduling as part of a suite of strategies to address sexism in sport, and enable women and girls to realise their full potential on and off the sports field, insist Dr Klaus Gebel, University of Technology, Sydney, Professor Nanette Mutrie, University of Edinburgh, and Associate Professor Melody Ding, University of Sydney.

Despite substantial progress in women’s participation in sports originally considered ‘men only’ activities, such as football and pole vault, and in equal pay—all four tennis Grand Slam  tournaments now offer the same prize money to male and female players, for example—female athletes around the world are still fighting for equality in various aspects of sport, say the authors. 

“Structural barriers are ubiquitous, such as sexist uniform mandates, rules that force women to choose between breast feeding and competing, sexual harassment and impropriety against female athletes, and lower representation of women in sports governance, coaching, and journalism,” they write.

The scheduling of sports events is another of these barriers, they suggest, citing previous Olympic Games before Tokyo 2020 and nearly all other mixed-sex sporting events, such as tennis, table tennis, and beach volleyball, where the last two events are the women’s and the men’s finals—in that order. 

“These obstacles not only hold female athletes back from achieving their full potential and being celebrated as the pinnacle of their sports, but they might also hold back girls and women around the world from embracing sport and reaping the full benefits of an active lifestyle,” they suggest.

Globally, women are less physically active than men, prompting the World Health Organization to encourage gender equality in sports as part of a strategy to reduce physical inactivity by 15% by 2030, they highlight.

What’s more, women’s sports continue to receive far less media coverage than men’s, with organisers of major sporting events often scheduling men’s events at TV ‘prime time’ or at better venues, they point out. 

Better TV coverage generates more revenues which translate into better pay for athletes and more team resources for the sport, they say.  Female athletes’ lower visibility perpetuates a vicious cycle of less funding and fewer resources and opportunities, they argue. 

A rethink is now needed, say the authors, who call on the International Olympic Committee and all major sports federations around the world that run mixed-sex sports events to implement “one small, yet potentially impactful change”---to alternate the order of the men’s and women’s match finals each year.

This proposal doesn’t entail adding, dropping, or replacing coverage, so wouldn’t affect total viewership, they contend.

But it would send an important message “to girls and women around the world that female athletes are not second-class athletes and women are not second-class citizens,” they write.

“It is time to challenge the gender hierarchy in sport, and to explicitly and proudly demonstrate that the achievements of female athletes are as valued as those of male athletes,” and enable girls and women “to cultivate their full potential on and off the sports field,” they write.

This will require long-term commitment from many different stakeholders across the sector, including sports bodies, the media, the legal profession and the community at large, they say. 

“We hope that through improving the visibility of women’s sport, as one component in a suite of strategies to address sexism in sport, we can advance social norms and improve the resources and opportunities for girls and women,” they conclude.

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JOURNAL

British Journal of Sports Medicine

DOI

10.1136/bjsports-2021-105379 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Commentary/editorial

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Another step towards gender equality: a call for ending structural sexism in the scheduling of sports events

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Aug-2022

Sharing on social media makes us overconfident in our knowledge

Sharing articles on social media, even when we haven’t read them, can lead us to believe we are experts on a topic.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

AUSTIN, Texas – Sharing news articles with friends and followers on social media can prompt people to think they know more about the articles’ topics than they actually do, according to a new study from researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.

Social media sharers believe that they are knowledgeable about the content they share, even if they have not read it or have only glanced at a headline. Sharing can create this rise in confidence because by putting information online, sharers publicly commit to an expert identity. Doing so shapes their sense of self, helping them to feel just as knowledgeable as their post makes them seem.

This is especially true when sharing with close friends, according to a new paper from Susan M. Broniarczyk, professor of marketing, and Adrian Ward, assistant professor of marketing, at UT’s McCombs School of Business.

The research is online in advance in the Journal of Consumer Psychology. The findings are relevant in a world in which it’s simple to share content online without reading it. Recent data from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism show only 51% of consumers who “read” an online news story actually read the whole article, while 26% read part, and 22% looked at just the headline or a few lines.

Broniarczyk, Ward and Frank Zheng, a McCombs marketing doctoral alum, conducted several studies that support their theory. In an initial one, the researchers presented 98 undergraduate students with a set of online news articles and told them they were free to read, share, or do both as they saw fit. Headlines included “Why Does Theatre Popcorn Cost So Much” and “Red Meats Linked to Cancer.”

Next, they measured participants’ subjective and objective knowledge for each article – what the students thought they knew, and what they actually knew. Reading articles led to increases in both objective and subjective knowledge. Sharing articles also predicted increases in subjective knowledge – even when students had not read what they chose to share, and thus lacked objective knowledge about the articles’ content.

In a second study, people who shared an article about cancer prevention came to believe they knew more about cancer than those who did not, even if they had not read the article.

Three additional studies found this effect occurs because people internalize their sharing into the self-concept, which leads them to believe they are as knowledgeable as their posts make them appear. Participants thought they knew more when their sharing publicly committed them to an expert identity: when sharing under their own identity versus an alias, when sharing with friends versus strangers, and when they had free choice in choosing what to share.

In a final study, the researchers asked 300 active Facebook users to read an article on “How to Start Investing: A Guide for Beginners.” Then, they assigned students to a sharing or no sharing group. All participants were told the content existed on several websites and saw Facebook posts with the sites. Sharers were asked to look at all posts and choose one to share on their Facebook page.

Next, in a supposedly unrelated task, a robo-advised retirement planning simulation informed participants that allocating more money to stocks is considered “more aggressive” and to bonds “more conservative,” and they received a customized investment recommendation based on their age. Participants then distributed a hypothetical $10,000 in retirement funds between stocks and bonds: Sharers took significantly more investment risk. Those who shared articles were twice as likely to take more risk than recommended by the robo-advisor.

“When people feel they’re more knowledgeable, they’re more likely to make riskier decisions,” Ward said.

The research also suggests there’s merit to social media companies that have piloted ways to encourage people to read articles before sharing.

“If people feel more knowledgeable on a topic, they also feel they maybe don’t need to read or learn additional information on that topic,” Broniarczyk said. “This miscalibrated sense of knowledge can be hard to correct.”

For more details about this research, read the McCombs Big Ideas feature story and watch the video explaining Broniarczyk and Ward’s work.

Media Contact
Judie Kinonen
judie.kinonen@mccombs.utexas.edu
409.356.3324

 

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JOURNAL

Journal of Consumer Psychology

DOI

10.1002/jcpy.1321 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

I share, therefore I know? Sharing online content - even without reading it - inflates subjective knowledge

The power to change is a key driver for sustainable pension saving

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG

Individuals who actively choose to save for retirement via so-called sustainable funds are not only driven by values of equality, justice and the environment. They also have a tendency to prioritise authority, and attach less importance to wealth. This is shown by a new study from the University of Gothenburg.

Those who work and pay taxes in Sweden receive their earned pension – their pension entitlement – each year for both premium pension and income pension. The premium pension is the smaller part of the national pension, where pension savers can choose the funds in which their pension capital is invested.

Researchers from the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg have used surveys to conduct a study investigating the psychological driving forces that influence how different people choose to invest their premium pension.

Egocentric values affect the willingness to invest sustainable
The study shows that people who choose different types of sustainable pension funds are more likely to be motivated by altruistic values that emphasise the importance of equality, environmental protection and social justice. However, the findings also suggest that egocentric values have a role to play.

“In actual fact, the strongest value behind sustainable retirement investments is authority, which we define as the desire to lead and consolidate power in order to control people and resources,” explains consumption researcher John Magnus Roos, who led the study.

The driving force may therefore involve authoritarian power, which can be established partly by impressing other people, since sustainability is trendy, and partly by being involved in controlling resources for sustainable development.

Attaching less value to money and ownership
At the same time, the findings also show that those who save more sustainably for retirement do not prioritise money and ownership to the same extent as those who invest in more traditional funds. They simply value physical property lower.

“Not surprisingly, they are primarily motivated by other factors. However, other research shows that these people do not believe that the returns are worse, and nor have they been shown to be. But our research reveals that what drives them towards sustainable investments is something else than financial return.”

An expression of values
According to the researchers, the study says something about the individual’s motivation to invest sustainable. The findings also suggest that sustainable pension saving is ultimately about values, which values we want to stand for, and the kind of society we want.

“This can be used in external communication, for example, or in the product range, where the focus is less on the financial return and more on ‘boosting the investor’s ego’ via the investment’s sustainability credentials.”

Conclusions from the study on people who actively choose to invest in sustainable pension funds:

• They attach more importance to altruistic values such as equality, environmental protection and social justice.
• They value authority – exercising power by controlling people and resources – to a greater extent.
• They prioritise material things and wealth to a lesser extent.

About the study
A total of 3,500 randomly selected people were contacted, with a response rate of 28.7%. Of the 1,005 respondents, 68 said they had invested in sustainable pension funds. Three different analyses of values were carried out, from general clusters of values to more nuanced/specific values. The study was based on social psychologist Shalom H. Schwartz’s theory of basic human values. In order to investigate the driving forces behind the decision to invest sustainably, various regression analyses were conducted using different values as independent variables.

The study, A three-level analysis of values related to socially responsible retirement investments, has been published in the Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment.

Contact:
John Magnus Roos, researcher at the Centre for Consumption Research, School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg, and senior lecturer in social psychology at the University of Skövde.  
Email: magnus.roos@cfk.gu.se, phone.: +46 730-48 22 27

Magnus Jansson, researcher at the Centre for Consumption Research, School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg and senior lecturer in social psychology at the University of Skövde.
Email: magnus.jansson@gri.gu.se, phone: +46 31-786 56 12

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JOURNAL

Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment

DOI

10.1080/20430795.2022.2077291 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

A three-level analysis of values related to socially responsible retirement investments

Humble leaders can help make groups more effective

Study of teachers links leadership to psychological empowerment

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

Leaders of teacher groups who were thought of as humble helped improve professionalism and collaboration among team members, new research has shown.

The study, done in China, found that teachers in the Chinese equivalent of professional learning communities (PLCs) were more willing to share their knowledge and expertise when they rated their PLC leaders as being higher in humility.

The reason was that humble leaders made teachers feel more empowered to share their knowledge because they felt psychologically safe to take risks, said study co-author Roger Goddard, professor of educational studies at The Ohio State University.

“A little humility on the part of leaders goes a long way in helping groups be more productive and collaborative,” Goddard said.

“When people feel their leader admits mistakes and is open to learning from others, everyone contributes more and makes these groups more effective.”

Goddard conducted the study with Yun Qu of Beijing Normal University in China and Jinjie Zhu, a doctoral student in education at Ohio State.  The study was published online recently in the journal Educational Studies.

In the United States and elsewhere, PLCs are designed to facilitate professional development through discussions in which teachers share their best practices and what they have learned through their experiences in the classroom.

“Teachers can feel fairly isolated in the classroom,” Goddard said. “PLCs help teachers build a sense of community and learn from each other about how to improve classroom instruction.”

In China, the equivalent of PLCs are called Teaching Research Groups (TRGs). The leaders of TRGs are experienced teachers who are not traditional administrators, but do serve as supervisors and coordinators and are involved in teacher evaluations, lesson planning and teacher selection.

This study involved 537 teachers from 238 TRGs in a variety of both urban and rural schools in China.

Teachers rated their TRG leaders on three dimensions of humility: their willingness to view themselves accurately, such as admitting when they didn’t know how to do something; their appreciation of others’ strengths; and their teachability, such as being open to other teachers’ advice.

Results showed that teachers who rated their TRG leaders as being higher in humility were more likely to report that they shared their knowledge and expertise in TRG meetings.

“The whole point of these groups is for teachers to share their knowledge, so the fact that humble leaders inspired individuals in their groups to be more willing to do this is very significant,” Goddard said.

The study also found why humble leaders were so effective in helping their teachers share their knowledge.

Results showed that in TRGs with more humble leaders, teachers reported higher levels of psychological safety – they felt they could take risks and knew that others would not act in a way to undermine their efforts.

That feeling of safety led them to feel more psychologically empowered: They felt their jobs had meaning, they had autonomy to do their work, and they felt they were competent and that their work had impact in the school.

So humble leadership led to teachers feeling psychologically safe, which made them feel empowered and ultimately led them to share their experience and knowledge more fully with their colleagues, Goddard said.

“This feeling of teachers that they could safely share their knowledge comes from having a leader who has humility – an openness to learning from others, a willingness to revise opinions, and an appreciation for the strengths of others,” he said.

While this research was done in China, Goddard said he believes the results would be similar in the United States and elsewhere.

“There’s a lot of evidence that suggests trust is a key part of successful organizations. And feeling psychologically safe and empowered to share your knowledge in the workplace is part of building trust, and that’s what humble leaders help create,” he said.

“That is as true in the United States as it is in China.”

In the same way, the results should be applicable outside of education.

“Many of the same principles that make successful organizations cut across cultures and fields.  It makes sense that humble leaders will build trust and better relationships that will increase the effectiveness of any groups that have to work together,” Goddard said.

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JOURNAL

Educational Studies

DOI

10.1080/03055698.2022.2103648 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Modesty brings gains: linking humble leadership to knowledge sharing via psychological safety and psychological empowerment in professional learning communities

Positive neighbor involvement important if teens don't develop mother-child bond

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Teens who live in neighborhoods with trusted, engaged adults can still develop critical social skills that were not nurtured early in life, according to a new University of Michigan study. 

Previous studies have shown the importance of early mother-child bonding that contributes to teens having social skills, such as positive behaviors that optimize relationships with others, solid academic performance and self-management of emotions. 

But what happens when that connection isn't formed? Social cohesion — or the trust and bonds among neighbors — can benefit the adolescents, researchers said. 

The study focused on social skills among 15-year-olds as a function of early attachment between mothers – also considered primary caregivers – and their 3-year-old kids, as well as neighborhood social cohesion.

Data from 1,883 children ages 1, 3 and 15 came from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a nationally representative study of children born in 20 U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000.

The present study asked 39 questions to determine the children's attachment, such as "is easily comforted by contact or interaction with mother when crying or otherwise distressed."  A higher score indicated a greater level of security in the child’s attachment with the mother. 

To measure adolescent social skills, behavior questions were asked of the 15-year-old participants. High scores in child attachment were positively correlated with increased adolescent social skills, the study showed. 

At age 3, some of the traits reflecting closeness would be "hugs or cuddles with mother without being asked to do so," "responds positively to helpful hints from mother," and "when a mother says follow, child does so willingly."

High scores in neighborhood social cohesion at age 3 were positively correlated with increased adolescent social skills. And when the bond between the mother-child wasn't strong, the impact neighbors had on kids' social skills was important, the research indicated. 

"Children who live in neighborhoods with a high degree of social cohesion may have more opportunities to engage within their community and interact with other trusted adults, as well as form friendships with children," said study lead author Sunghyun Hong, a doctoral student of social work and psychology.

These connections with other sources of support may be the driving force behind the buffering impact of social cohesion on social skills for children who had insecure attachments to their caregivers

"This underscores the value of children having access to supportive and loving relationships with the mother and the surrounding community, even from early childhood," Hong said. 

The data was collected in the late 90s to early 20s, in which mothers were frequently the primary caregivers. However, in recent decades, the definition of primary caregivers has been expanding with families having diverse forms, including more fathers who are engaged in co-parenting and are the sole primary caregiver. Thus, if the research involved father, the study's results would be similar, Hong said. 

The findings, which appear in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, show that living in a neighborhood with high social cohesion is as important as having high attachment security to the mother," she said. 

"This means that when we think about policies and programs to empower our children in the community, we must consider directly supporting the family relations and investing in their surrounding community relations," Hong said.

The study's co-authors were U-M psychology graduate student Felicia Hardi and Kathryn Maguire-Jack, associate professor of social work.

Abstract: The moderating role of neighborhood social cohesion on the relationship between early mother-child attachment security and adolescent social skills

Hong

Hardi

Maguire-Jack

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JOURNAL

Journal of Social and Personal Relationships

Children suffering adversity more likely to thrive when parents are emotionally supported

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

Emotional support for parents may bolster family resilience and help young children flourish despite adversity, according to a Rutgers study.

“While exposure to adversity increases risks for children, we found that very often children who demonstrated positive signs of flourishing even after being exposed to negative life events, were raised by parents or caregivers who had access to their own supportive networks,” said Lawrence C. Kleinman, the vice chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, who coauthored the study published in the Journal of Pediatrics Nursing with colleagues from Case Western Reserve University and the University of San Diego.  “This finding about the importance of networks was true both for families who exhibited higher levels of resilience and lesser resilience.”

Experts in children’s well-being have known that kids with greater flourishing traits – such as curiosity and the ability to bounce back when faced with challenges – have fewer problems in school, achieve higher grades and make healthier lifestyle choices while children with less flourishing characteristics are more likely to be bullied and demonstrate antisocial behavior.

What wasn’t clearly understood is what promotes flourishing in children who experience adverse childhood experiences, or ACES.  ACES represent, hardships that can range from physical abuse to the death or incarceration of a parent. To examine the flourishing-adversity correlation, researchers measured the factors associated with flourishing and family resilience among children ages 6 months to 5 years.

Using an enhanced data set of 14,494 young children derived from the 2016 National Survey of Children's Health, an annual household-based survey administered by the U.S. Census Bureau, Kleinman and his colleagues assessed the potential effect of adversity on family resilience and child flourishing.

They found that among resilient families – defined as families with strong teamwork and communication skills – the likelihood of the child flourishing was greater when the family lived in a supportive neighborhood and had emotional support in raising children. But even within families lacking these aspects of resilience, child flourishing was more likely when parents had emotional support.

Primary care health systems – particularly practices that demonstrate characteristics of a patient-centered medical home (PCMH) –  are among the most important venues for parents to obtain emotional support, Kleinman said.

However, for many at-risk children and their caregivers, access to PCMH care can be limited, especially for those reliant on Medicaid, which places a de facto cap on visit lengths because of reimbursement costs.

“Short visits may be insufficient to address the complexity of the Medicaid population, which is characterized by a greater amount of financially disadvantaged families and children with chronic health-care needs,” the researchers wrote.

Expanding reimbursement mechanisms to enable pediatric primary care clinicians to spend more quality time with children and families could facilitate flourishing in children, they said.

“Increasing the availability of parent-centered services in settings that are traditionally conceptualized as pediatric may offer additional opportunities to bolster emotional support for parents and adult caregivers,” said Kleinman. “This is a logical next step to promote flourishing in the face of childhood adversity. Efficiency should not be designed as seeing the most patients in the shortest time, ” Kleinman added.  “Quality takes time and is a pre-requisite for efficiency.”

Dealing with angry customers on social media? De-escalate the high arousal with active listening and empathy

News from the Journal of Marketing

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION

Researchers from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Dartmouth College, Babson College, and LUISS University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that shows how to de-escalate customer anger on social media sites by using language that signals active listening and empathy.

The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled “Complaint De-escalation Strategies on Social Media” and is authored by Dennis Herhausen, Lauren Grewal, Krista Hill Cummings, Anne L. Roggeveen, Francisco Villarroel Ordenes, and Dhruv Grewal.

Social media is rife with angry customers venting their grievances about brands and companies.

According to the latest Customer Rage Study, completed in February 2020, the number of customers who prefer to register complaints via digital platforms rather than by phone or in-person has tripled over the past three years. The study also found that 48% of consumers in the U.S. rely on social media to gauge other people’s experiences with products and services.

What should worry companies is that less than one-third of the respondents indicated being satisfied with service recoveries and two-thirds expressed anger after a failure. The anonymity provided by social media has boosted expressions of anger and many firms struggle to offer effective responses to dissatisfied customers. Failing to de-escalate anger may be a critical reason that many companies fail in their recovery attempts.

Although recent research indicates that firms should address public complaints to limit the detrimental effects on other customers, it is unclear which response strategies are best suited to de-escalate angry customers and evoke a feeling of gratitude in the person making the complaint on social media. Using natural language processing on real social media complaints and in controlled experiments, this research team explains two effective response strategies that firms could adopt to de-escalate negative arousal and enhance costumer gratitude in social media: active listening and empathy.

• Active listening implies paying attention to customers’ complaints and following up by demonstrating that attention through actions such as repeating, paraphrasing, or adapting the language to the customer.

• Empathy involves connecting at an emotional level with complaining customers by indicating understanding of their feelings with explicit expressions of validation and affirmation.

In a text-based context, active listening concerns the style of the response (i.e., linguistic style matching) and empathy is related to the content of the response (i.e., using empathetic words).

When dealing with highly aroused consumers on social media, increasing active listening and empathy in a firm’s response evokes gratitude, even if the actual failure is not yet recovered. The researchers say that “Our three field studies show that increasing active listening by 1% increases the probability of customer gratitude by up to 14% and increasing empathy by 1% increases the probability of customer gratitude by up to 90%. Thus, compared to active listening, empathy is a stronger lever to enhance desired outcomes.”

These findings offer easy-to-implement implications that will help for-profit firms, non-profit organizations, and governmental agencies that handle complaints via social media. “Since social media interactions are often driven by high arousal and negative emotions, we hope our findings not only change the way companies deal with angry customers, but also make interaction partners more receptive to each other’s perspective and have better social media conversations,” say the researchers.

While past research often focused on how companies could resolve customers’ problems and this research explores methods to de-escalate anger, a combination of both is a potential direction for future research. Sometimes it might be warranted to first solve the problem and then de-escalate the negative high arousal emotions, while at other times it might be best to prioritize de-escalation.

Full article and author contact information available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/00222429221119977

About the Journal of Marketing 

The Journal of Marketing develops and disseminates knowledge about real-world marketing questions useful to scholars, educators, managers, policy makers, consumers, and other societal stakeholders around the world. Published by the American Marketing Association since its founding in 1936, JM has played a significant role in shaping the content and boundaries of the marketing discipline. Shrihari Sridhar (Joe Foster ’56 Chair in Business Leadership, Professor of Marketing at Mays Business School, Texas A&M University) serves as the current Editor in Chief.
https://www.ama.org/jm

About the American Marketing Association (AMA) 

As the largest chapter-based marketing association in the world, the AMA is trusted by marketing and sales professionals to help them discover what is coming next in the industry. The AMA has a community of local chapters in more than 70 cities and 350 college campuses throughout North America. The AMA is home to award-winning content, PCM® professional certification, premiere academic journals, and industry-leading training events and conferences.
https://www.ama.org

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JOURNAL

Journal of Marketing

DOI

10.1177/00222429221119977 

ARTICLE TITLE

Complaint Deescalation Strategies on Social Media

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Aug-2022

Food advertisements on Twitch can lead to cravings, purchases

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PENN STATE

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Food advertisements on social media are pervasive, but research has not yet comprehensively documented the effects of these ads on adolescents and young adults. A new study by researchers at Penn State and Dartmouth College found that advertisements on the social media platform Twitch can lead to cravings for and purchasing of nutrient-poor foods like candy and energy drinks among some adolescents and young adults.

Twitch is a streaming platform that allows viewers to have conversations while sharing a common video feed. It offers channels across a broad range of topics including travel, sports, food, art and music. But videogame play is the original — and by far most common — use of the platform.

The use of Twitch is growing rapidly, with over six billion hours of content viewed on the platform during the first three months of 2021. This represented a 97% increase over the same period in 2020.

“People can be baffled by Twitch, but anyone old enough to have played home videogames as a teenager likely had a similar experience,” said Travis Masterson, assistant professor of nutrition, Broadhurst Career Development Professor for the Study of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, and co-author of the research. “You would go over to a friend’s house after school, or on Saturday morning, and if they were trying to get through a particularly tough part of a videogame, you might sit and watch them play. The videogame was an excuse for a conversation. This was certainly true for me. Twitch offers the same opportunity to hang out in a community with your friends, but now it is all online.

“Endorsement deals on Twitch can be worth many millions of dollars, and younger people — who are always attractive to advertisers — are moving their eyeballs away from television into these more interactive forms of entertainment, often to Twitch specifically," added Masterson.

The researchers noted that, as the popularity of Twitch increased, advertising for nutrient-poor foods like candy and energy drinks became more common on the platform. The research team, which included Jennifer Emond, associate professor of biomedical data science and pediatrics at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, and Catherine Pollack, Emond’s former graduate student, wanted to understand how advertising on Twitch affected the cravings and purchasing habits of viewers.

The team recruited 568 Twitch users through Reddit. Participants were predominantly male and either non-Hispanic White or Asian. Using three existing instruments for measuring food cravings, the researchers sought to understand whether they could predict which people were more susceptible to food advertising.  

In a new publication in the journal Public Health Nutrition, the researchers demonstrated that some Twitch viewers are more likely than others to remember, crave and purchase brands that they see advertised on the streaming platform. The researchers also found that three questions from an instrument called the External Food Cue Responsiveness inventory could help identify members of this "highly susceptible" group. Highly susceptible viewers endorsed the statements, "I want food or drinks that I see others eating," "I want to eat when people talk about food" and "I notice restaurant signs/logos." 

Fifteen percent of study participants reported experiencing cravings of products they saw advertised on Twitch, and 8% reported buying the advertised products. Masterson said that the researchers were concerned that people who are highly susceptible to advertising and who spend multiple hours per day on Twitch could be prone to buying foods that undermine their health.

“In academic research, we are playing catch up with food advertisers,” Masterson explained. “Advertising is pervasive for a reason: It works, and companies understand how it works. People tend to understand that children are susceptible to advertising messages, but we often like to think that once we grow up and start making our own decisions, adults are immune to advertising’s power. But advertising didn’t grow to be a $100 billion-plus industry in the United States because it is ineffective. Advertising works on us, and on a subset of us, it is especially effective.”

Masterson added that academic researchers need to understand consumer behavior as well as advertisers, so that society can determine what advertising is or is not safe in different environments.

“This is a single study, and these results cannot be generalized to everyone, but the study still has broad implications,” said Masterson. “This research shows that some people are highly susceptible to advertising and that the External Food Cue Responsiveness inventory can help researchers identify those vulnerable people.

“I am a gamer. I am on Twitch and am part of these communities,” Masterson continued. “It bothers me when I am watching League of Legends, for example, and I see a branded candy ad in the middle of the game. It bothers me because I know that these ads affect people, including me. This work provides researchers with one tool for understanding who is most affected, and in the long run, that could promote greater health for gamers and everyone who is exposed to food advertising.”

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JOURNAL

Public Health Nutrition

DOI

10.1017/S1368980022001628 

Neighborhood associations should reflect the communities they belong to, argues a new study

Darla Fortune says it is problematic when organizers are a homogenous group with limited interest in serving all residents

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: DARLA FORTUNE: “WHEN WE ASKED LEADERS ABOUT WHO IS INVOLVED, WE ENCOUNTERED A LOT OF AMBIVALENCE.” PHOTO BY DAVID WARD view more 

CREDIT: DAVID WARD

The difference between a desirable, vibrant neighbourhood and one that is stagnant and moribund can depend on the strength of its local associations. These groups often act as the engine of local public life, organizing the kinds of sporting activities, cookouts, festivals and holiday celebrations that tighten the community fabric.

But a recent paper published in the World Leisure Journal argues that these associations may not always be as inclusive as they seem. Researchers interviewed community leaders in an anonymous, mid-sized city in Ontario. They found that these volunteer groups, which often receive funding and in-kind support from the municipality for the purpose of encouraging neighbourhood belonging, can be insular, exclusive and resistant to change. They also do not always reflect the dynamic communities they are intended to serve.

The research was led by Sarah Byrne and Lindsay Kalbfleisch, former undergraduate students at the University of Waterloo. Darla Fortune, an associate professor of applied human sciences in Concordia’s Faculty of Arts and Science, supervised the study.

“We went into this research project thinking that everything was going to be positive — that these associations are creating connections between neighbours at festivals and events they plan,” Fortune says. “And that did happen. But we were surprised that the most active members say that while fostering a sense of belonging played a big role in what they do, it wasn’t necessary for everyone in the neighbourhood to be included.”

Fun for some, not all

The researchers noted that the nine association leaders they interviewed were almost exclusively white, affluent homeowners, with the majority raising young families. Others were retirees whose children no longer lived at home.

They note that their contributions are often valuable: they organize community activities and ensure facilities such as pools and parks are maintained, sports leagues are managed and Easter egg hunts and Christmas tree lighting ceremonies are planned. And when families experience challenges, such as with a birth or death in the family, these associations often act as a valued support network.

“But when we asked these leaders about who is involved, we encountered a lot of ambivalence,” Fortune notes. Few events were planned for older adults, and despite the multicultural nature of the neighbourhoods, association events were almost exclusively organized around Christian-inspired themes. The leaders interviewed often said that they would continue to plan events as they had in the past because they personally experienced a sense of belonging through their involvement.

“Nobody told us that they did not want to involve all of their neighbours. But there was no intentional effort to reach out to them.”

Reaching out to the community

The researchers argue that municipally funded neighbourhood associations hold a place of power within their communities and while attending to the goals of leaders — who may not represent the broader neighbourhood — associations risk perpetuating exclusion based on difference. Their hope is that these associations and the municipalities that support them can diversify and expand their focus to foster a genuine sense of belonging for all residents, not just a limited, often affluent subgroup.

“It isn’t necessarily a problem that the most active community members are young white families,” Fortune says. “However, they should be willing to take into consideration that there are people in the mix whose needs have to be met, and that they should be heard from even if they are not actively involved members.”

Read the paper: “Neighbourhood associations may promote belonging, but for whom?”

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JOURNAL

World Leisure Journal

DOI

10.1080/16078055.2022.2099453 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Neighbourhood associations may promote belonging, but for whom?