Negative Disclosure Research Articles

Machines versus Humans: The Impact of AI Chatbot Disclosure on Customer Purchases

Empowered by artificial intelligence (AI), chatbots are surging as new technologies with both business potentials and customer pushback. This study exploits field experiment data on over 6,200 customers who are randomized to receive highly structured outbound sales calls from chatbots or human workers. Results suggest that undisclosed chatbots are as effective as proficient workers and four times more effective than inexperienced workers in engendering customer purchases. However, a disclosure of chatbot identity before the machine-customer conversation reduces purchase rates by over 79.7%. Additional analyses find that these results are robust to non-response bias and hang-ups, and the chatbot disclosure substantially decreases call length. Exploration of the mechanisms reveals that when customers know the conversational partner is not a human, they are curt and purchase less because they perceive the disclosed bot as less knowledgeable and less empathetic. The negative disclosure effect seems to be driven by a subjective human perception against machines, despite the objective competence of AI chatbots. Fortunately, such negative impact can be mitigated by a late disclosure timing strategy and customer prior AI experience. These findings offer useful implications for chatbot applications, customer targeting, and advertising in conversational commerce.

Post-Acquisition Earnings Forecasts: Unintentional Optimism or Strategic Bias?

I examine whether and why the completion of an acquisition affects the bias in managers’ earnings forecasts, and three disclosure consequences to understand the source of the bias. I find systematic optimism in acquiring firms’ earnings forecasts after an acquisition. Prior research suggests this bias can arise from an intentional, strategic motive by management or an unintentional, psychological bias. To disentangle these possible explanations, I examine whether the bias varies predictably with acquisition characteristics that enhance managers’ perceived commitment and control to an acquisition, and whether the bias is associated with subsequent disclosure costs. I find post-acquisition forecast optimism is more likely for diversifying acquisitions, relatively-larger acquisitions and acquisitions management completed despite a negative market reaction to its announcement. In addition, post-acquisition forecast optimism is associated with negative disclosure consequences, including lower analyst responses to future forecasts, greater likelihood of a class action lawsuit dismissal, and greater likelihood of CEO departure. Together, these tests support the argument that managers’ optimistic bias is related to unintentional, rather than strategic, optimism regarding the recently completed acquisition.

Negative disclosures and feeling caught mediate coparental communication and mental health

Negative disclosures and feeling caught mediate coparental communication and mental health

Venting to Unify the Front: Parents’ Negative Relational Disclosures about Their Children as Mediators of Coparental Communication and Relational Quality

ABSTRACTIn families with children, presenting a unified front is important for healthy couple and family functioning, yet the behavioral mechanisms that explain how coparental communication strengthens the interparental relationship remain unclear. In this study, we examined how parents’ negative relational disclosures about their children to each other serve as mediators of coparental communication and relational quality in divorced (n = 65 dyads) and married couples (n = 173 dyads). Coparents’ reports of closeness and satisfaction in both couple types were predicted primarily by their reports of supportive and antagonistic coparental communication. The results also revealed significant indirect effects of supportive coparental communication on closeness through negative relational disclosures about young adult children for married mothers and divorced fathers. Antagonistic coparental communication positively predicted married coparents’ disclosures about their children, but not divorced coparents’ disclosures. The results extend theoretical models of coparenting and provide implications for coparenting education programs.

Corporate Social Responsibility Rhetoric in Times of Crises. A Rhetorical Analysis of CSR Reports Prior to and After Major Corporate Crises

Corporate Social Responsibility reporting has grown increasingly in importance for companies in terms of portraying themselves as good corporate citizens. However, when confronted with a major corporate crisis that evoked an extensive loss in stakeholders’ trust, it remained unclear, how to further deal with the need for CSR communication without presenting oneself as exceedingly hypocritical. In the course of this study, the questions of how and to what extent crises cause change in a corporation’s CSR rhetoric were addressed. Therefore, the utilization of the rhetorical dimensions of logos, ethos, pathos, cosmos and autopoiesis as well as the amount of negative disclosure in the CSR reports of the world’s leading automobile companies (Toyota, General Motors, Volkswagen) were analyzed, one year before and one year after they had maneuvered themselves into a corporate crisis. The rhetorical analysis revealed that the distinctive context of each case (including the corporations’ responsibility for the crisis) dictated the rhetorical adjustments of the CSR reporting after the crisis. Moreover, it could be shown, that when reporting on the crisis cause itself, corporations tend to apply the dimension of ethos more frequently to counter the audience’s potential perception of their hypocrisy.

Development of the Sexual Minority Adolescent Stress Inventory.

Although construct measurement is critical to explanatory research and intervention efforts, rigorous measure development remains a notable challenge. For example, though the primary theoretical model for understanding health disparities among sexual minority (e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual) adolescents is minority stress theory, nearly all published studies of this population rely on minority stress measures with poor psychometric properties and development procedures. In response, we developed the Sexual Minority Adolescent Stress Inventory (SMASI) with N = 346 diverse adolescents ages 14–17, using a comprehensive approach to de novo measure development designed to produce a measure with desirable psychometric properties. After exploratory factor analysis on 102 candidate items informed by a modified Delphi process, we applied item response theory techniques to the remaining 72 items. Discrimination and difficulty parameters and item characteristic curves were estimated overall, within each of 12 initially derived factors, and across demographic subgroups. Two items were removed for excessive discrimination and three were removed following reliability analysis. The measure demonstrated configural and scalar invariance for gender and age; a three-item factor was excluded for demonstrating substantial differences by sexual identity and race/ethnicity. The final 64-item measure comprised 11 subscales and demonstrated excellent overall (α = 0.98), subscale (α range 0.75–0.96), and test–retest (scale r > 0.99; subscale r range 0.89–0.99) reliabilities. Subscales represented a mix of proximal and distal stressors, including domains of internalized homonegativity, identity management, intersectionality, and negative expectancies (proximal) and social marginalization, family rejection, homonegative climate, homonegative communication, negative disclosure experiences, religion, and work domains (distal). Thus, the SMASI development process illustrates a method to incorporate information from multiple sources, including item response theory models, to guide item selection in building a psychometrically sound measure. We posit that similar methods can be used to improve construct measurement across all areas of psychological research, particularly in areas where a strong theoretical framework exists but existing measures are limited.

Attitudes Toward Parental Disclosures to Children and Adolescents by Divorced and Married Parents

ObjectiveTo examine individuals' attitudes about parental disclosures to children.BackgroundParents' disclosures can either help or hinder children's coping with family‐related stressors. Knowing what is appropriate to disclose, however, is not always clear.MethodWe examined judgments about parental disclosures using a mixed‐methods approach. In 18 factorial vignettes, information about a parent's marital status and gender and a child's age and gender were randomly varied; a convenience sample of 561 individuals evaluated the appropriateness of parental disclosures. An open‐ended question asked respondents to explain their answers.ResultsQuantitative data indicated that children's ages and parents' gender affected attitudes about disclosures, but parents' marital status and children's gender did not. Qualitative responses indicated that participants were concerned about parental disclosures putting children in the middle of parents' problems. Disclosures about sexual issues were considered inappropriate for school‐aged children but appropriate for adolescents.ConclusionThere is consensus on evaluations of the appropriateness of specific parental disclosures. Negative disclosures are perceived as potentially harmful to offspring regardless of parents' marital status. Some topics are seen as more acceptable to disclose to adolescents than to younger children, and evaluations of specific disclosures differ for fathers and mothers.ImplicationsA better understanding of how people evaluate parental disclosures may be useful to family therapists, parent educators, and others who work with families.

Untying the Ties That Bind: Dispositional and Relational Patterns of Negative Relational Disclosures and Family Members’ Feelings of Being Caught

This study examined the associations among family members’ reports of negative relational disclosures and their feelings of being caught. Participants included a mother, father, and young adult child from 170 families. Social relations analyses revealed positive associations between each family member’s actor effect for negative disclosures (i.e., each member’s individual disposition to perceive receiving negative disclosures across all family relationships) and their feelings of being caught between the other two members of the family triad. The child’s actor effect for receiving negative disclosures from parents was positively associated with both parents’ feelings of being caught between their child and spouse. Important patterns of association emerged between unique relationship effects of receiving negative disclosures and family members’ feeling caught. Whereas negative disclosures in parent–child dyads were positively associated with feeling caught (especially for mothers and children), in spousal dyads, they were inversely associated with feeling caught.

The impact of corporate social responsibility assurance on investor decisions: Chinese evidence

In this experimental study, we examine whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports affect the investment decisions of non‐professional investors in China depending on whether they are assured, the nature of CSR disclosures (positive versus negative disclosures), and the type of assurance provider (professional accountants versus industry experts). The results indicate that CSR assurance increases investor willingness to invest and that the credibility of CSR information partially mediates the relationship between assurance and investment decisions. We also note that the effect of CSR assurance on investment decisions is greater when CSR disclosures are positive than when they are negative. However, the type of assurance provider does not significantly influence the effect of CSR assurance on investor decision making. China's institutional setting features novice investors, government‐affiliated industry expert assurers, and government‐driven CSR assurance. As a pioneering study on the effects of CSR assurance in China, our work is a valuable supplement to previous studies, which have largely focused on developed economies with considerably different institutional settings.

Negative Parental Disclosures as Mediators of Coparental Communication and Relational Outcomes in Parent-Child Relationships

ABSTRACTThis study explored the associations among perceptions of coparental communication (i.e., supportive and antagonistic), parents’ negative disclosures, and relational outcomes in parent-child relationships (i.e., closeness and satisfaction). Participants included 241 young adult children who completed online surveys. Results indicate that parents’ negative disclosures to their children mediated the associations between both dimensions of coparental communication and both relational outcomes. Indirect effects of supportive and antagonistic coparental communication through mothers’ negative disclosures emerged for children’s closeness with mothers, but not satisfaction. Indirect effects of both forms of coparental communication through mothers’ negative disclosures also emerged for children’s closeness and satisfaction with fathers. Ultimately, the results underscore the importance of disclosure as an explanatory mechanism for the associations between coparental communication patterns and relational quality in parent-child relationships.

The Adolescent HIV Disclosure Cognition and Affect Scale: Preliminary Reliability and Validity.

Globally, there are 2 million HIV-positive 10-19-year-olds. One challenge for this population is sharing their HIV status with others (onward HIV disclosure). There are no multi-item, multidimensional scales of HIV disclosure cognitions and affect for young people living with HIV. An 18-item measure of HIV disclosure cognition and affect was developed, administered to 65 adolescents living with HIV (aged 12-16 years). Data were explored using principal component analysis and preliminary construct and criterion validity assessed. Three factors were revealed: negative disclosure attitudes and feelings, self-efficacy, and positive disclosure attitudes and feelings. The full scale and its subscales were internally consistent. The total score showed statistically significant positive relationships with HIV disclosure in the past 6 months, HIV disclosure intention and self-perception. Preliminary evidence of the measure's good psychometric properties suggests it may be helpful in future clinical and research work.

Runs versus Lemons: Information Disclosure and Fiscal Capacity

We study the optimal use of disclosure and fiscal backstops during financial crises. Providing information can reduce adverse selection in credit markets, but negative disclosures can also trigger inefficient bank runs. In our model, governments are thus forced to choose between runs and lemons. A fiscal backstop mitigates the cost of runs and allows a government to pursue a high disclosure strategy. Our model explains why governments with strong fiscal positions are more likely to run informative stress tests, and, paradoxically, how they can end up spending less than governments that are more fiscally constrained.

A social relations model of negative relational disclosures and closeness in families

This study examined the intrapersonal and interpersonal mechanisms underlying family member reports of negative relational disclosures and closeness. Participants included a mother, father, and young adult child from 170 families ( N = 510). Social relations analyses revealed that negative relational disclosures and closeness vary across family relationships as a function of actor and relationship effects. Mothers’ reports of negative disclosures from other family members varied primarily as a function of actor effects, whereas their closeness varied as a function of relationship and partner effects. Dyadic reciprocity emerged in both the father–child and spousal relationships. Fathers who received negative disclosures from their spouse and their child were more likely to have both family members report being closer to them, respectively.

Emotional disclosure in home hospice cancer care: Implications for spouse caregiver bereavement.

54 Background: Evidence shows the benefit of positive and negative emotional disclosure for family caregivers (CG), but little is known about the impact of emotional disclosure at end of life. We assessed the effect of CG and hospice nurse disclosure during home visits on CG anxiety and depression in bereavement. Methods: As part of a larger study, nurse visits to 95 spouse CGs of cancer home hospice patients were audio recorded. An adapted Roter Interaction Analysis System was used to identify emotional disclosure: CG and nurse positive emotion (humor, gratitude), CG distress, and nurse emotional response (reassurance, validation). CGs completed demographics at hospice enrollment, and HADS anxiety scale, and Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) at enrollment, and 2, 6 and 12 months after patient death. Growth curve analysis was conducted to predict HADS and GDS trajectories, controlling for CG gender, total talk, anxiety and depression at enrollment. Results: Average spouse CG age was 65; 60% were female and 98% were white. There were no GDS effects for CG expression of distress or nurse emotional response. Higher CG positive emotion talk predicted higher GDS at 2 months (B = .18, p < .01), but a significant decline of GDS over time (B = -.08, p = .03). There were no effects for CG emotional disclosure on anxiety. However, more nurse emotional response predicted lower anxiety at 2 months (B = -.10, p = .02) which did not significantly change over time. More nurse positive emotion did not impact anxiety at 2 months, but predicted lower anxiety over time (B = -.04, p = .04). Conclusions: Emotional disclosure during cancer hospice visits was associated with spouse CG bereavement trajectories. CG positive emotion talk may signal increased potential for depression early in bereavement, but appears to lessen over time. CGs who express more positive emotion, which includes humor, gratitude and savoring the moment, may be more sensitive to loss, but appear to recover in time. Nurse expression of reassurance and validation, and of positive emotions seems to be effective in addressing and normalizing CG anxiety during bereavement. These findings have potential implications for communication interventions.

Differential reporting of social and environmental disclosures between local and foreign oil companies in Nigeria

PurposeThis study aims to identify the differences between local and foreign companies’ social and environmental disclosures (SEDs) practices operating in the Nigerian oil sector. It aims at distinguishing SED levels by comparing local and foreign companies operating in the oil sector.Design/methodology/approachThe paper analyses annual reports through content analysis. SED extent and type are measured by the number of sentences. SEDs are further classified into three subcategories according to whether they are negative, neutral or positive disclosures and then their proportions are compared through descriptive analysis. To better understand SED differences, the Kruskal–Wallis and Mann–Whitney–Wilcoxon tests are used.FindingsLocal companies are found to provide more content and a wider variety of SED than foreign companies. The majority of the total SEDs in both local and foreign companies are positive with very little evidence of negative news.Research limitations/implicationsThe measurement of SEDs focuses on only annual reports, without consideration of other disclosure media such as standalone reports and corporate websites. SEDs are assumed to be voluntary for the companies and they may choose not to disclose any information in annual reports, as there are no regulations or disclosure guidelines in Nigeria to be followed.Originality/valueThe main contribution of this study lies in identifying the factors that have led to diversity and uniqueness in SED between local and foreign oil companies. As such, this study seeks to contribute to the development of understanding multiple factors that could give rise to changing patterns of SED.

Proximity to the SEC and Stock Price Crash Risk

We explore the possibility that Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) oversight influences disclosure practices in a manner that reduces the likelihood of individual stock price crashes. Firms located farther from the SEC have greater stock price crash risk and this result is more pronounced for firms with financial statements that are less readable (those with larger 10‐K filings) and more pronounced when SEC budgets are relatively smaller. Similar results are obtained in response to SEC regional office location changes that are more likely to be exogenous. Our results suggest that SEC oversight induces disclosure practices that reduce the likelihood of large negative disclosures.

Conduct a trial using written emotional disclosure

Written emotional disclosure (WED) is a structured therapy which encourages people to write about highly emotive experiences for a pre–specified duration and number of sessions. The first studies of WED instructed undergraduate student participants to write for 20 minutes over four consecutive days about their most stressful or traumatic experiences. Since then, WED has been used in other healthy and clinical populations to varying degrees of effect. This article highlights some factors for consideration when designing a trial of WED. Specifically, the importance of intervention-related factors (e.g. number, spacing and duration of sessions, positive vs. negative disclosure, emotionally ‘neutral’ control tasks), potential moderators and analyses are discussed. The number of writing sessions (at least three are advised), duration of writing, time of day, privacy afforded to participants and appropriate control writing are highlighted as particularly important in the design of WED trials.

Disclosure and Psychological Well-Being of Sexually Abused Adolescents in Hong Kong

The role of disclosure on psychological well-being of adolescents with child sexual abuse experience was investigated in a subsample of 74 disclosers among 800 adolescents recruited in the community in Hong Kong. The results supported that CSA experiences have differential impact on adolescents’ psychological well-being. Family characteristics of the disclosers accounted for only a small amount of the variance in an array of psychological well-being measures. CSA characteristics were robust predictors of disclosers’ sexual eroticism and externalizing behavioral symptoms. Disclosers’ cognitive appraisal of CSA experience and quality of parental attachment were strong predictors of their self-esteem and internalizing behavioral problems. After controlling for the aforementioned factors, negative disclosure experience still significantly predicted lower self-esteem, higher sexual anxiety, more internalizing behavior, and more severe post-traumatic stress disorder responses. Research to understand the factors that generate negative disclosure experiences is needed for developing effective intervention strategies to mitigate the negative consequences of disclosure.

Investor Reaction to $Firm or #CEO Use of Social Media for Negative Disclosures

We examine whether CEOs are able to influence how investors react to a negative earnings surprise by directly communicating with them via social media. Results show that investors exhibit higher levels of trust and are more willing to invest in a firm when the firm’s CEO communicates the negative news through a Twitter account than when the news comes from the CEO via a website or from the firm’s Investor Relations website or Twitter account. Further analysis reveals that direct communications from the CEO through a Twitter account help build more trust in the CEO, including a more enduring form of trust, which leads investors to discount the negative news as a one-time event. Our results have implications for the many firms and their executives who are considering the costs and benefits of directly communicating with investors via social media.

Discount and disengage: How chronic negative expressivity undermines partner responsiveness to negative disclosures.

Partner responsiveness-the degree to which partners respond with caring, understanding, and validation to one another's disclosures (Reis, Clark, & Holmes, 2004; Reis & Shaver, 1988)--has been heralded as a "core, defining construct" in relationship science (Reis, 2007, p. 28). Yet little is known about the determinants of responsiveness in ongoing relationships. The present research elucidates one such set of processes, focusing in particular on responsiveness to negative disclosures. We predicted that the degree to which a partner behaves responsively to negative disclosures depends on the partner's perception of the discloser's typical expressive tendencies. Results of 5 studies employing both correlational and experimental methods supported the hypothesis that partners are less responsive to negative disclosures made by disclosers whom they perceive to have high negativity baselines-that is, to express negativity frequently--than to identical (Studies 1-4) or equally negative (Study 5) disclosures made by disclosers with lower negativity baselines. We also examined 2 routes through which negativity baselines might affect partner responsiveness: by shaping listener appraisals of the discloser's need for support and by making disengagement from those interactions seem justifiable to listeners. These findings fill an important gap in the responsiveness literature and highlight the utility of considering person-context factors in emotion interpretation and responsiveness processes.