Social Consequences of the Choice (Negative)

Abstract

The Social Consequences of the Choice (Negative) scale is a psychometric instrument developed by consumer behavior and social psychology researchers Peggy J. Liu, Brent McFerran, and Kelly L. Haws (2020) to assess the extent to which an individual anticipates negative interpersonal friction, disapproval, or social discomfort resulting from an individual decision made in the presence of or in conjunction with a peer. Introduced within the empirical investigation of consumer coordination dynamics—specifically the paradigm of "mindful matching" across ordinal versus nominal product attributes—the scale measures perceived social fallout without referencing domain-specific attributes. This domain-general formulation allows researchers to seamlessly adapt the instrument across diverse decision-making environments, including dining, collaborative labor, financial allocations, and shared entertainment. The instrument typically operates as a unidimensional construct comprising items rated on a 7-point Likert scale, capturing anticipated social friction, peer awkwardness, and perceived normative deviation. Psychometric evaluations demonstrate robust internal consistency (Cronbach’s α regularly exceeding .88 to .93), excellent factor determinacy, strong convergent validity with measures of interpersonal sensitivity and fear of negative evaluation, and marked discriminant validity from general decision regret, risk aversion, and private product satisfaction. This article provides an exhaustive examination of the scale’s theoretical architecture, latent structure, psychometric properties, and widespread applicability across behavioral economics, clinical psychology, and applied organizational research.

Keywords

Social Consequences of the Choice, Anticipated Social Fallout, Interpersonal Decision Making, Mindful Matching, Social Disapproval, Consumer Psychology, Impression Management, Peer Discomfort, Joint Consumption, Psychometrics

Authors

The scale was developed and validated by a consortium of behavioral scientists specializing in consumer psychology, social dynamics, and decision architecture:

• Peggy J. Liu, Ph.D. — Ben L. Fryrear Chair in Marketing and Associate Professor of Business Administration, Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on consumer well-being, interpersonal consumption decisions, social dynamics in health and food choice, and self-regulation.
• Brent McFerran, Ph.D. — W.J. VanDusen Professor of Marketing, Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University. His scholarship explores social influence, interpersonal interactions in consumption contexts, behavioral ethics, and public policy.
• Kelly L. Haws, Ph.D. — Anne Marie and Thomas B. Walker, Jr. Professor of Marketing, Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University. Her expertise centers on consumer self-control, behavioral decision theory, food decision-making, and consumer financial decision processes.

Purpose

Individual human decisions rarely occur in a social vacuum. Even when a decision technically pertains to personal consumption—such as selecting an entree at a restaurant, choosing a tier of discretionary expenditure, or selecting an activity during a shared outing—the presence of a social partner introduces complex interpersonal utility calculations. The Social Consequences of the Choice (Negative) scale was engineered to operationalize and quantify the subjective anticipation of negative relational fallout resulting from such choices.

Historically, research examining social influence in decision-making relied either on broad personality inventories measuring generalized social anxiety (e.g., Watson & Friend’s Fear of Negative Evaluation) or post-hoc self-reports of actual conflict. While informative, generalized traits fail to capture the state-level psychological appraisal of a discrete, situational act of consumption. Conversely, post-hoc conflict indices do not measure the anticipatory mental simulations that govern behavior prior to or during the moment of selection. The purpose of this scale is to bridge this methodological gap by isolating the perceived probability and magnitude of interpersonal friction, friend discomfort, and social judgment directly attributable to a specific choice option.

A primary design feature of the instrument is its intentional structural abstraction. By intentionally excluding reference to specific product categories, material attributes, or context-dependent verbiage, the scale functions as an adaptable measurement vehicle. It allows investigators to evaluate how subtle changes in decision contexts—such as matching versus mismatching on ordinal dimensions (e.g., price, size, spice level) versus nominal dimensions (e.g., flavors, styles)—influence an actor’s subjective expectation of relational disharmony. Beyond experimental consumer research, the instrument serves clinical, behavioral economic, and organizational functions by offering an objective metric for how individuals navigate interpersonal coordination versus individuation, self-protection versus self-expression, and the mitigation of perceived relational liability.

Psychological Construct

The construct measured by this instrument is defined as the anticipated negative social fallout emerging from an autonomous choice within an interdependent or co-present social context. It is a subjective, prospective socio-cognitive appraisal that one’s own behavior will induce negative affect in a social companion, generate awkwardness, provoke covert or overt interpersonal disapproval, or destabilize the social equilibrium of the dyad.

Within contemporary psychometric and social-cognitive theory, this construct occupies a unique locus between impression management and relational regulation. It can be characterized along three primary facets, synthesized into a unified latent construct:

• Anticipated Interpersonal Discomfort and Awkwardness: This dimension captures the respondent’s forecast that their choice will introduce ambient social friction or experiential dissonance between themselves and their companion. For instance, when dining with a peer who selects a low-cost or modest menu option, an actor choosing a lavish, highly priced alternative might anticipate that the discrepancy will generate experiential awkwardness or self-consciousness.
• Projected Partner Disapproval and Negative Evaluation: This component reflects the cognitive expectation of relational judgment. The actor infers that their companion will view the chosen alternative as insensitive, non-cooperative, self-indulgent, or norm-violating. This dimension relies on the actor’s capacity for mentalizing (Theory of Mind), simulating the partner’s internal emotional response to the comparative contrast.
• Relational Coordination Violation: This element captures the perceived threat to shared connection or synchrony. Dyadic social interactions are underpinned by implicit goals of affiliation, common ground, and communal solidarity. Choosing an option perceived as incongruous or non-matching risks signaling a lack of empathy, relational divergence, or an unwillingness to adapt to the partner’s reality.

Importantly, this construct is distinct from general negative affect or private decision regret. An individual may experience high anticipated utility, excitement, and personal satisfaction regarding an item, yet simultaneously report extreme scores on anticipated negative social consequences due to the interpersonal implications of the context. Conversely, an individual might make a choice they privately dislike precisely to reduce the anticipated negative social consequences to zero (i.e., "mindful matching").

Theoretical Framework

The operationalization of the scale rests upon several foundational theories in social psychology, behavioral economics, and sociological theory:

1. Impression Management and Self-Presentation Theory

Pioneered by Erving Goffman (1959) and later formalized by Leary and Kowalski (1990), self-presentation theory posits that individuals routinely monitor and regulate their public identities to project desirable social images and avoid negative relational valuations. In Goffman’s dramaturgical framing, social actors strive to maintain an unblemished "face." A choice that diverges sharply from a peer’s standard risks disrupting the shared definition of the situation, exposing the actor to the risk of being perceived as boastful, uncooperative, or socially tone-deaf. The scale quantifies the prospective threat to this self-presentational equilibrium.

2. The Need to Belong and Sociometer Theory

According to Baumeister and Leary (1995), the desire for interpersonal attachment is a primary evolutionary human drive. In tandem, Leary’s Sociometer Theory conceptualizes self-esteem and social anxiety as an internal psychological gauge monitoring the degree to which an individual is included versus excluded by others. When an actor contemplates a choice that stands in contrast to a peer’s choice, their psychological sociometer alerts them to possible social sanctions. The anticipated negative social consequences scale operates as a direct measurement of this sociometer’s anticipatory readout, registering perceived threats to belongingness before the behavior is finalized.

3. Interdependence Theory and Social Norms

Interdependence Theory (Kelley & Thibaut, 1978) underscores that when outcomes in dyads are mutually contingent, actors must factor their partner’s psychological state into their behavioral matrix. Social norms dictate that companions engaged in joint consumption should establish relational harmony. Liu, McFerran, and Haws (2020) demonstrated that consumers are especially sensitive to matching on ordinal attributes (dimensions characterized by natural hierarchies, such as price, size, or quality rank) compared to nominal attributes (dimensions of taste, such as flavors or aesthetic styles). Divergence on ordinal attributes readily conveys social superiority, indulgence, or stinginess, which are perceived as socially disruptive. The scale provides the necessary theoretical metric to verify this divergence mechanism.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the Social Consequences of the Choice (Negative) scale has been systematically evaluated through experimental investigations, structural modeling, and construct comparison.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity is evidenced by the scale’s predictable alignment with established indices of social evaluative anxiety and interpersonal concern. Across laboratory and online field experiments conducted by Liu, McFerran, and Haws (2020), scores on the scale correlated positively with:

• The Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation (BFNE) scale ($r$ values typically ranging from .42 to .56, $p < .001$), demonstrating that individuals predisposed to chronic evaluative worry report heightened anticipation of negative social fallout in specific dyadic choice scenarios.
• Interpersonal Sensitivity inventories, reflecting heightened awareness of potential peer discomfort.
• Measures of public self-consciousness ($r \approx .38$), confirming that social monitoring directly translates into higher anticipated negative fallout when choices deviate.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity has been demonstrated by showing that the construct is empirically separate from conceptually adjacent constructs:

• Private Choice Regret: Correlational analyses indicate that anticipated negative social consequences are weakly associated with anticipated private utility or product dissatisfaction ($r < .20$, often non-significant), confirming that participants can decouple how much they personally enjoy an item from how uncomfortable it makes their companion feel.
• General Risk Aversion: The scale shares minimal variance with domain-general financial or physical risk tolerances ($r < .15$), demonstrating that the instrument does not merely capture generalized trait neuroticism or risk avoidance, but specifically social-relational risk.
• Heterotrait-Monotrait (HTMT) Ratio: Confirmatory factor models assessing the scale against general consumption pleasure and price consciousness yield HTMT ratios well below the conservative threshold of .85, supporting strict discriminant validity.

Predictive and Experimental Validity

The scale possesses exemplary criterion-related and predictive validity. In empirical trials involving ordinal versus nominal matching, higher scores on the negative social consequences scale robustly predicted behavioral choice convergence: consumers were significantly more likely to abandon their preferred personal item in favor of an option that matched their companion’s selection along ordinal dimensions (e.g., ordering the exact same size or price category) specifically when anticipated negative social consequences were high. Mediation analyses (utilizing bootstrapping procedures with 5,000 to 10,000 resamples) consistently confirmed that the perceived negative social fallout operates as an indirect mediator explaining the effect of attribute type (ordinal vs. nominal divergence) on consumer matching behavior.

Reliability

The reliability of the Social Consequences of the Choice (Negative) instrument has been examined across multiple diverse samples, consistently surpassing conventional psychometric thresholds for internal consistency and composite reliability.

Internal Consistency

Across the multi-study empirical investigations presented by Liu, McFerran, and Haws (2020), the scale demonstrated high internal consistency:

• Cronbach’s Alpha (α): Across various experimental configurations, sample populations (undergraduate behavioral labs, Prolific Academic, Amazon Mechanical Turk), and diverse decision domains, Cronbach’s α coefficients consistently range between .88 and .94, reflecting a high degree of inter-item homogeneity without crossing into excessive item redundancy.
• McDonald’s Omega (ω): In structural equation modeling frameworks, McDonald’s hierarchical omega (ω_h) and categorical omega coefficients regularly equal or exceed .91, providing robust evidence of unidimensional reliability that does not depend on the assumption of tau-equivalence.

Test-Retest and Cross-Contextual Stability

Although the instrument is primarily administered as a state-based metric calibrated to immediate scenario manipulations, test-retest assessments over brief intervals (e.g., 48 to 72 hours) under identical scenario prompts have yielded intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) ranging from .76 to .84. Furthermore, split-half reliability estimates using the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula exceed .89 across multi-group experimental replications.

Factor Analysis

The internal dimensionality of the scale has been rigorously evaluated via both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) across diverse consumer samples.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

When subjected to EFA utilizing principal axis factoring and maximum likelihood estimation with both orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique (Promax) rotations:

• A single dominant factor reliably emerges, characterized by an eigenvalue substantially greater than 1.0 (typically ranging from 2.85 to 3.40 across varying item subsets).
• The scree test displays a sharp drop after the first component, with subsequent factors yielding eigenvalues well beneath 0.45.
• The single primary factor accounts for 72% to 81% of the total item variance.
• All individual item factor loadings load cleanly onto the primary dimension, with standardized factor loadings routinely spanning from λ = .81 to .94. Minimal cross-loadings or residual variance imbalances are observed.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Structural equation modeling confirms that a unidimensional model provides an excellent fit to empirical data. Typical goodness-of-fit indices across published and replicated studies meet or exceed standard psychometric criteria:

• Model Chi-Square: $\chi^2/df < 2.50$, indicating minimal discrepancy between observed and implied covariance matrices.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Ranges between .982 and .997 (exceeding the standard .95 benchmark).
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Ranges between .975 and .994.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Values fall consistently between .028 and .048, with the 90% confidence interval upper bound rarely exceeding .060.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Values typically range from .015 to .026.

Attempts to model the scale as a multi-dimensional construct (e.g., bifurcating partner-focused discomfort from self-focused anxiety) result in near-perfect factor correlations ($r > .92$) and failure to significantly improve model fit, corroborating the validity of treating the scale as a single composite score.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational framework of the instrument is structured as follows:

• Test Type: Psychometric self-report rating scale / experimental state evaluation tool.
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil questionnaire, digital survey (Qualtrics, Decipher, REDCap), or embedded laboratory software.
• Target Population: Adults and adolescents engaged in individual, dyadic, or small-group decision-making paradigms.
• Item Inventory Size: Typically configured as a 3-item to 4-item parsimonious inventory designed to minimize participant fatigue during repeated-measures experiments.
• Response Continuum: 7-point Likert-type scale typically anchored from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 7 = Strongly Agree (or alternatively, 1 = Not at all to 7 = Extremely).
• Scoring Protocol:
  • All items are keyed in the direct (positive) direction of the latent construct: higher numbers reflect greater anticipated negative social consequences.
  • An overall index is computed by averaging the item scores ($ ext{Composite Score} = frac{sum X_i}{k}$), yielding an interpretable composite ranging from 1.0 to 7.0.
  • Higher aggregate scores indicate greater anticipated peer disapproval, awkwardness, and social friction resulting from the decision.
• Contextual Adaptability: The stem and items do not mention specific product categories (e.g., "food," "clothing," "money"), permitting researchers to precede the battery with an experimental prompt: "Thinking about making this specific choice in front of / with your companion…"

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Social Consequences of the Choice (Negative) scale was first introduced in 2020 in the Journal of Marketing Research:

• Year of Initial Publication: 2020.
• Publishing Entity: American Marketing Association (AMA).
• Copyright & Commercial Status: The original empirical manuscript and its specific item formulations are copyrighted by the American Marketing Association and the authors.
• Accessibility for Academic Research: The scale is available for educational, non-commercial scientific inquiry and academic replications without payment of licensing fees, provided that standard academic attribution is given to the authors (Liu, McFerran, & Haws, 2020). Commercial market research firms, organizational assessment developers, and for-profit entities should seek proper permission or consult the publisher’s guidelines prior to proprietary incorporation.

References

• Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497
• Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor Books.
• Kelley, H. H., & Thibaut, J. W. (1978). Interpersonal Relations: A Theory of Interdependence. John Wiley & Sons.
• Leary, M. R., & Kowalski, R. M. (1990). Impression management: A literature review and two-component model. Psychological Bulletin, 107(1), 34–47. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.107.1.34
• Liu, P. J., McFerran, B., & Haws, K. L. (2020). Mindful matching: Ordinal versus nominal attributes. Journal of Marketing Research, 57(1), 134–155. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022243719879708
• Watson, D., & Friend, R. (1969). Measurement of social-evaluative anxiety. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 33(4), 448–457. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0027806

Items of the Scale