A study from the University of Illinois to be published in the next Journal of Consumer Psychology, suggests that those with “high self-brand connections (SBC) respond to negative brand information as they do personal failure – they experience a threat to their positive self-view.” Pretty deep, right? Or kinda obvious; I’ve always put it down to self-validation. That is, not wanting to feel like a dick because you bought a crap product.
Well, that and the joys of being a troll.
The study says consumers with a high SBC also maintained a favourable brand evaluation despite negative information. In lay terms: fanboys (and girls). “However, when they completed an unrelated self-affirmation task, they lowered their brand evaluations the same as low SBC consumers.”
According to Ars, the conclusion that fanboys treat brands as they do themselves (and are therefore affected personally by a brand’s failure) challenges previous research that the connection was more akin to a personal relationship. I guess they hadn’t factored in denial. [ScienceDirect via Ars Technica]
EckyThump
Friday, August 19, 2011 at 5:08 PMCertainly explains ‘Apple’ users! #]
Mark Ampersand
Friday, August 19, 2011 at 5:53 PMY’know what’s odd? Maybe it’s the websites I frequent, or the social circles I’m in, but I see far more “LOL! Apple users are losers!”/”Apple sucks”/”Get a real computer!” comments now, than I ever saw fanatic comments from actual Apple users in the past.
All of the above could also apply to anyone who spends their days on news sites, looking for excuses to bash Apple products and users, even when the article doesn’t even mention them directly.
Just sayin’, is all.
Steve
Saturday, August 20, 2011 at 12:16 AMThat’s because there hardly WERE any true Mac OS users pre-2004. The vast majority have all been bandwagon hopping in recent years and have brought with them a rather unfortunate case of smug.
MotorMouth
Saturday, August 20, 2011 at 11:37 AMNot where I come from (I’m a graphic artist). Everyone in my industry just assumes Apple products are superior because that’s what they all learned on at Art School. When I show them how much better my PC laptop is than their pathetic MBPro they invariably get defensive. I always look at the latest MacBook when I am shopping for a new laptop but they never make the grade, either in terms of performance or price.
Strangely though, that doesn’t extend to other “industry standards”. When I show other artists the software I use instead of Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and Flash (Xara Designer Pro does it all) they are usually very impressed and more than happy to bitch about Adobe. But they will never bitch about Apple the way I like to bitch about Microsoft.
Joel
Friday, August 19, 2011 at 5:55 PMAnd PC users.. and Android users.. and PS3 and 360 users.. and pretty much every company out there including non-technology..
Hey I have Lindt chocolate!
Lindt chocolate is shit.
NO ITS NOT X(
Get my point? Each to their own.
Matt
Saturday, August 20, 2011 at 11:26 AMBut we’re talking fanboism. Everyone has brand preferences, it’s in our nature. Fanboism is taking that to the extreme though. To follow on your example,
“I have a lindt Chocolate”
“They’re OK, but they use a bit too much cocoa for my tastes”
“How dare you. They use the exact amount of cocoa that EVERY HUMAN EVER SHOULD NEED!!! All other chocolates are inferior and copycats”
Eckythump
Friday, August 19, 2011 at 6:21 PMWow right out of the box,… it’s bit sad when you can’t even make a tongue in cheek comment without having someone crawl down your throat! But given the nonsense that Jobs has gotten up to lately, are you really that surprised? #}
Joel
Friday, August 19, 2011 at 6:29 PMKeep on trollin’
AntiEverything
Friday, August 19, 2011 at 8:13 PMKnowing several people who fit this ‘category’, I have to say that previous research never really nailed these people. Ars seems to have found the ‘missing link’ so to speak.
Off-Topic: Eckythump – Have you been raped by the entire Apple staff or something? None of the rest of us feels the need to slag off Apple in every other Gizmodo thread, whether we hate them or not. I think you should either get your own site, or therapy…
EckyThump
Saturday, August 20, 2011 at 9:25 AM” Have you been raped by the entire Apple staff or something?”
What an odd thing to say! How many negative posts do you see about Windows recently? I’d guess about one for every nine Apple comments! I don’t like Apple, never gonna buy Apple, until Jobs is gone and dust! It’s not the bloody product, it’s the way it’s being managed and sold,… and Apple fanboys are called fanboys because when they see something about their drug of choice, they just can’t help themselves! Now I might be a little self serving here, but hopefully if enough people bag Apple and Jobs in particular, then maybe, just maybe, they’ll stop acting like dicks and start acting like human beings who don’t want to rule the world!! Microsoft are well on the way to doing just that! Now stop acting like petulant school children and grow up!
Ozoneocean
Friday, August 19, 2011 at 8:32 PMI think what happened to you was actually a beautiful illustration of exactly what this story is about! ^_^
_______
Fanatical brand loyalty is a bit of a disease. It’s ok to defend a product you know well against obvious miss-information, but that’s only as far as you should take it. People really do take the whole brand thing far too seriously, when we should really be sceptical of ALL big business brands!
It’s hard though… brand loyalty tends to come so naturally :(
EckyThump
Saturday, August 20, 2011 at 9:25 AMPrecisely !!
smurfydog
Friday, August 19, 2011 at 11:14 PMI remember the first time I was asked the question – “So, are you a Ford man… or a Holden man?”
I was totally stumped for a reply.
I was aware of the Ford/Holden rivallry thing but never really come across it before.
All I could think to say was “I drive a Datsun”.
Ozoneocean
Friday, August 19, 2011 at 11:40 PMI think it stemmed from the fact that those were the affordable, mass-market cars that most people’s dad’s drove in Australia. So the car brand was tied into family identity/pride.
In reality they’re both crappy American, badly made makes of cars.
Steve
Saturday, August 20, 2011 at 12:20 AMOf course Fanboys are most rabid when defending their chosen brand. It’s a very peculiar case of cognitive dissonance where they cannot possibly fathom their own personal product being less than #1, because they feel it reflects on them.
james_whatsit
Saturday, August 20, 2011 at 2:38 AMhah! my brands dick is way bigger than ur brand’s :P
MotorMouth
Saturday, August 20, 2011 at 11:53 AMThe choice of photo shows that even the author of the piece (or his editor) is not immune. Apple is the obvious target for this topic, yet they manage to find a photo of the only person on the planet with a Zune tattoo. Do an image search and this guy is the only one who comes up. Then do an “Apple logo” search and see the dozens of tragics with their brand tattoo. At least the Zune logo is interesting, although some of the Apple tattoos are pretty good, too.
Anyway, I think it goes well beyond people not wanting to be seen to have bought a dud product. Fanbois buy everything, whether it is any good or not (even if they don’t need the thing). They defend every aspect of it, completely unwilling to concede that any aspect of it is less than perfect. That’s what really gets under my skin with Apple zealots. They think they know something the rest of us don’t and even when they find out I use a MacPro at work all day and actually know more about OS X than they do, they still won’t concede even the tiniest point.
I am sure I can be a little bit the same way. After all, I have a Zune HD, a Windoze Phone, three Windoze PCs, two Arc Mice (one on my MacPro at work), one Arc Touch Mouse and an Arc Keyboard. The difference is that Microsoft still drive me up the freakin’ wall with their total lack of support for any of their products. I also don’t like Win7 nearly as much as I liked Vista, although I do understand why they did a lot of the things they did to it.