Abigail Bergman
Abigail Bergman
Faculty Advisors
Research Statement
The stories we tell and the messages we convey play a pivotal role in inspiring, motivating, and persuading others. My research program examines three types of communications exchanged by consumers: (1) narratives of goal pursuit, (2) narratives of failure, and (3) persuasive messages aimed at influencing others. The central theme is that these communications shape the inferences the audience makes about the communicator, including perceptions of skill, emotional resilience, expertise, and intention, often resulting in contradictory evaluations. By employing a combination of natural language analysis (e.g., conversation on Reddit forums) and experimental methods, my work aims to develop new theories that illuminate how consumers interpret and respond to the narratives and recommendations presented by others.
Research Interests
- Motivation and Goal Pursuit
- Narratives
- Influencers
- Text Data
Job Market Paper
People share narratives about how the journeys of their goal pursuits unfold, from training milestones on fitness platforms to personal updates on social media. These goal narratives are widely viewed and often serve as sources of inspiration for observers. Importantly, goal pursuit journeys vary in their linearity: Some unfold with smooth and consistent progress (i.e., linear journeys), whereas others involve overcoming setbacks, detours, and restarts (i.e., nonlinear journeys). Through a natural language analysis of a large Reddit dataset (N = 318,882) and eight preregistered experiments, we theorize and find that narratives of linear goal pursuit journeys are more inspiring than nonlinear ones. This is because the patterns of progress described in goal narratives guide what observers infer about the actor: While linear journeys primarily signal the actor's skill (high competence enabling smooth progress), nonlinear journeys primarily signal the actor's emotional effort (effort invested in managing emotional reactions to setbacks). Because observers weigh skill inferences more heavily than emotional effort inferences when reading goal narratives, this asymmetry leads narratives of linear (vs. nonlinear) journeys to be more inspiring. We further delineate three theory-driven boundary conditions under which this effect is alleviated or reversed: Observers’ prior experience with nonlinear journeys, perceived controllability of setbacks, and whether the journey has been successfully completed. This research reveals that observers extract meaningful psychological information from narratives of goal pursuit journeys and enriches our understanding of how progress patterns described in goal narratives shape social perception.
Publications
People generally believe that more is better in persuasion, for good reason. Past research has shown that providing more arguments can enhance a message’s persuasiveness. In contrast, we demonstrate that increasing the number of arguments in a message can have conflicting effects on perceptions of the message source. Compared to using few arguments, using many arguments makes the source seem more like an expert, increasing persuasion, but it can also make the source appear to have greater persuasive intent, decreasing persuasion. These perceptions suppress each other, resulting in minimal or no overall benefit to persuasion. We document these effects across multiple experiments. We further demonstrate that providing many arguments can have a clear positive or negative effect, depending on whether high expertise or low persuasive intent is more valued. These findings expand our understanding of argument quantity effects in persuasion and contribute to a growing literature on conflicting source perceptions.