Consumers Infer Higher Status from Others’ Choice of Relatively Larger Options: Conceptual Replications of Experiment 1 in Dubois, Rucker, and Galinsky (2012)

Experiment 1 in Dubois et al. (2012) found that choosing a larger size within a set of hierarchically arranged sizes (e.g., small, medium, large) leads the chooser to be perceived as having higher status without systematically altering perceptions of non-status dimensions. Six conceptual replication studies (total N = 7,318) offer results largely consistent with this effect. In addition to using food items (coffee, smoothie) as in Dubois et al. (2012), the authors show that the effect can occur outside of the food domain (notebook computers, framed pictures). They also provide initial evidence that attempts to reconcile the original and current findings with a recent replication failure by Tunca et al. (2022). Notably, the current work used stimuli closer to the original stimuli which visually represented the different sizes arranged hierarchically within a set as well as the chosen option, thereby making the size hierarchy vivid (as opposed to text-only stimuli used in Tunca et al. [2022]).