1

Broadcasting and Narrowcasting: How Audience Size Impacts What People Share

ALIXANDRA BARASCH JONAH BERGER*

* Alixandra Barasch (abarasch@wharton.upenn.edu) is a doctoral student and Jonah Berger (jberger@wharton.upenn.edu) is the James G. Campbell Jr. Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104. The authors thank Ezgi Akpinar, Amit Bhattacharjee, Cindy Chan, Zoey Chen and Deborah Small for helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

2 CONTRIBUTION STATEMENT How does the communication audience impact what people talk about and share? Research has mainly considered audience type (i.e., tie strength), but no work has considered how mere audience size might impact what people share. Five studies demonstrate how broadcasting (communicating with a large group) and narrowcasting (communicating with one person) alter sharer focus and influence what people pass on. Broadcasting encourages people to share selfpresentational content because it boosts self-focus, while narrowcasting encourages people to share useful content because it boosts other-focus. This work sheds light on the drivers of wordof-mouth and interpersonal communication, and provides preliminary insight into when the sender versus the receiver plays a relatively larger role in what people share.

ABSTRACT Does the mere number of people with whom consumers communicate impact what they talk about and share? Five studies demonstrate that broadcasting (i.e., communicating with a large group) encourages people to share self-presentational content, while narrowcasting (i.e., communicating with one person) encourages people to share content that is useful to the message recipient. These effects are driven by sharer focus. Broadcasting encourages self-focus, which leads people to share self-presentational content, whereas narrowcasting encourages other-focus, which leads people to share useful content. These findings are discussed in the context of research on word-of-mouth and egocentrism, and provide insight into when the sender versus the receiver plays a relatively larger role in what people share.

Keywords: word-of-mouth, self-presentation, self- vs. other-focus

3 Consumers communicate with dozens of people every day. They talk to friends, chat with neighbors, and gossip with co-workers. These social exchanges have an important impact on consumer behavior, and word-of-mouth affects everything from the books people read to the products they buy to the websites they visit (e.g., Chevalier and Mayzlin 2006; Trusov, Bucklin, and Pauwels 2009). One fundamental aspect of communication is audience size. Sometimes communication involves talking to many people, or broadcasting. In other instances, it involves talking to just one person, or narrowcasting. At a party, for example, consumers can find themselves talking to a group of friends or just one companion. Similarly, people may be responding to an email chain that involves a crowd of co-workers or just one. Might these differences in audience size affect the psychology behind communication? And if so, how? This paper investigates how mere audience size impacts what people talk about and share. In particular, we suggest that broadcasting encourages people to share self-presentational content, while narrowcasting encourages people to share useful content. Further, we show that these effects are driven by where potential sharers focus their attention. People naturally tend to focus on the self, but communicating with just one person heightens other-focus, which in turn impacts what people pass on. The paper makes two primary contributions. First, although communication almost always involves an audience (either real or imagined), no work has examined how mere audience size affects what people share. Second, while communication involves multiple parties, little is known about when and why communication focuses more on the sender versus the recipient of the interaction. We address both these issues, illustrating how audience size shapes both what

4 people talk about and how much they focus on themselves versus others during interpersonal communication.

WORD-OF-MOUTH

Most research on word-of-mouth has focused on its consequences, or how it influences choice, diffusion, and sales. Word-of-mouth can affect consumer behavior by generating awareness, encouraging people to update their beliefs about whether a product is worth trying, or producing normative pressures (Van den Bulte and Wuyts 2009). Marketing scientists have studied the causal impact of word-of-mouth in a variety of domains. For instance, word-ofmouth has been shown to increase book and movie sales (Chintagunta, Gopinath, and Venkataraman 2010; Chevalier and Mayzlin 2006) and encourage the adoption of websites, pharmaceutical drugs, and television shows (Godes and Mayzlin 2004; Trusov, Bucklin, and Pauwels 2009; Iyengar, Van den Bulte, and Valente 2011). There has been less attention, however, to the psychological processes underlying interpersonal communication, particularly how the audience impacts what people talk about and share. Communication requires more than one party; indeed, people cannot share things without an audience (real or implied). Research on audience effects has mainly considered how tie strength affects communication (Brown and Reingen 1987; Frenzen and Nakamoto 1993). Strong ties are close others like family members and good friends, while weak ties are more distant others, such as acquaintances (Granovetter 1973). While people share with anyone when the value of information is low, people are more hesitant to transmit valuable information to weak ties

5 (Frenzen and Nakamoto 1993). Similarly, in networks of referral behavior, strong ties are perceived as more influential than weak ties, and are more likely to be used as sources of information for related goods (Brown and Reingen 1987). But while such research has considered how audience type (i.e., tie strength) affects communication, might mere audience size impact what people share, and if so, how?

WORD-OF-MOUTH MOTIVATORS

We suggest that one way audience size impacts communication is by shifting the relative force of two fundamental word-of-mouth drivers: self-presentation and helping others (Engel, Blackwell, and Kegerreis 1969; Hennig-Thurau et. al. 2004; Dichter 1966).

Self-Presentation

People often share things to present themselves in a positive, rather than negative, light. Social interactions are often described as a performance where people promote favorable impressions of themselves rather than unfavorable ones (Goffman 1959). Indeed, the tendency to self-enhance, or bolster the self-concept, is one of the most central human motivations (Fiske 2001). It is also one of the most studied drivers of word-of-mouth (Engel et al. 1969; HennigThurau, et. al. 2004; Packard and Wooten 2012; Wojnicki and Godes 2011). Individuals can generate a positive self-view in their communication by distancing themselves from negative personal outcomes (Sedikides 1993; Sedikides and Strube 1995) or negative experiences (Richins 1984). Similarly, negative content is less viral than positive

6 content (Berger and Milkman 2012), potentially because it reflects negatively on the sender (i.e., people dont want to be known for sharing angry or sad stories). Further, people may be more likely to talk about novel, interesting, or surprising products (Berger and Milkman 2012; Moldovan, Goldenberg, and Chattopadhyay 2011) because doing so reflects well on the person sharing the information, making him look more interesting and in-the-know (Berger and Schwartz 2011).

Helping Others

Another major reason people share is to help others. Interview data suggest that over 20% of word-of-mouth conversations are motivated by altruistic desires to guide people towards good consumption experiences (Sundaram, Mitra, and Webster 1998). People often tune messages to their audience, tailoring what they say to suit the audiences knowledge or attitudes (Clark and Schaefer 1989; Fussell and Krauss 1989; Higgins 1999). People will be more likely to bring up golf tips, for example, when talking to a golfer than a theater buff. One way people help others is by sharing useful information (e.g., discounted products or good restaurants, Dichter 1966; Hennig-Thurau et al. 2004).1 People are more likely to share marketing messages that have more utilitarian value (Chiu et al. 2007), and more practically useful news articles are more likely to go viral (Berger and Milkman 2012).

Though one could argue that sharing useful information is simply another instantiation of self-presentation, this is not always the case. In many instances, people share useful information that doesnt make them look particularly good (e.g., I just bought a horrible camera, and I dont want you to make the same mistake). Thus while selfpresentation may lead people to share some useful information, helping others is a separate key driver.

7 Taken together, research shows that people often share things to self-present or to help to others. But might audience size impact the degree to which each of these factors drives what people talk about?

THE CURRENT RESEARCH

We suggest that audience size affects whether people share self-presentational and helpful things, and argue that it does so by altering the sharers focus (i.e., the degree to which the sharers focus on themselves versus the communication recipient(s) when deciding what to share). People have a strong tendency to focus on the self. Individuals have privileged access to their own thoughts and feelings and assume that others will see things the same way (Ross and Ward 1996). Similarly, decades of research on egocentrism show that people disproportionately attend to their own opinions and interests (Kruger 1999; Chambers and Windschitl 2004). Whether comparing abilities (Kruger 1999) or predicting others preferences (LeRouge and Warlop 2006) people tend to focus on themselves and inadequately take others attitudes and values into account. In addition, people have difficulty taking others perspective (Dunning, Van Boven, and Loewenstein 2001; Van Boven, Loewenstein, and Dunning. 2005), and tend to focus on the self in part because self-relevant information is more accessible (Ross and Sicoly 1979). This natural propensity toward egocentrism can also be seen in what people share. Much of our daily communication is fixated on the self. Studies of human conversation report that self-disclosure is the most common topic (Emler 1990) and that 30-40% of everyday speech consists of ones personal experiences and relationships (Dunbar, Marriott, and Duncan 1997;

8 Landis and Burtt 1924). That percentage is even higher in social media, where 80% of users focus on the self (Meformers) while a smaller set of users focus on sharing information (Informers; Naaman, Boase, and Lai 2010). Neuroscientific evidence even suggests that selfdisclosure is intrinsically rewarding, activating regions of the brain associated with primary reinforcers like food and attractive members of the opposite sex (Tamir and Mitchell 2012). Broadcasting should do little to move people from their natural tendency for self-focus. Considering others is a deliberate process that requires substantial time, mental effort, and motivation (Epley et al. 2004; Apperly et al. 2006). People do not consider others beliefs and knowledge unless something in their environment triggers them to do so (Zhang and Epley 2012). There is little reason to believe that broadcasting would encourage such effort; in fact, it may even increase the effort necessary to take others perspectives given that there are more others to consider. Self-focus, in turn, should encourage self-presentation because people automatically associate themselves with favorable attributes more than unfavorable ones (Paulhus and Levitt 1987). Rather than evaluating the self accurately, people naturally view the self in a non-negative light (Sedikides 1993). Thus broadcasting should encourage people to share self-presentational content. H1a: Compared to narrowcasting, broadcasting will lead people to share more selfpresentational content. H1b: This will be driven by increased self-focus. Narrowcasting, in contrast, should increase other-focus. Having people think about a specific other mitigates egocentrism because it makes others more concrete (Alicke and Govorun 2005). Seeing a single persons name, for example, promotes individuation, or recognition of

9 that persons distinct identity, which reduces the above-average effect (Alicke et al. 1995). Similarly, charity appeals featuring singular targets lead people to help others more because they make the victim more vivid (Jenni and Loewenstein 1997). Along these lines, sharing with just one other person should make the audience more concrete and vivid, which should increase the attention they receive (Taylor and Thompson 1982). By increasing other-focus, narrowcasting should encourage people to share useful information. Increased other-focus should lead sharers to see others as having their own theory of mind, with unique mental states, thoughts, and knowledge (Pylyshyn 1978; Wellman 1988). Just like a child who develops to understand that others have beliefs and desires that are different from ones own (Piaget 1926), narrowcasting should discourage egocentrism and encourage consideration of the audiences point of view. This other-focus, in turn, should facilitate the process of audience tuning (Higgins 1999) and lead people to share things that are more useful or relevant to their audience. This is consistent with the Gricean maxim of relation, in which one tries to be relevant and says things that are pertinent to the discussion (Grice 1975). H2a: Compared to broadcasting, narrowcasting will lead people to share more useful content. H2b: This will be driven by increased other-focus. In sum, we suggest that mere audience size impacts whether people share selfpresentational and helpful things. Broadcasting should encourage people to share selfpresentational content because people naturally focus on the self, while narrowcasting should encourage people to share useful content because it increases other-focus. Importantly, we are not explicitly comparing the sharing of self-presentational content to useful content, as these are

10 not always competing motives. Rather, we test how audience size impacts the sharing of each type of content separately through shifts in sharer focus. We test these predictions in five experiments. Study 1 investigates how audience size impacts the valence of events that people share. Study 2 examines how audience size impacts real, face-to-face conversations, while also providing a preliminary test of self- versus otherfocus. Study 3a and 3b more directly test this mechanism by manipulating sharer focus and investigating how that impacts sharing of self-presentational and useful content. Finally, Study 4 further tests the process through mediation. By directly manipulating audience size, we demonstrate how it impacts what people share and illustrate the underlying psychological processes driving these effects.

STUDY 1: TALKING ABOUT YOUR DAY

In our first study, we simply manipulate audience size and examine how it affects what people share. We gave participants a list of positive and negative events that supposedly happened to them on an imaginary day. Then, we asked them to write a short description of that day to share with either one person (narrowcasting) or a group of people (broadcasting). We predicted that broadcasting should increase self-presentation, and test how audience size impacts the number of positive and negative events people share, as well as whether they reframe negative events to seem more positive. Importantly, while self-presentational concerns could affect the sharing of both positive and negative events, prior work suggests that distancing the self from negative outcomes is more likely (Baumeister et al. 2001; Tice 1991), so that may occur here as well.

11

Method

Ninety-two participants were asked to imagine describing their day to someone. To provide a level of control, we presented everyone with the same imaginary day. It included five positive events (e.g., Your friend complimented you on your new shirt) and five negative events (e.g., You overslept and missed your favorite morning show).2 Participants selected which events to discuss and were encouraged to add details and elaborate beyond what was described in the text. The only difference between conditions was the size of the group they communicated with. In the narrowcasting (broadcasting) condition they were asked to think about one friend (a group of friends) they often talk to, and to imagine they were talking to that friend (those friends) in an email. See Appendix A for an example of what participants wrote in each condition. Analyzing language content has been used to evaluate important word-of-mouth outcomes (Moore 2012; De Angelis et al. 2012). In this study, our key dependent variables were how many negative and positive events participants mentioned. We also tested whether participants reframed the negative events they mentioned. For example, someone might say that it is okay that he slept through his alarm and missed his favorite show because he needed to catch up on sleep or because the show would be replayed later. Two independent coders were given a short description of reframing and then rated each participants passage based on how much it reframes things to sound less negative (1 = not at

The 10 events were pretested (N = 40) to control for extremity of valence. The 5 positive items were rated as just as far above the neutral midpoint (M = 5.28) as the 5 negative items were rated below the neutral midpoint (M = 2.81, t(39) = -.88, p =.38).

12 all and 5 = a great deal). Coders ratings were highly correlated (r = 0.75) and averaged to form a reframing score.

Results

As predicted, compared to narrowcasting, broadcasting led participants to mention fewer negative events (Mbroad = 2.02 vs. Mnarrow =2.63, t(90) = 2.50, p = .01). Broadcasting also led participants to engage in more reframing of negative events to make them sound less negative (Mbroad = 2.84 vs. Mnarrow = 2.42, t(90) = -2.16, p = .03). There was no effect on the number of the positive events mentioned (Mbroad = 2.12 vs. Mnarrow = 2.12, t < .1, p > .9).3

Discussion

Study 1 provides preliminary support for our prediction that audience size impacts what people share. Supporting Hypothesis 1a, broadcasting increased self-presentation, decreasing the number of negative events participants shared with others and leading them to reframe the negative events they did mention as less negative. One might wonder why there was no effect on the number of positive events mentioned, but this finding is consistent with a great deal of prior work on self-presentation (Baumeister et al. 2001). According to the literature, there are two types of self-presentation: protective and acquisitive (Arkin 1981). Protective self-presentation occurs when people avoid social disapproval by shifting their judgments or distancing themselves from negative personal

There were no differences between the conditions in number of words written here (Mbroad = 137 vs. Mnarrow = 140; t(90) < .3, p > .8) or in Study 2 (Mbroad = 170 vs. Mnarrow = 156; t(179) > -1.6, p > .1).

13 outcomes or experiences (Richins 1984; Sedikides 1993; Sedikides and Strube 1995). For example, people wear fewer school colors after their team loses (Cialdini et al. 1976), and may avoid sharing negative things that happened to them because it makes them look bad or seem like a Debbie Downer. Acquisitive self-presentation occurs when people seek social approval by connecting themselves to positive personal outcomes (Brown, Collins, and Schmidt 1988). Experts, for example, or people whose need to self-enhance is increased, tend to say positive things about a chosen experience (e.g., everyone liked the restaurant I picked) to look smart and demonstrate expertise (Wojnicki and Godes 2011; De Angelis et al. 2012). Importantly, while both types of self-presentation can occur, prior work suggests that protective self-presentation occurs more frequently (Baumeister et al. 2001). The distance between someones real self and undesired self (i.e., how they hope never to be), for example, is more predictive of life satisfaction than the distance between their real and ideal self (Ogilvie 1987). Similarly, work on self-serving biases finds that people are more likely to underestimate their bad traits than they are to overestimate their good ones (Klein 1992; Hoorens 1996). Further, direct comparisons of protective and acquisitive self-presentation find that protective is more likely to occur (Tice 1991). Overall, people are more motivated to avoid bad impressions of the self than to pursue good ones. So where does this leave us? Our theory focuses on how audience size affects selfpresentation, but does not make any a priori predictions about whether one or both types of selfpresentation will occur. Consequently, we look for evidence of both types of self-presentation across our studies (particularly Study 3) and discuss the overall pattern in the general discussion. Given the findings of prior work, however, it may end up that audience size has stronger effects

14 on protective self-presentation (i.e., avoiding negative) than acquisitive self-presentation (i.e., approaching positive).

STUDY 2: REAL CONVERSATION AND TEXT ANALYSIS

Study 2 has four goals. First, we examine whether the effect of audience size on selfpresentation persists in real interactions where people communicate with one or many conversation partners. Second, we control for audience closeness and the public nature of communication. The results of Study 1 are supportive, but one could argue that people in the narrowcasting condition might have happened to imagine closer others, which made them more comfortable sharing negative emotions. Alternatively, maybe communicating with a larger group felt more public, which made people less comfortable sharing negative things. To rule out this possibility, all participants in Study 2 interacted with complete strangers and did so face-to-face. This allows us to test whether our effects persist even in a situation where audience closeness and the public nature of communication are held constant across audience size conditions. Third, to test whether our results extend to a more open-ended situation, we let participants talk about whatever they want. We predict that broadcasting will encourage selfpresentation and examine how audience size impacts the positivity and negativity of what people share. Finally, we provide a preliminary test of whether audience size impacts self- and otherfocus. To do so, we examine pronoun use. Personal pronoun usage provides information about the speakers focus, attention, and priorities (Tausczik and Pennebaker 2010). First-person

15 pronouns (e.g., I, my, and mine) are used when people are focused on themselves (Rude, Gortner, and Pennebaker 2004). People use more words like I and me, for example, when they are sitting in front of a mirror (Davis and Brock 1975). People use second-person pronouns (e.g., you and your), on the other hand, when they are focused on others, and other-focused individuals (i.e., high self-monitors) tend to use them more frequently in peer interactions (Ickes, Reidhead, and Patterson 1986). Based on our theorizing, we predict that broadcasting will increase the use of self-focused pronouns (i.e., I and me), while narrowcasting will increase the use of other-focused pronouns (i.e., you and your).

Method

One-hundred eighty-one respondents completed a brief interaction task. They were asked to have a short conversation about anything they wanted. The only difference between conditions was audience size. Participants were randomly assigned to speak either with a single partner (narrowcasting) or a small group (broadcasting). Each pair or group was introduced and asked to have a conversation with each other. To facilitate the interaction and data analysis, participants first wrote down what they wanted to share. This allowed us to analyze the data at the individual level and avoid any concerns about the interdependence of group conversation driving the results (Bales 1951). Then, participants read aloud what they had written to their partner or group. Two sets of two independent coders separately rated the negativity (1 = Not at all, 7 = Extremely) and positivity (1 = Not at all, 7 = Extremely) of what participants shared. Coders ratings were highly correlated (negativity r = 0.88 and positivity r = 0.77) and averaged

16 to form negativity and positivity scores. We measured negativity and positivity separately to distinguish between differences in the two constructs that might be obscured by a unidimensional (i.e., bipolar) measure (Thompson, Zanna, and Griffin 1995). In other words, separate measures allow us to observe whether the passages differ in the degree to which they express positive sentiments, negative sentiments, or both. Finally, we counted the number of first-person singular pronouns (e.g., I, me, my, or mine) and second-person pronouns (e.g., you, ya, your, or yours) each participant used.

Results

Self-Presentation. As predicted, a between-subjects t-test revealed that broadcasting decreased negativity in the participants speech (Mbroad = 3.13 vs. Mnarrow = 3.72, t(179) = -2.73, p < .01). Audience size did not affect the positivity of participants speech (Mbroad = 3.96 vs. Mnarrow = 3.75, t(179) < 1.1, p > .2). Self- and Other-Focus. Further, as predicted, broadcasting increased the usage of firstperson singular pronouns (Mbroad = 8.91 vs. Mnarrow = 7.81, t(179) = -2.14, p = .03) and narrowcasting increased the usage of second-person pronouns (Mnarrow = 0.88 vs. Mbroad = 0.37, t(179) = 3.38, p < .01).

Discussion

The results of Study 2 provide further support for our conceptualization. First, audience size influenced what people shared. Similar to Study 1, broadcasting increased self-presentation,

17 decreasing the negativity of peoples speech. Consistent with Study 1, and prior findings that protective self-presentation is more frequent than acquisitive (Baumeister et al. 2001; Tice 1991), there was no effect of audience size on the positivity of peoples speech. Second, the results provide preliminary support for the notion that audience size impacts self- and other-focus. Broadcasting increased the usage of first-person singular pronouns, while narrowcasting increased the usage of second-person pronouns. The study also casts doubt on alternative explanations for the effect. Even in a situation where audience closeness and the public nature of communication were controlled across conditions (i.e., both broadcasters and narrowcasters interacted face-to-face with complete strangers), broadcasting still affected self-presentation and sharer focus. Finally, by analyzing actual conversations, not constraining participants to write about any particular event, and using an impartial measure of linguistic styles to code for personal pronouns, our results underscore the generalizability of these effects.

STUDY 3: MANIPULATING SHARER FOCUS TO TEST THE PROCESS

While Study 2 provided preliminary evidence that audience size impacts self- and otherfocus, Study 3 more directly tests this underlying process. As discussed in the introduction, thinking about others should mitigate peoples automatic tendency for self-focus and lead people to consider their audience more heavily when deciding what to share. Narrowcasting is one way to encourage people to think more about the particular individual(s) with whom they are sharing. Thus, narrowcasting should encourage people to share content that is useful and discourage sharing self-presentational content. While thinking more

18 about the message recipient(s) may not cause a person to stop thinking about the self completely, it should at least shift weight towards other-focus when people consider what to talk about. We use another manipulation of sharer-focus to illustrate its role in these effects. In addition to manipulating audience size, we ask half our participants to list the name(s) of the people receiving their message. Prior work finds that reading specific information about a comparison target (or even just seeing their name) reduces egocentric tendencies and increases how much people think about that other person (Weinstein 1983; Alicke et al. 1995). If audience size impacts what people share through self- versus other-focus, as we suggest, then having participants list the other(s) with whom they are sharing should moderate the effect. In other words, compelling individuals to concentrate on their audience should make broadcasting look more like narrowcasting.4 Study 3a investigates how audience size impacts whether people share useful content, while Study 3b investigates how audience size impacts whether people share self-presentational content.

Study 3a

Study 3a examines how audience size impacts whether people share useful content. Based on our theorizing, compared to broadcasting, narrowcasting should boost the sharing of useful information.

A pretest (N = 168) confirmed that listing the names of audience members interacted with audience size to affect other-focus (F(1,164) = 4.41, p = .04). Among broadcasters, listing recipients names increased how much people reported thinking about their audience (Mlist = 6.18 vs. Mno list = 5.21, F(1,164) = 11.98, p < .01). Among narrowcasters, however, whom we expected to already be focused on others, there was no additional effect of listing names on the degree to which participants reported that they were thinking about the audience (Mlist = 6.00 vs. Mno list = 5.85 F < .5, p > .5).

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Method

One hundred- and-forty-two respondents were randomly assigned to condition in a 2 (Audience Size: narrow vs. broad) x 2 (Other-focus vs. Control) between-subjects design. Similar to Study 1, participants were randomly assigned to think about communicating online with one friend (narrowcasting) or a group of friends (broadcasting). We also manipulated other-focus by asking some participants to list the specific other(s) with whom they were sharing. Half the participants (Other-focus condition) were asked to write down the names of the specific person or group of people with whom they were thinking of communicating. The other half (Control condition) were not. All participants were then given a list of eight useful things they might share with others (e.g., Information about how to buy tickets to a really popular upcoming concert, A coupon for a discount, A review about a restaurant) and asked to rate how likely they would be to share each with the person(s) with whom they were communicating.5 Responses to these items were highly correlated ( = 0.78) and were combined to create an overall measure of likelihood to share useful content.

Results

In addition to a main effect of Other-focus (F(1,138) = 4.54, p = .04), a 2 x 2 ANOVA revealed the predicted Audience Size x Other-focus interaction (F(1,138) = 5.65, p = .02), see
Pretest participants (N = 47) who rated each item based on its usefulness (1 = Not at all useful to the recipient; 7 = Extremely useful to the recipient) confirmed that the items were significantly more useful than the scale midpoint (M = 4.91, t(46) = 7. 88, p < .001).
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20 Figure 1. Among control participants, narrowcasting boosted the sharing of useful content (Mnarrow = 4.39 vs. Mbroad = 3.65, F(1,138) = 7.54, p < .01). When participants focused more on others by listing the names of the people with whom they were sharing, however, this difference disappeared (Mnarrow = 4.34 vs. Mbroad = 4.50, F < .4, p > .5). Looked at another way, while there was no effect of Other-focus in the Narrowcasting condition (F < .1, p > .8), there was in the Broadcasting condition, such that listing the name of the recipient(s) increased peoples willingness to share useful information (F(1,138) = 10.30, p < .01). As predicted, boosting other-focus led broadcasting to have effects similar to narrowcasting.

Study 3b

Study 3b uses the same manipulations as Study 3a to test how audience size impacts sharing self-presentational content. Further, we directly manipulate protective and acquisitive self-presentation (using slightly different wording of the same response items) to more closely examine whether the effects of audience size are stronger for one type of self-presentation than the other. Given that prior research (Baumeister et al. 2001; Tice 1991), as well as Studies 1 and 2, found protective self-presentation to be more prevalent than acquisitive, we may find the same here. We also further test the alternative explanations of audience closeness and the public nature of the communication. While Study 2 controlled for these factors, here we measure them directly to see whether either drives the observed effects.

21 Method

One hundred- and-fifty-eight respondents were randomly assigned to condition in a 2 (Audience Size: narrow vs. broad) x 2 (Other-focus: yes vs. no) x 2 (Self-Presentation Type: Acquisitive vs. Protective) between-subjects design. The Audience Size and Other-focus manipulations were identical to those used in Study 3a. Next we manipulated acquisitive versus protective self-presentation. Participants were asked to rate how likely they would be to share each of 15 self-presentation items. We kept the topic of the items similar (e.g., grades), but in the acquisitive (protective) condition the items were framed as making the self look good (bad). For example, The fact that you got a good (bad) grade on your recent test, How you recently got a great new pair of shoes on sale (spent too much money on an average pair of shoes), and How much fun you had last night at a concert (boring the concert you went to last night was).6 Responses to these items were highly correlated in each condition and combined to create a measure of likelihood to share acquisitive items (things that make the self look good; = 0.90) and a measure of likelihood to share = 0.79).

protective items (things that make the self look bad;

Finally, we collected ancillary measures to test potential alternative explanations. Participants were asked How much do you know about the recipient(s) of these items?, How much do you care about the recipient(s) of these items?, and How good of a friend is the recipient(s) of these items? Response to this set of items were averaged to form an audience
Pretest participants (N = 63) rated each item on how sharing it would make the sharer look (1 = extremely bad to the recipient; 7 = extremely good to the recipient). One-sample t-tests confirmed that acquisitive self-presentation items made the sharer look good to the recipient (i.e., significantly better than the self-presentation scale midpoint, M = 5.19, t(62) = 12.64, p < .001), while protective self-presentation items made the sharer look bad to the recipient (i.e., significantly worse than the self-presentation scale midpoint, M = 3.09, t(62) = -13.42, p < .001).
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22 closeness measure ( = .85). To measure the public nature of communication they were also asked How public do you feel sharing these items would be?

Results

A 2 x 2 x 2 ANOVA on willingness to share revealed main effects of Audience Size (F(1,150) = 12.37, p = 0.001), Other-focus (F(1,150) = 33.12, p < 0.001), and Self-presentation type (F(1,150) = 23.10, p < .001), and a two-way Other-focus x Self-presentation type interaction (F(1,150) = 4.05, p < 0.05). More importantly, consistent with results of the first two studies, and with prior theory, these effects were qualified by a three-way interaction (F(1,150) = 3.58, p = 0.06). To understand the nature of this three-way interaction, we examine the two types of self-presentation items separately. Among participants who considered protective self-presentation, in addition to main effects of Audience Size (F(1,78) = 13.20, p < 0.001) and Other-focus (F(1,78) = 31.62, p < .001), the results revealed the predicted Audience Size x Other-focus interaction (F(1,78) = 6.90, p = 0.01), see Figure 2A. In the Control condition, the effect of audience size mirrored our prior studies. Compared to narrowcasting, broadcasting decreased participants willingness to share things that would make them look bad (Mbroad = 2.37 vs. Mnarrow = 3.99, F(1,78) = 19.59, p < .001). When participants listed the names of the people with whom they were sharing, however, thereby increasing other-focus, this difference disappeared (Mbroad = 4.51 vs. Mnarrow = 4.77, F < .6, p > .4).

23 In contrast, among participants who considered acquisitive self-presentation items, there was only a main effect of Other-focus (F(1,72) = 6.69, p = 0.01), but no Audience Size x Otherfocus interaction (F < .1, p > 0.9), see Figure 2B. Alternative Explanations. Ancillary analyses cast doubt on the notion that the effects in the Protective Self-presentation condition are driven by audience closeness (i.e., tie strength) or publicity of communication. There was no Audience Size x Other-focus interaction on audience closeness (F < .2, p > .7), and audience closeness did not mediate the effect of the manipulations on participants willingness to share (no list indirect effect = -.07, standard error = .17, 95% CI [.51, .15]; list indirect effect = -.13, standard error = .14, 95% CI [-.48, .06]). Similarly, there was no Audience Size x Other-focus interaction on how public participants felt the sharing of the items would be (F < 1, p > .3), and the public nature of the communication did not mediate the effects (no list indirect effect = .008, standard error = .05, 95% CI [-.04, .26]; list indirect effect = -.009, standard error = .07, 95% CI [-.27, .08]).7

Discussion

Results of Study 3 extend the findings of the prior studies, provide evidence for the mechanism behind the observed effects, and cast doubt on a number of alternative explanations. First, audience size influenced what participants were willing to share. Compared to broadcasting, narrowcasting increased peoples willingness to share useful content. Broadcasting, however, increased protective self-presentation, decreasing peoples willingness to share content that made them look bad.
The same measures were also collected for Study 3a, and showed the same results. There was no significant interaction between Audience Size and Other-focus for either audience closeness or the public nature of the communication, and the mediation analysis ruled out both variables as drivers of the likelihood to share interaction.
7

24 Second, consistent with our underlying conceptualization, these effects were moderated by Other-focus. When people listed the names of the recipient(s) with whom they would share, the impact of audience size disappeared and broadcasting looked more like narrowcasting. The fact that a manipulation which increased other-focus made broadcasting look like narrowcasting supports the notion that the effects of audience size are driven by shifts in sharer focus. Third, our findings are inconsistent with a number of alternative accounts. Audience closeness (how much people knew and cared about their audience) and the public nature of the conversation did not show the same interaction patterns and did not mediate the effects. Consequently, it is difficult for these alternatives to explain the effects observed here. Fourth, audience size did not influence acquisitive self-presentation (willingness to share content that makes the self look good). This is particularly noteworthy given the study design. Protective and acquisitive items were, on average, equidistant from the scale midpoint. Thus one cannot argue that we found an effect on protective but not acquisitive self-presentation because the acquisitive items were more or less extreme. Further, in the 15 acquisitive self-presentation items used, we tested a number of ways to make the self look good. This included (1) direct bragging about the self (e.g., That you recently ran a marathon), (2) indirect bragging about a self-relevant domain (e.g., That your favorite sports team won last night), and (3) linking of the self to positive personal outcomes (e.g., That you did something really fun last weekend). Audience size did not affect sharing of any of these subcategories, nor the 15-item scale as a whole. Thus, as in Study 1 and 2, there is little evidence that audience size impacts acquisitive self-presentation.

25 STUDY 4: THE ROLE OF SELF- AND OTHER-FOCUS

While Study 3 used experimental manipulations to provide evidence that audience size impacts what people talk about by shifting sharer focus, Study 4 tests this mechanism more directly. We manipulate audience size, measure sharer focus, and examine whether it mediates the effects of audience size on what people share (i.e., self-presentational and useful content). We predict that broadcasting should encourage people to share self-presentational content because it leads sharers to focus more on the self. Narrowcasting should encourage people to share useful content because it encourages sharers to focus more on others.

Method

One hundred and sixty-one respondents were randomly assigned to condition in a 2 (Audience size: narrow vs. broad) x 4 (Content Type) design, with audience size manipulated between subjects and content manipulated within subjects. First, we manipulated broadcasting and narrowcasting. Participants were asked to imagine that they were thinking of sharing content (e.g., a link or story) with all of their friends in a Facebook status update (broadcasting condition) or with one of their friends in a Facebook wall post (narrowcasting condition). These two conditions are equally public (both can be viewed by all of ones Facebook friends), but the narrowcasting condition is more targeted (i.e., directed towards one person).8

Update =

A pretest (N = 40) confirmed that while status updates and wall posts are perceived to be similarly public (MStatus 5.18, MWall Post = 5.30, t(39) < .8, p > .4), wall posts are seen as directed more at particular audience members than status updates (MStatus Update = 4.35, MWall Post = 5.58, t(39) = 3.81, p < .001).

26 Next, we manipulated the type of content being shared. To avoid any concerns about the particular nature of the items, we used more abstract measures that directly tapped selfpresentation and usefulness. Participants were asked how likely they would be to share each of four types of content in the situation described (order counterbalanced, 1 = not at all likely, 7 = extremely likely): (1) Something that makes you look good, (2) Something that makes you look bad, (3) Something that is useful to others, and (4) Something that is not useful to others. Finally, we measured sharer focus to test the proposed mechanism behind these effects. Participants were asked How much did you think about yourself? and How much did you think about the [person/people] with whom you were sharing? when deciding whether to share the content (1 = did not think about at all, 7 = thought about it a lot). The difference between these variables formed our measure of sharer focus.

Results

Self-Presentation. As predicted, in addition to a main effect of self-presentation (F(1,141) = 163.09, p < .001), a repeated-measures ANOVA revealed an Audience Size x Self-Presentation interaction (F(1,141) = 23.97, p < .001). Consistent with our previous results, while audience size did not impact participants willingness to share content that made them look good (Mbroad = 5.23 vs. Mnarrow = 5.37, F(1,141) < .3, p > .6), broadcasting did reduce participants willingness to share content that makes them look bad (Mbroad = 1.87 vs. Mnarrow = 3.67, F(1,141) = 49.25, p < .001).

27 Useful. As predicted, in addition to a main effect of usefulness (F(1,141) = 168.47, p < 0.001), a repeated-measures ANOVA revealed an Audience Size x Usefulness interaction (F(1,141) = 6.94, p < .01). While audience size slightly decreased participants wiliness to share content that was not useful (Mnarrow = 2.24 vs. Mbroad = 2.59, F(1,141) = 1.70, p = 0.19), narrowcasting increased participants willingness to share useful content (Mnarrow = 5.48 vs. Mbroad = 4.73, F(1,141) = 5.99, p = .02). Mediation Analysis. To test the mediating role of sharer focus, we used the bootstrap mediation method (MEDIATE macro; Hayes, Preacher, and Myers 2011), which allowed us to avoid many of the problems associated with traditional mediation methods (Zhao, Lynch, and Chen 2010). As we saw in Study 3, thinking more about the message recipient(s) shifts focus away from the self and causes the person to consider others more when deciding what to talk about. To verify this process, we included our sharer focus variable as a mediator for each of the effects discussed above. As predicted, differences in sharer focus drove the impact of audience size on what people shared. First, the effect of audience size on sharing self-presentational content (difference between willingness to share things that make the self look good versus bad) was mediated by sharer focus (total indirect effect = .30, standard error = .16, 95% CI [.03, .65]). Broadcasting led participants to think more about themselves (a1 = .42), which increased their willingness to share self-presentational content (b1 = 0.78), see Figure 3A. The effect of audience size on sharing useful content was also mediated by sharer focus (total indirect effect = -.40, standard error = .20, 95% CI [-.86, -.07]). Narrowcasting led participants to think more about the audience member(s) (a1 = -0.84), which increased their willingness to share content that is useful to others (b1 = 0.43), see Figure 3B.

28

Discussion

Results of Study 4 underscore the findings of the first three studies and provide further evidence for the underlying mechanism behind these effects. First, audience size influenced peoples willingness to share different types of content. As predicted, broadcasting decreased willingness to share content that makes the self look bad while narrowcasting boosted willingness to share content that is useful to others. Second, these effects were driven by sharer focus. Broadcasting led people to think more about the self which, in turn, boosted the sharing of self-presentational content. Narrowcasting led people to think more about the audience with whom they were sharing, which, in turn, boosted the sharing of useful content. Third, by holding the public nature of the sharing constant (a Facebook wall post versus a Facebook status update, both of which all Facebook friends can see), we again cast doubt on the notion that differences in the public nature of communication are driving the effects.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Whether face-to-face or online, all conversations involve communicating with an audience. This audience may consist of just one person or multiple people. Five experiments demonstrated how mere audience size affects what people share. Broadcasting encourages people to share self-presentational content. It leads people to share fewer negative events (Study 1), reframe shared negative events to make them seem less

29 negative (Study 1), avoid negativity in a face-to-face conversation (Study 2), and avoid sharing things that would make them look bad (Study 3b and 4). Narrowcasting, on the other hand, leads people to share content that is more useful to their conversation partner (Study 3a and 4). The studies also demonstrate the underlying role of sharer focus in these effects. Broadcasting encourages self-presentation because it engenders self-focus, while narrowcasting encourages people to share useful content because it boosts other-focus. Our studies provide support for this mechanism by demonstrating differences in self- and other-focused pronoun usage (Study 2), establishing direct mediational evidence (Study 4), and showing that inducing other-focus leads to the same effects as narrowcasting (Study 3a and 3b). Finally, showing these effects across a wide range of manipulations and outcomes illustrates their generalizability. The effects hold for willingness to share (Study 3a, 3b, and 4), written messages (Study 1), and actual communication with others (Study 2). In addition, they persist regardless of whether writing is relatively constrained (Study 1) or uncontrolled (Study 2), and whether messages are human-coded (Study 1 and 2) or analyzed using more objective text analysis (Study 2).

Theoretical Contributions and Implications

Our research makes several contributions. First, it sheds further light on the drivers of word-of-mouth and interpersonal communication. Recent research has begun to delve more deeply into why people share (Berger and Milkman 2012; Cheema and Kaikati 2010; Moldovan et al. 2011; Wojnicki and Godes 2011; Packard and Gershoff 2012), but less work has addressed how the audience itself shapes what people talk about. While some work has focused on

30 audience type (e.g., strong vs. weak ties, Frenzen and Nakamoto 1993), no prior work has investigated how mere audience size shapes what people share. We fill this gap, showing that whether people communicate with a large or small audience can impact what they talk about by changing their focus. Second, this work provides insight into when the communication sender versus receiver plays a relatively larger role in what people share. We examined the role of audience size, but other factors should also play a role. For example, arousal increases social transmission (Berger and Milkman 2012; Berger 2011), but it also encourages self-focus (Wegner and Giuliano 1980). Consequently, it might increase the weight people put on their own interests and opinions when deciding what to share. The goal of the communication may also matter. If people are trying to sell a product, they may be particularly attentive to others needs, regardless of whether they are speaking to a small or large group. Similarly, if people are communicating in an interview or blind date, they may be particularly self-focused, no matter how small the audience size is. Finally, there may be cultural differences: people from collectivist societies may be less selffocused than those from individualist societies. Third, our work helps explain why social media posts (e.g., Facebook or Twitter) tend to be self-focused. People often brand themselves through their social media updates, and researchers have discussed the relationship between social media and self-promotion (Buffardi and Campbell 2008; Manago et al. 2008). The computer-mediated (Walther 2007) and public (Ratner and Kahn 2002) nature of such communication should increase self-presentational concerns, but our work also identifies a third factor. Posting on social media often involves a large audience: sharing comments with hundreds or thousands of friends or followers. Our

31 findings suggest that such broadcasting encourages self-presentation because it engenders selffocus. This has important implications for consumer welfare. Using social media may decrease well-being because viewing postings makes others lives seem fantastic, and makes ones own life seem worse in comparison (Chou and Edge 2012). Our results suggest that communication with large audiences may contribute to this. Broadcasting is unrepresentative of everyday life because people may avoid sharing things that make their lives look bad. Greater awareness of this bias may reduce viewers negative inferences about the relative quality of their own lives. More broadly, our results have important implications for interpersonal communication. At an individual level, these findings can help consumers manage how they are perceived by others. For instance, if people want to avoid sounding negative at a party, they may want to talk in relatively larger groups. Narrowcasting may also provide a natural way to reduce egocentric tendencies (e.g., seeing the self as above average), which can lead to inaccurate judgments, false beliefs, and other negative outcomes. People have a natural tendency to focus on the self, and may not spontaneously expend cognitive resources to correct for egocentrism and engage their theory of mind (Lin, Keysar, and Epley 2010). Our findings suggest that speaking to a single other may help reduce these biases by encouraging the speaker to focus less on the self and more on others. For instance, when sizing up ones opponent before a competition, one-on-one (rather than group) interaction may result in more realistic assessments of relative ability. Our results also have implications for how brands can encourage word-of-mouth. Companies that sell useful products (e.g., healthcare) may generate greater word-of-mouth by providing web forms that allow for narrow, personalized messages. Conversely, companies that sell products related to self-presentation (e.g., designer clothing), may increase sharing by

32 facilitating easy broadcasting (e.g., one-click posting on social media). These findings have similar implications for brand management. For instance, a politician or public figure that is concerned about being perceived as too self-focused may be better off scheduling more one-onone public appearances than larger public events.

Directions for Future Research

As with any preliminary investigation, there is always more work to be done. Across our studies, we find stronger effects on protective than acquisitive self-presentation. This finding is consistent with prior literature suggesting that people are more motivated to avoid bad impressions than to create good ones (Baumeister et al. 2001; Ogilvie 1987; Tice 1991). Does that mean that broadcasting never leads to acquisitive self-presentation? It is unclear. While we do not mean to suggest that audience size has no impact on acquisitive selfpresentation, we find little evidence of such an effect here. Studies 1 and 2 show that audience size impacts whether people share negative content, but there were no effects on positive content. While one could argue that content positivity is not the right measure to use, we also find no effect of audience size on a the most direct measure of acquisitive self-presentation possible, sharing content that makes the sharer look good (Study 4). Further, even directly manipulating self-presentation type in Study 3 finds the same result: effects on protective but not acquisitive self-presentation. This occurs even though a variety of types of acquisitive self-presentation were tested, including (1) direct bragging about the self, (2) indirect bragging about a selfrelevant domain, and (3) linking of the self to positive personal outcomes. One reason broadcasting may not boost acquisitive self-presentation is concern about implausibility (Tice et al. 1995). Prior research shows that people are less likely to try and claim

33 a desirable image when there is more potential to be caught faking it (Packard and Gershoff 2012). While people can tailor their message to avoid being caught exaggerating their positive traits when talking to one person, this may become more difficult when talking to a large group, as different people may have access to different information. Similarly, while people can tailor their message to one person to avoid being seen as arrogant, concerns about coming off this way (Schlenker and Leary 1982) might also dampen bragging to larger audiences. More generally, future research might consider when, if ever, broadcasting increases acquisitive self-presentation. It would also be interesting to consider other ways in which audience size impacts sharing beyond self- and other-focus. For instance, larger audiences are more likely to involve heterogeneous groups, and may thus elicit more cautious opinions. Similarly, people who communicate in multiple-audience contexts are more likely to acknowledge multiple viewpoints and present more than one side of an argument (Schlosser 2005). Indeed, ancillary data we collected suggests a link between broadcasting and talking generally or vaguely. We asked people to share their musical tastes with either one person or a group. Compared to narrowcasting, broadcasting led people to list more general musical tastes (e.g., genres rather than particular musicians or songs). This might be because listing broader preferences will avoid offending anyone and connect more with a diverse audience. Future research might also examine if people select audiences of different sizes depending on what they want to talk about. This paper demonstrates that manipulating audience size has a causal impact on what consumers share. But in situations where the audience size is not fixed, consumers may select how many people to talk to based on the content of their communication. For instance, a person who had a bad day may choose to share this with one person instead of broadcasting it to a larger audience, and someone who discovered a new hair

34 salon may choose to share it with one friend rather than many. Hence, the influence of content on audience size selection is worth examining. Moreover, while we define audience size in two distinct categories (broadcasting versus narrowcasting), we recognize that it may be more of a continuum. Consequently, the self-focus versus other-focus trade-off may be more fluid, with people gradually thinking more about others as audience size decreases. In conclusion, the current research demonstrates one way in which audience size affects what and why people share. Broadcasting encourages people to share more self-presentational content because it leads them to focus on the self, while narrowcasting encourages people to share more useful content because it focuses attention on others. Thus, this research integrates work on the drivers of word-of-mouth with work on self-other trade-offs to deepen our understanding of what people share and why.

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45 FIGURE 1 LISTING AUDIENCE MEMBER(S) MODERATES THE IMPACT OF AUDIENCE SIZE ON SHARING USEFUL ITEMS (STUDY 3a)
4.7

Willingness to share useful items

4.5 4.3 Control 4.1 3.9 3.7 3.5 Narrowcasting Broadcasting Other focus (Listing)

46 FIGURE 2A LISTING AUDIENCE MEMBER(S) MODERATES THE IMPACT OF AUDIENCE SIZE ON SHARING ITEMS THAT MAKE THE SELF LOOK BAD (STUDY 3b)
6 Willingness to share items that makes the self look bad 5.5 5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 Narrowcasting Broadcasting Other focus (Listing) Control

FIGURE 2B LISTING AUDIENCE MEMBER(S) MODERATES THE IMPACT OF AUDIENCE SIZE ON SHARING ITEMS THAT MAKE THE SELF LOOK GOOD (STUDY 3b)

6 Willingness to share items that make the self look good 5.5 5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 Narrowcasting Broadcasting Other focus (Listing) Control

47 FIGURE 3A THINKING ABOUT THE SELF MEDIATES THE IMPACT OF AUDIENCE SIZE ON SHARING SELF-PRESENTATIONAL CONTENT (STUDY 4)

Sharer focus: self =.42* =.78***

Audience size: broadcasting

=1.94*** ( =1.66 )

***

Sharing self presentational content

Note: ns p > .10; * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001. Mediation run using the Bootstrap method with 1,000 samples (Hayes, Preacher and Myers 2011). The total indirect effect is significant, with a 95% confidence interval of [.03, .65] and a standard error of 0.16. Broadcasting led participants to think more about themselves, which increased their willingness to share selfpresentational content.

48 FIGURE 3B THINKING ABOUT OTHERS MEDIATES THE IMPACT OF AUDIENCE SIZE ON SHARING USEFUL CONTENT (STUDY 4)

Sharer focus: audience = .84** =.43**

Audience size: narrowcasting

= 1.09** ( = .79 ns)

Sharing useful content

Note: ns p > .10; * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001. Mediation run using the Bootstrap method with 1,000 samples (Hayes, Preacher and Myers 2011). The total indirect effect is significant, with a 95% confidence interval of [-.86, -.07] and a standard error of 0.20. Narrowcasting led participants to think more about the audience member(s), which increased their willingness to share content that is useful to others.

49 APPENDIX A EXAMPLES OF PARAGRAPHS WRITTEN BY PARTICIPANTS IN STUDY 1 Broadcasting (Reframe Score = 5, Number of negative events = 2, Number of positive events = 3) I woke up this morning and jumped out of bed because I realized I overslept. Most days that would not matter but today I was meeting some friends for coffee. When I got to the coffeehouse, my one friend critcized me for being late. So, before ten am my mood was horrible. My other friend tried to make me feel better by complimenting my new shirt. I was grateful for her compliment, especially since I had spent a long time at the store yesterday trying to determine whether or not I should buy the shirt. After coffee, my one friend decided we needed to go shopping to improve my mood. Nothing makes me happier than going shoe shopping!! So, we went to the shoe store and I was delighted to find a great pair of shoes. It was even better because the shoes were on sale! Finally, I made it back to my apartment and decided to chill and make dinner. It was awesome because my casserole cooked perfectly!! So, even though the day started off horribly it ended pretty well!!

Narrowcasting (Reframe Score = 2, Number of negative events = 4, Number of positive events = 3) Yesterday started out a little rough for me because I overslept & missed my favorite morning show, & you know me & my tv addiction! But, anyway, I ended up getting to my coffee meeting late so my friend just HAD to say something about that, of course. But I had picked out a special dessert for us that we both thought was delicious, so that shut her up! Then later we went to a movie that I had suggested & it ended up being horrible. So, she was back to complaining about something I had a hand in, once again. I was getting annoyed when, in the same breath, she complimented me on my new shirt! I love her, but man, talk about up & down! I couldn't do anything right, then she's all compliments?? I don't know what her issue was. She kinda hurt my feelings a couple of times. Like, at one point, I told her a really funny story & she didn't even laugh! She just kinda looked at me & barely acknowledged what I'd said. She didn't even notice the great new pair of shoes I was wearing - I got them on sale earlier that day & she's a shoe fanatic! I kinda wore them for her, ya know? (Sigh) I don't know. I'm sorry for talking your ear off. I just needed to vent. I shouldn't be so annoyed, I guess. What do you think?