According to new research, when people are choosing a place for a big event, they want to feel unique
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When planning a trip, or seeking a venue for a special celebration, prospective travellers often look at social-media photos of people enjoying possible destinations.
Such selfies can actually make the destinations seem less appealing, according to a recently published study . More specifically, if consumers are considering a place for a self-defining experience such as a wedding, proposal or special vacation, they won’t like it if they see other people pictured there.
The reason, researchers say, is that when a human is featured in a website picture or social-media post of a destination, it can give the viewer a sense that the person pictured has or is signalling ownership of the place.
“We want to stand out by being a little different,” says Zoe Y. Lu , an assistant professor of marketing at Tulane University and the lead author of the paper. “If my cousin saw a picture of my husband proposing to me at a particular national park, for example, my cousin would worry that choosing that same spot to propose to his loved one would be perceived as him being a boring person, lacking a sense of self.”
Across six studies, Lu and two colleagues looked at when and why human presence in online photos lowers viewers’ preference for what she calls “experience venues”—that is, destinations that serve not only as physical spaces but as symbolic arenas that provide a way for people to define themselves.
In one experiment, Lu and her team asked 416 online participants to look at images of two hiking trails, labeled A and B, and to imagine they were picking one for their New Year’s Day hike. Participants liked trail A better than trail B when no person was shown. If there was a hiker present in the photo of trail A but not trail B, viewers preferred trail A significantly less than when no human was shown. “Our theory is that the hiker in the image offers kind of a territorial signal,” says Lu. “It says to our self-identity, ‘Someone else has been here, don’t try their hike, try a hike that seems like nobody has done.’ ”
In another experiment, participants were asked to imagine the photos they were being shown were of two potential wedding locations for themselves. Fifty-three percent of participants chose location A if neither picture included another couple tying the knot. But if another couple was shown in a photo of location A, and not in location B, only 27% of the participants chose location A.
By contrast, in another experiment, participants were told to imagine they were planning a wedding for someone else. As planners, they didn’t mind whether or not a couple was shown in the photo. “Wedding planners aren’t seeking self-identity the way their clients are,” Lu says.
Lu says that her research may have some implications for online marketers. “They might encourage previous customers not to post selfies of special experiences if they want new customers to try those experiences at the same location, which seems counterintuitive, I know,” she says.
Hotels and destinations, too, might reconsider including images of clearly visible guests and visitors in their marketing materials. And social-media influencers might want to skip the selfie in paid posts for destinations, so as not to seem territorial. One exception, Lu notes, is when the person in the photo has an identity that is distinct from that of the viewer, such as the owner of the venue, “but you might want to acknowledge that the person shown is the owner,” she says.
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New research suggests that bonuses make employees feel more like a mere cog in a wheel.
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When it comes to rewarding workers financially, cash isn’t always king.
Companies frequently give employees monetary bonuses, but a new study suggests that paid vacation time is a perk employers should also consider.
The study’s authors say that while they didn’t explicitly look into whether employees prefer time off, the study found that receiving extra vacation time rather than bonus money makes workers feel less like a mere cog in a wheel and more like people who are recognised and valued as individuals with a life beyond work.
It makes them feel more human, in the researchers’ terms.
And that feeling benefits employers as well as employees, says Sanford DeVoe, a professor at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles, and one of the study’s authors.
Feeling more human is strongly correlated with higher job satisfaction, greater engagement with work, better relationships with colleagues and less inclination to leave a job, he says.
In one experiment, the researchers asked about 1,500 participants to recall times when they received a monetary bonus or paid time off—all had received both—and how that made them feel.
Participants responded to the question on a 7-point scale, from feeling more like a robot on the low end of the scale to feeling more human on the high end. Monetary bonuses were given an average score of 5.04, compared with 5.4 for paid vacation time.
“While that difference may sound modest numerically, it represents a meaningful psychological shift,” says DeVoe. “It’s the difference between feeling neutral and feeling genuinely seen as a person.”
The authors then sought to better understand why paid vacation time made employees feel more human. In another experiment, about 500 participants were asked to imagine starting a new job where they might be awarded a bonus. Some were told the bonus would be an extra week of vacation, others were told it would be an extra week of pay.
Participants were then asked about their expectations for being able to keep their work and home lives separate in the new job. Those who could hope for a bonus of extra time off expected more separation between their work and personal lives than those whose potential bonus would be extra pay.
They also reported feeling more human on the 7-point scale. This suggested to the researchers that time off makes people feel more human because it creates a clearer psychological distance from work than a monetary bonus.
In a third experiment, the researchers further tested the idea that clear boundaries between work and personal lives were driving their results.
Two hundred participants were told to imagine being on a vacation and receiving two texts, including one from their mother. Half were told the second text was from a friend and half were told the second text was from their boss.
The authors then measured how human participants felt after each scenario. The average score for those receiving a text from a friend was 5.4 on the 7-point scale, compared with 4.16 for those receiving a text from the boss.
The difference in the scores “demonstrates that even minimal work intrusions can undo the psychological benefits of time off,” says DeVoe. “It shows that it’s not just time away that matters—it’s whether work actually lets go.”
All of this is important for employers looking to get the most out of their workers, he says. “For managers concerned with sustainable productivity, giving people uninterrupted time away from work can be a powerful lever.”
