Deceptive advertising, or advertising that intends to mislead consumers by false claims or incomplete disclosure, is ubiquitous in the marketplace. Though prior research has shown that consumers generally view companies’ deceptive communication as unethical and react to it negatively, anecdotal evidence suggests that some consumers are more accepting of such misleading tactics than others. Delving deeper into this phenomenon, this research examines the role of self-construal on consumers’ responses toward deceptive advertising. Three studies provide converging evidence that interdependent (vs. independent) consumers are more tolerant of deceptive advertising, which is mediated by their attribution styles. Moreover, we further demonstrate the self-construal effect on lie acceptability decreases as the firm becomes smaller, when it is easier for consumers to pinpoint who should be responsible for the misconduct and thus are more likely to make internal attribution.

欺骗性广告或意图通过虚假声明或不完整披露误导消费者的广告在市场上无处不在。尽管先前的研究表明，消费者通常认为公司的欺骗性沟通不道德并对其做出负面反应，但轶事证据表明，一些消费者比其他消费者更能接受这种误导性策略。深入研究这一现象，本研究考察了自我构念对消费者对欺骗性广告的反应的作用。三项研究提供了一致的证据，表明相互依赖（与独立）的消费者更能容忍欺骗性广告，这是由他们的归因风格调节的。此外，我们进一步证明了随着公司变小，自我建构对谎言可接受性的影响会降低，