Speaker: Xueqi (Sookie) Bao, INSEAD

Date & Time: Monday, 23 November 2026, from 14:00 to 15:30 AM (Beijing Time)

Location: Tongji Building A2101

ABSTRACT

Algorithms that curate social media feeds typically rank posts based on predicted engagement with each post. However, consumers’ engagement also depends on adjacent posts. Eight preregistered studies (N = 4,103) show that consumers perceive sequences in which highly profane content (e.g., advertisements, memes) follows highly sacred content (e.g., posts about heroism, leaders, or babies) as more inappropriate than when it follows less sacred content. This is because highly profane content intrudes on the psychological space consumers need after encountering highly sacred content. Consistent with this account, this effect attenuates when the subsequent content is also highly sacred, when highly profane content appears before highly sacred content, and when a neutral post separates highly sacred and highly profane content. Perceived inappropriateness of the sequence reduces engagement (e.g., “liking” the profane content) and leads to unfavorable evaluations of the platform, algorithm, and brand. Furthermore, consumers expect others to preserve psychological space for highly sacred content and evaluate content creators’ behavior more negatively when they post highly profane content soon after highly sacred content. These findings extend theories of the sacred and profane, contribute to research on media context and moral judgment, and offer practical implications for platforms, algorithm design, and content creators.

Keywords: Sacred and profane; sacred values; social media sequencing; morality; media context

GUEST BIO

Xueqi Bao is a Ph.D. candidate in Marketing (Consumer Behavior) at INSEAD. Her research focuses on contextual influences on consumers’ appropriateness and moral judgments, perceptions of character and social class, sacred contexts in social media, mindful consumption, and product presentation. She uses online, lab, and field experiments, along with secondary data analysis. Xueqi holds an M.Sc. in Social Cognition (with Distinction) from University College London and a B.S. in Human Resources Management from Renmin University of China.