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Consumer Confusion of Percent Differences
Justin Kruger, Patrick Vargas
2008 Vol. 18 No. 1
The present research investigated consumers' intuitions about percent differences. We found that the perceived difference between two quantities compared on a percent scale varies as a function of the target of the comparison. The subjective price difference between a $1500 and a $1000 moped, for instance, increased when the former was described as 50% more than the latter than when the latter was described as 33% less than the former (Experiment 1). This effect (1) is limited to comparisons made on a ratio scale, (2) varies as a function of the percent difference between the two quantities, and (3) applies not only to price but also to other quantifiable attributes (Experiments 2–4). Finally, Experiment 5 found that the bias was reduced (but not eliminated) with financial incentives for accuracy and persisted even among highly numerate individuals. Discussion focuses on the source and the implications of this bias.
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Degree of Freedom of Will: An Essential Endless Question in Consumer Behavior
David Glen Mick
2008 Vol. 18 No. 1
Baumeister, Sparks, Stillman, and Vohs [Baumeister, R. F., Sparks, E. A., Stillman, T. F., & Vohs, K. D. (2008). Free will in consumer behavior: Self-control, ego depletion, and choice. Journal of Consumer Psychology] provide new insights on consumer free will by linking it to self-regulation within the context of culture, the market system, and ego depletion. They imply that free will is strong and widespread, as consumers set their goals and budgets and choose products and brands according to self-interests. However, the article gives little attention to the forces that substantially constrain consumer free will. These include the structure and power of international corporations, the role of socioeconomic status and biography, and the 24/7, high-speed, multitasking, hyperchoice lifestyle of millions of people. I identify some consumer behaviors that appear higher in free will than brand choices per se. I then outline additional research on belief in free will, the experience of free will, the association between wisdom and free will, and the roles of nonconscious factors and marketplace metacognition in exercising free will.
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Free to Buy? Explaining Self-Control and Impulse in Consumer Behavior
Fritz Strack, Roland Deutsch, Wilhelm Hofmann
2008 Vol. 18 No. 1
An important goal for consumer psychology is to understand when and why consumer behavior is driven by impulses versus rational decisions. Models accounting for the different shades of consumer behavior should spell out how impulsive versus reflective precursors of action are instigated, how they transform into behavior, when they conflict with each other, how such conflicts are resolved, and which boundary conditions (such as ego depletion) affect the relative influence of impulsive versus reflective precursors on behavior. Introducing the notion of free will into consumer psychology may discourage researchers from investigating the specific mechanisms underlying consumer choice and behavior.
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Free Will in Consumer Behavior: Self-Control, Ego Depletion, and Choice
Erin A. Sparks, Kathleen D. Vohs, Roy F. Baumeister, Tyler F. Stillman
2008 Vol. 18 No. 1
Consumer behavior offers a useful window on human nature, through which many distinctively human patterns of cognition and behavior can be observed. Consumer behavior should therefore be of central interest to a broad range of psychologists. These patterns include much of what is commonly understood as free will. Our approach to understanding free will sidesteps metaphysical and theological debates. Belief in free will is pervasive in human social life and contributes to its benefits. Evolution endowed humans with a new form of action control, which is what people understand by free will. Its complexity and flexibility are suited to the distinctively human forms of social life in culture, with its abstract rules, expanded time span, diverse interdependent roles, and other sources of opportunities and constraints. Self-control, planful action, and rational choice are vital forms of free will in this sense. The capacity for self-control and intelligent decision making involves a common, limited resource that uses the body's basic energy supply. When this resource is depleted, self-control fails and decision making is impaired.
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FREE WILL, TEMPTATION, AND SELF-CONTROL: WE MUST BELIEVE IN FREE WILL, WE HAVE NO CHOICE (ISAAC B. SINGER)
Klaus Wertenbroch, Joachim Vosgerau, Sabrina D. Bruyneel
2008 Vol. 18 No. 1
Baumeister, Sparks, Stillman, and Vohs (2007) sketch a theory of free will as the human ability to exert self-control. Self-control can produce goal-directed behavior, which free will conceptualized as random behavior cannot. We question whether consumer psychology can shed light on the ontological question of whether free will exists. We suggest that it is more fruitful for consumer psychology to examine consumers' belief in free will. Specifically, we propose that this belief arises from consumers' phenomenological experience of exercising self-control in the face of moral or intertemporal conflicts of will. Based on extant literature in philosophy, psychology, and economics, we offer both a narrower conceptualization of the nature of self-control problems and a more general conceptualization of self-control strategies, involving not only willpower but also precommitment. We conclude with a discussion of the consequences of consumers' belief in free will.
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Gender-Related Reactions to Gratuitous Sex Appeals in Advertising
Darren W. Dahl, Jaideep Sengupta
2008 Vol. 18 No. 1
This research investigates differences and similarities between men and women in their spontaneous reactions to gratuitous sexual appeals in advertising. Earlier research suggests that both males and females will react negatively to such ads because of perceptions of unethicality, manipulativeness, etc. However, we hypothesize and find that, under the sort of constrained processing conditions that allow the elicitation of spontaneous, gut-level reactions, men on average will exhibit a more positive attitudinal response to gratuitous sex appeals than women (Experiments 1 and 2). Experiment 3 then provides support for the underlying process – and also demonstrates intragender variation—by showing that women with more liberal attitudes to sex per se react in a manner very similar to men; namely, they report more liking for a sexual ad than a nonsexual ad.
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My Brain is Tired: Linking Depletion and Cognitive Effort in Choice
Eric J.Johnson
2008 Vol. 18 No. 1
Understanding how limited resources influence decision making is important to theory and even more to important practice. I focus on two questions inspired by Baumeister et al.: (1) What exactly is depleted? and (2) Is it useful to employ Systems 1 and 2 in modeling depletion? I discuss possible candidates for depletion at both the neural and the cognitive process levels and argue that a dual process model of depletion makes a very clear set of testable predictions. Finally, I believe that understanding the causes of depletion is essential in designing helpful choice environments
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Social Reality and the Hole in Determination
Roy F. Baumeister
2008 Vol. 18 No. 1
To believe in free will is to believe that people really make choices, in which more than one outcome is possible. Instead of the outmoded dualism of mind and body, we need to understand the duality of physical and social reality. Social reality, composed of meaning, reveals the inadequacy of physical determinism. Social realities (e.g., money, justice, democracy, law, mathematics, culture) do not have the properties of physical matter (e.g., chemical composition, mass, velocity, molecular structure), but they can affect behavior and thereby enter into the stream of physical causation.
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The Impact of Negative Affect on Responses to Affect-Regulatory Experiences
Hao Shen, Robert S. Wyer, Jr.
2008 Vol. 18 No. 1
People who feel unhappy are usually motivated to eliminate this unpleasant affective state. However, the objective they pursue could be either general (e.g., to feel better) or specific (to remedy the conditions that gave rise to their negative feelings). Three studies examined the factors that determined the level of specificity at which individuals define their affect-regulatory objective and their attraction to activities that bear on this objective. Participants were attracted to activities that could potentially eliminate the specific concerns that elicited their negative affect only if (a) the description of these activities called attention to these concerns or (b) they were explicitly told to think about the situation that gave rise to their unpleasant feelings. More generally, participants were attracted to activities that were intrinsically attractive but irrelevant to the situation that produced the negative affect they were experiencing
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