Right here, right now: situated interventions to change consumer habits

Consumer behavior-change interventions have traditionally encouraged consumers to form conscious intentions, but in the past decade it has been shown that while these interventions have a medium-to-large effect in changing intentions, they have a much smaller effect in changing behavior. Consumers often do not act in accordance with their conscious intentions because situational cues in the immediate environment automatically elicit learned, habitual behaviors. It has therefore been suggested that researchers refocus their efforts on developing interventions that target unconscious, unintentional influences on behavior, such as cue-behavior (“habit”) associations. To develop effective consumer behavior-change interventions, however, we argue that it is first important to understand how consumer experiences are represented in memory, in order to successfully target the situational cues that most strongly predict engagement in habitual behavior. In this article, we present a situated cognition perspective of habits and discuss how the situated cognition perspective extends our understanding of how consumer experiences are represented in memory, and the processes through which these situational representations can be retrieved in order to elicit habitual consumer behaviors. Based on the principles of situated cognition, we then discuss five ways that interventions could change consumer habits by targeting situational cues in the consumer environment and suggest how existing interventions utilizing these behavior-change strategies could be improved by integrating the principles of the situated cognition approach

Effect of labeling bias on ratings of ADHD symptoms

In a study by Fox and Stinnett (1996), labeling bias was defined as the “expectations that others might develop for a person given a particular label.” Research has repeatedly shown that negative characteristics are often attributed to children given a label, even when behavior does not differ from non-labeled peers. This study aimed to add to the understanding of labeling bias, specifically a label of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Teachers were recruited to participate in an online survey in which they were randomly assigned one of three variations of a vignette. The vignettes described two children with either no label, a possible moderate ADHD label, or a possible severe ADHD label. Two videos of scripted, child actors were viewed by each participant. After each video, teachers rated the children’s behavior on the seven item, Hyperactivity/Inattention subscale of the Social Skills Improvement System (SSIS; Gresham & Elliot, 2008) and rated tolerance for the behaviors exhibited. The effect of priming teachers with an ADHD label (or lack thereof) on ratings of behavior was examined. Differences in tolerance ratings for the ADHD scale behaviors were also examined. Lastly, differences in behavior and tolerance ratings among the two videos were analyzed. Results suggest that ADHD label groups had no effect on behavior or tolerance ratings; however, significant effects were found for both behavior and tolerance ratings with regard to videos. The limitations of the current study and implications for future research are discussed

Feminist Stereotypes: Communal vs. Agentic

This study examined relationships between facial appearance, gender-linked traits, and feminist stereotypes. Naïve college students rated traits based on facial appearance of female CEO\u27s whose companies appeared in the Forbes 1000 list. The photos of each female CEO (n=35) were randomly combined with two descriptive identifiers; an occupation (n=9) and an interest area (n=9), including \u27feminist\u27. Participants then rated the head shots of the CEO\u27s on a 7 point Likert scale of communal (expected feminine) traits like attractiveness, warmth, compassion and cooperativeness, and on agentic (expected masculine) traits like ambition, leadership ability and intelligence. If college students hold negative stereotypes of feminists, feminist identified women are expected to be rated lower on levels of attractiveness, warmth, compassion and cooperativeness, but higher in leadership ability, ambition, and intelligence. Results demonstrated that participants did not hold negative stereotypes of feminists as they rated them similarly to environmentalists, progressives, and liberals. Results demonstrated that participants held negative stereotypes about conservatives and republicans

Preconscious control of stereotype activation through chronic egalitarian goals

This research shows stereotype activation is controlled by chronic egalitarian goals. In the first 2 studies it was found that the stereotype of women is equally available to individuals with and without chronic goals, and the discriminant validity of the concept of egalitarian goals was established. In the next 2 experiments, differences in stereotype activation as a function of this individual difference were found. In Study 3, participants read attributes following stereotypical primes. Facilitated response times to stereotypical attributes were found for nonchronics but not for chronics. This lack of facilitation occurred at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) where effortful correction processes could not operate, demonstrating preconscious control of stereotype activation due to chronic goals. In Study 4, inhibition of the stereotype was found at an SOA where effortful processes of stereotype suppression could not operate. The data reveal that goals are activated and used preconsciously to prevent stereotype activation, demonstrating both the controllability of stereotype activation and the implicit role of goals in cognitive control. The current research addresses an important question for understanding both the nature of stereotyping and the nature of cognitive control: Can one's commitment to a goal lead to control over th

Investigating the attitude towards ambiguity: Interindividual differences in automatic activations of evaluations of ambiguity

Direct measures of (in)tolerance of ambiguity provided evidence for a variation in liking of ambiguity. Given the limitations of these measures, we developed a direct measure of attitude towards ambiguity. However, the main part of this thesis deals with the questions, whether there are interindividual differences in the automatic activations of evaluations of subjective ambiguity (single information triggers multiple distinct representations). We developed a database with norms for ambiguous and unambiguous German words. A subset of these words matched for several dimensions was used in two indirect measures. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) assessed the relative strength of associations of ambiguity and clearness with positive and negative valence, respectively. In the Evaluative Priming (EP) paradigm ambiguous and unambiguous primes preceded targets with positive or negative valence. This allows to draw inference about the automatic evaluations of the primes. In order to validate potential variances in the automatic evaluations of the primes (indicated by interindividual differences in latencies as a function of prime type and target type), information about the attitude towards ambiguity was used as a moderator. Apart from the first study, which investigated the relation of direct measures with the IAT and showed unrelatedness, all other studies used the EP paradigm, using either the IAT score (studies 2 – 4) or the induced associations of opposite valence with ambiguity and clearness (studies 5 – 6) as moderators. Studies 2 and 3 provided evidence for interindividual differences in the activation of evaluations of ambiguity via a three-way interaction of prime type, target type and IAT score. However, this three-way interaction was not found in the replication study 4. In study 5, there was an interaction of prime type, target type, and induction but opposite to the expected direction. The post-hoc explanation for the partial contrast effect was further investigated by manipulating the SOA in study 6. However, in this study the induction had no influence on latencies in the EP paradigm, but there was a prime type, target type and SOA interaction. This can be explained in terms of contrast (long SOA) and assimilation (short SOA) effects if we consider the evidence across the aforementioned studies showing that, on average, participants had a stronger association of ambiguity with negative valence and clearness with positive valence. Summarized, evidence for interindividual different automatic evaluations of ambiguity was weak, but the results of the EP paradigms indicated a more negative (or less positive) automatic evaluation of ambiguity compared to clearness. The implications of automatic evaluations of the mental representation of ambiguity are discussed

Social cognitive and neural mechanisms of food choice under the influence of food-related information

Food is the fuel of life. As such food stimuli are intensively processed by the human brain and the consequences of these processes, resulting in our food choice, have an essential impact on our life. Research suggested that food choice is largely guided by predominantly learned preference, and is likely to be influenced by information regarding the food (e.g., nutritional value) as well as by learned beliefs and associations (e.g., between a given food and its health value). This project aims at understanding at both behavioral and neural levels how these non-physiological factors might influence the food/drink choice and how they can be modified to improve our choice. Chapter 1 includes the literature review on 1) how semantic information influences implicit/explicit associations toward food/drink, 2) the predictive validity implicit/explicit associations on food/drink choice, 3) the behavioral and neural evidence of changing associations, choices, and impulsivity control toward food/drink by implementing a conditioning paradigm (e.g. evaluative conditioning). The motivation and the objectives of my Ph.D. project are also presented here. Chapter 2 contains Study 1 (Experiment 1 and 2). The first aim of the thesis is to understand how the association between a certain food and different concepts may guide our choices. This is addressed in Experiment 1 where I investigated how our choices can be predicted by preference and/or implicit associations between different constructs of interest (e.g., social status) and coffee and/or tea. People\u2019s self-report preference, implicit and explicit associations between different social constructs and tea/coffee were measured. Results based on 22 Italian healthy adults indicate that they possess strong implicit associations between tea and low social status, and this association significantly predicted choice of tea. The second aim of the thesis is to investigate whether the associations between food/drink and certain constructs can be changed through a classical learning paradigm, evaluative conditioning (EC), in which the associations between target drinks/food and food-related information was manipulated. This approach allowed us to investigate a possible strategy of intervention that could improve drink/food choices. This is addressed in Experiment 2 whereby a within-subject design is employed with participants going through both EC-condition and control condition. Results based on 68 healthy adults show that the implicit associations between tea and high-social-status, as well as the preference towards tea, significantly increase after EC. Most importantly, the difference in implicit associations across conditions significantly predict the difference in choices of tea between conditions, indicating that changes in implicit associations determine changes in choice. Chapter 3 is dedicated to the third aim which is to identify the neural mechanisms underlying the changes in association after EC between foods and the concepts of healthiness and sustainability. To this end changes in neural markers were related to changes in food choice as well as personal eating habits and individual difference in restraint eating and impulsive behavior. In Study 2, I experimentally strengthened the association between the concept of unhealthiness/unsustainability and heavily-processed food, and between healthiness/sustainability and minimally-processed food. A semantic congruency task combined with the Electroencephalography (EEG) technique was used to investigate changes in neural activity of the N400 in incongruent trials. Results on 18 healthy adults derived by comparing neural signatures of incongruent trials between conditions demonstrated that the magnitude of the N400 in left dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) for minimally-processed high-calorie food significantly increased after EC. Thus, EC can be considered as an effective method to strengthen the semantic association between foods and a given concept, indexed by the change of neural signature tracking the semantic conflict. This increased magnitude also positively correlated with the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale score, indicating that the more impulsive a person is, the greater the change in magnitude of the N400. Chapter 4 is devoted to address the fourth aim of the thesis that is to understand whether control of impulsivity over unhealthy food choice can be improved through the evaluative priming (EP) that is a variation of EC used in Study 2. Thus in Study 3, 15 healthy adults went through a pre-EP and a post-EP test including a Go/NoGo task combined with EEG. During EP, an increased subjective liking was found for Minimally-Processed Low-Calorie food images in evaluative block. For GNG tasks, at neural level, the averaged amplitude at left DLPFC for food images with evaluative priming was more negative in post-EP than in pre-EP GNG task. More negative N200 amplitudes were consistently found at left DLPFC in post-EP GNG task for Heavily-Processed Low-Calorie food as well as for Minimally-Processed Low-Calorie food. The behavioral and neural evidence showed the improvement of self-control towards food stimuli through evaluative priming. The possible role of left dorsal lateral prefrontal region in online value modulation and in integrating the stimulus feature with related information was identified, suggesting the self-control process based on deliberated thinking with symbolic representations and information operations. In Chapter 5 I summarized and discussed the main findings of my thesis. In short, my project provides the basic roadmap for understanding how food/drink related information affects cognitive and neural underpinnings of food/drink choices. Indeed, choices can be improved through modifying associations between food/drink and related information and thus healthy diets are encouraged. These results provide a potentially interesting research avenue well as possible interventions to modify and improve food/drink choices that could possibly be applied to individuals with eating disorders

Perception and expression of emotion in TBI : identification of emotion, recognition of emotional ambiguity, and emotional verbal fluency

Communication and social integration require effective emotional, cognitive, and language processing within the brain. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) results in impaired emotion processing in a variety of contexts including emotion encoded in facial appearance, prosody, and the linguistic content of messages. Individuals with TBI report difficulty in relationship maintenance and social integration post injury as a result of impairments in communication. Emotional communication is frequently ambiguous or incongruous in presentation and its accurate perception is vital to effective communication and interpersonal relationships. Recognition of ambiguity in emotional communication has not been investigated in individuals with TBI. This study evaluated differences in emotion perception and expression between 12 individuals with TBI and 24 individuals without TBI. Three tasks were utilized: 1) emotion identification in 34 congruous and 66 incongruous emotional sentences, 2) identification of ambiguity in emotion in 34 congruous and 66 incongruous emotional sentences, and 3) verbal fluency with emotion category generation. Participants without brain injury demonstrated increased accuracy in emotion identification and emotional ambiguity identification. Participants without brain injury generated more responses in all verbal fluency categories. Both groups were more accurate in emotion identification of congruous sentences, and more accurate in ambiguity identification in congruous sentences. Participants with TBI showed impaired identification of emotion in sentences, impaired identification of emotional ambiguity in sentences, and a reduced number of responses in verbal fluency tasks when compared to individuals without brain injury. Results are discussed in terms of impact on effective communication for individuals with TBI. These findings support that individuals with TBI are impaired in perception of emotion, including ambiguity in emotional communication, and show reduced output in verbal fluency tasks.Communication Sciences and Disorder