Preferential attraction effects with visual stimuli : the role of quantitative versus qualitative visual attributes

Offering an inferior and rarely chosen third (decoy) option to decision makers choosing between two options has a paradoxical effect: It increases the choice share of the option most similar to the decoy. This attraction effect is robust when options are numeric but rarely occurs in humans when options are visual, even though it occurs in animals. Building on psychophysics, we examined two types of visual attributes: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative visual attributes (e.g., different bottle volumes) can be perceived as magnitudes. Qualitative visual attributes (e.g., different colors), however, do not fall onto a magnitude scale. One can perceive that a bottle’s volume is twice that of another bottle but not that a green bottle’s color is twice that of a red bottle. We observed robust attraction effects for quantitative visual attributes (4,602 adults, 237 college-age participants), which reversed to repulsion effects when the visual attributes were qualitative (6,005 adults)

Defining the Stimulus in S–R Interventions: On the Need to Embrace Theory and Organism in S–O–R

We comment on a proposal by Janiszewski and Laran (2023) that draws on ‘behaviorism’ for developing interventions geared at attenuating negative consumer behaviors. One interpretation of this proposal emphasizes the influence of stimuli (S) on responses (R) and de-emphasizes intervening mental processes. We contrast this S-R perspective with an S-O-R perspective that embraces both process explanations and O, the organism (in our context, the consumer) to productively study, explain and then leverage S-R relations. We discuss in detail that without an organism- and theory-centered perspective of S-R relations it is difficult to identify relevant stimuli and predict patterns of behavior in new contexts. We illustrate in more depth why Janiszewski and Laran’s example of aiding an individual suffering from depression could benefit from adopting a theory and organism-centered perspective to improve possible intervention strategie

Defining the Stimulus in S–R Interventions: On the Need to Embrace Theory and Organism in S–O–R

We comment on a proposal by Janiszewski and Laran (2023) that draws on ‘behaviorism’ for developing interventions geared at attenuating negative consumer behaviors. One interpretation of this proposal emphasizes the influence of stimuli (S) on responses (R) and de-emphasizes intervening mental processes. We contrast this S-R perspective with an S-O-R perspective that embraces both process explanations and O, the organism (in our context, the consumer) to productively study, explain and then leverage S-R relations. We discuss in detail that without an organism- and theory-centered perspective of S-R relations it is difficult to identify relevant stimuli and predict patterns of behavior in new contexts. We illustrate in more depth why Janiszewski and Laran’s example of aiding an individual suffering from depression could benefit from adopting a theory and organism-centered perspective to improve possible intervention strategie

Do Hedonic Motives Moderate Regulatory Focus Motives? Evidence from the Framing of Persuasive Messages

Research on regulatory focus has established a regulatory matching effect: The persuasiveness of a message is enhanced when regulatory orientations of message and perceiver match (i.e., both are promotion or both are prevention). We report evidence that varying the hedonic outcome reverses this effect. We manipulated hedonic outcome by explicitly stating pleasurable versus painful outcomes as part of the message frame as well as by priming perceivers to focus on either pleasurable or painful outcomes. When both message and perceiver were focused on pleasurable outcomes, we replicated the regulatory matching effect. However, the matching effect reversed when the hedonic outcome of the message was opposed to that of the perceiver (i.e., one was pleasurable and the other painful). Under these conditions, messages that mismatched the perceivers' regulatory orientation were more persuasive (i.e., promotion message for a prevention oriented perceiver or vice versa). We also examined the persuasion effects when both message and perceiver were focused on painful outcomes and found that the regulatory matching effect re-emerged. The reversal of the regulatory matching effect by hedonic outcome strongly suggests that hedonic motives (approach of pleasure vs. avoidance of pain) and regulatory focus motives are distinct constructs. This is important because contrary to theoretical statements these constructs have often been confounded

The Influence of Goals on Value and Choice

This chapter discusses a role for goals in choice processing and in the perception of value of objects. It defines goals and the activation of goals. An evidence is presented that people habitually associate goals with objects in the world. The chapter describes studies of the influence of goals on how information about options is processed. The role of goals in the evaluation of objects is discussed. The chapter examines how the evaluation of objects can change as a function of the active goal, and how the perceived value of an object is affected by its relationship to the active goal. It is believed that this work makes a positive statement about the processes of decision-making

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING

Many theorists have pointed out that the economic foundations of psychological research on decision making have had a profound impact on the way that research is carried out (e.g., Medin & Bazerman, in press; Goldstein &amp