The Effects of Omitting-Then-Revealing Product Attribute Information: an Information Revelation Effect

Three experiments investigate the evaluative effect of revealing previously omitted information. In short, attributes were weighed more heavily when omitted-then-revealed (versus not omitted). Additionally, this revelation effect was mediated by changes in affect toward the product and bounded to those open (versus resistant) to change. The implications are discussed

Why We Decide Not to Decide? Decision Avoidance As a Means of Cognitive Closure

We propose decision avoidance is a collection of choice strategies motivated by the need for cognitive closure. This need, driven by the bothersome nature of a decision, offers a novel mechanism for decision avoidance effects and novel hypotheses regarding individuals' reliance on decision avoidance as a choice strategy

Activating a Mental Simulation Mind-Set through Generation of Alternatives: Implications for Debiasing in Related and Unrelated Domains

Encouraging people to consider multiple alternatives appears to be a useful debiasing technique for reducing many biases (explanation, hindsight, and overconfidence), if the generation of alternatives is experienced as easy. The present research tests whether these alternative generation procedures induce a mental simulation mind-set (cf. Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000), such that debiasing in one domain transfers to debias judgments in unrelated domains. The results indeed demonstrated that easy alternative generation tasks not only debiased judgments in the same domain but also generalized to debias judgments in unrelated domains, provided that participants were low in the need for structure. The alternative generation tasks (even when they were easy to perform) showed no evidence of activating a mental simulation mind-set in individuals high in need for structure, as these individuals displayed no transfer effects. Implications of the results for understanding the role of the need for structure, ease of generation, and mental simulation mind-set activation for debiasing are discussed

Influences on the Illusory Truth Effect in Consumer Judgment

The Illusory Truth Effect: Exploring Implicit and Explicit Memory Influences on Consumer JudgmentsMaria L. CronleyMiami UniversityFrank R. KardesUniversity of CincinnatiScott A. HawkinsUniversity of TorontoRepetition does not seem like a sound basis for determining truth, but researchers have consistently found that people rate repeated statements as more true than non-repeated statements. This effect is known as the illusory truth effect and appears to be quite persistent. Following on previous work in memory and judgment, additional moderators of attention, exclusion, and subliminal exposure are investigated in two experiments to assess their effects on repetition-induced beliefs of validity for product claims. Results provide new insights into the processes of incidental learning and implicit memory use by which consumers form judgments based on repetitive persuasive messages

The benefits of deciding now and not later: The influence of the timing between acquiring knowledge and deciding on decision confidence, omission neglect bias, and choice deferral

Consumers often spend time searching before making a purchasing decision to acquire knowledge about products. If the purchasing decision is delayed, recall of acquired knowledge is likely to be impaired. Because products in the marketplace are rarely described completely, consumers who take too long to decide may fail to notice the absence of information relevant to a purchasing decision and fall prey to a phenomenon called ‘omission neglect’, an inability to detect missing information and form extreme and confidently held judgments. Omission neglect may be corrected by acquiring knowledge about the target product before making the choice. In the present research, we examine consumer decisions in the context of choice sets described incompletely and presented either immediately or a week after the acquisition of relevant information about a target product. Specifically, we investigate how the timing between product knowledge acquisition and decision-making affects the detection of missing information, decision confidence, and choice deferral. Across three experiments, we find that, after acquiring knowledge, when consumers have their decision delayed, they are less able to detect missing information, feel more confident, and defer choices less

Non-Conscious Influences on Consumer Choice

While consumer choice research has dedicated considerable research attention to aspects of choice that are deliberative and conscious, only limited attention has been paid to aspects of choice that occur outside of conscious awareness. We review relevant research that suggests that consumer choice is a mix of conscious and nonconscious influences, and argue that the degree to which nonconscious influences affect choice is much greater than many choice researchers believe. Across a series of research domains, these influences are found to include stimulus that are not consciously perceived by the consumer, nonconscious downstream effects of a consciously perceived stimuli or thought process, and decision processes that occur entirely outside of awareness