Visual Attention During Brand Choice: The Impact of Time Pressure and Task Motivation

Measures derived from eye-movement data reveal that during brand choice consumers adapt to time pressure by accelerating the visual scanning sequence, by filtering information and by changing their scanning strategy. In addition, consumers with high task motivation filter brand information less and pictorial information more. Consumers under time pressure filter textual ingredient information more, and pictorial information less. The results of a conditional logit analysis reveal that the chosen brand receives significantly more intra-brand and inter-brand saccades and longer fixation durations than non-chosen brands, independent of time pressure and task motivation conditions. Implications for the theory of consumer attention and for pretesting of packaging and shelf lay-outs are discussed.Brand choice;time pressure;task motivation;visual attention

Explorations in price (un)fairness.

Consumers may use multiple reference points-including cost of goods, past prices, and competitive prices-to judge price fairness. Across a series of studies we show that consumers are inclined to overestimate profits, often to an extreme extent. We further demonstrate that prices are perceived to be unfair because consumers fail to take into account vendor costs, underestimate the effects of inflation, and attribute competitive price differences to profits. Potential corrective interventions by marketers-such as cueing costs, providing historical price information, and explaining price differences-were insufficient to eliminate unfairness perceptions. In addition, prices for goods were found to be stickier than prices for services and therefore were especially susceptible to these systematic perceptions of unfairness.Prices; Studies; Costs; Effects;

Inhibitory Spillover: Increased Urination Urgency Facilitates Impulse Control in Unrelated Domains

This is the authors’ final, accepted and refereed manuscript to the articleVisceral states are known to reduce the ability to exert self-control. In the current research, we investigated how self-control is affected by a visceral factor associated with inhibition rather than with approach: bladder control. We designed four studies to test the hypothesis that inhibitory signals are not domain-specific but can spill over to unrelated domains, resulting in increased impulse control in the behavioral domain. In Study 1, participants’ urination urgency correlated with performance on color-naming but not word-meaning trials of a Stroop task. In Studies 2 and 3, we found that higher levels of bladder pressure resulted in an increased ability to resist impulsive choices in monetary decision making. We found that inhibitory spillover effects are moderated by sensitivity of the Behavioral Inhibition System (Study 3) and can be induced by exogenous cues (Study 4). Implications for inhibition and impulse-control theories are discussed

Embodied myopia and purchasing behaviour

In conventional thinking, the mind controls the body. Our brains decide something and the body follows suit. However, in many ways this turns out not to be the case. Indeed, our research has found that even simple postures and gestures may be enough to influence our purchasing behaviour

Farmers’ management of functional biodiversity goes beyond pest management in organic European apple orchards

Supporting functional biodiversity (FB), which provides natural pest regulation, is an environmentally sound and promising approach to reduce pesticide use in perennial cultures such as apple, especially in organic farming. However, little is known about farmers’ practices and motivations to implement techniques that favor FB, especially whether or not they really expect anything from FB in terms of pest regulation. In fact, FB-supporting techniques (FB-techniques) are massively questioned by practitioners due to inadequate information about their effectiveness. An interview survey was performed in eight European countries(i) to describe farmers’ practices and identify promising FB-techniques: (ii) to better understand their perceptions of and values associated with FB; and (iii) to identify potential drivers of (non-)adoption. Fifty-five advisors and 125 orchard managers with various degrees of experience and convictions about FB were interviewed and a total of 24 different FB-techniques which can be assigned to three different categories (ecological infrastructures, farming practices and redesign techniques) were described. Some were well-established measures (e.g., hedges and bird houses), while others were more marginal and more recent (e.g., animal introduction and compost). On average, farmers combined more than four techniques that had been implemented over a period of 13 years, especially during their establishment or conversion period. In general, it was difficult for farmers to evaluate the effectiveness of individual FB-techniques on pest regulation. They considered FB-techniques as a whole, targeting multiple species, and valued multiple ecosystem services in addition to pest regulation. The techniques implemented and their associated values differed among farmers who adopted various approaches towards FB. Three different approaches were defined: passive, active and integrated. Their appraisal of FB is even more complex because it may change with time and experience. These findings provide empirical evidence that the practical implementation of promising techniques remains a challenge, considering the diversity of situations and evaluation criteria. Increased cooperation between researchers, farmers and advisors should more effectively target research, advisory support and communication to meet farmers’ needs and perceptions

Defecatory urge increases cognitive control and intertemporal patience in healthy volunteers

Background: Past research has demonstrated that moderate urge to urinate improves inhibitory control, specifically among participants with higher behavioral inhibition sensitivity (BIS). The effect was absent when the urge exceeded intolerable level. The present research examines whether rectal distension-induced urge to defecate has similar effects. Methods: The moderate and high defecatory urge were induced by rectal distension in healthy volunteers (n=35), while they completed Stroop task and monetary delay discounting task. The difference of average reaction time between incongruent and congruent trials in the Stroop task (Stroop interference) and the preference for larger-later rewards in the delay discounting task were the primary outcomes. Key Results: Participants with high BIS (n=17) showed greater ability to inhibit their automatic response tendencies, as indexed by their Stroop interference, under moderate urge relative to no urge (128±41 ms vs. 202±37 ms, t64=2.07; p=0.021, Cohen’s d: 0.44), but not relative to high urge (154±45 ms, t64=1.20; p=0.12, Cohen’s d: 0.30). High BIS participants also showed a higher preference for larger-later reward in the delay discounting task under high (odds ratio = 1.51 [1.02–2.25], p=0.039) relative to no urge, but not relative to moderate urge (odds ratio = 1.02 [0.73–1.42], p = 0.91). In contrast, rectal distension did not influence performance on either of the tasks in participants with low BIS (n=18). Conclusions and inference: These findings may be interpreted as a ‘spill-over’ effect of inhibition of the urge to defecate to volitional cognitive control among healthy participants with high BIS