Chung, Seh-Woong

Mitchell, Andrew A.

Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University

Singapore Management UniversityInstitutional Knowledge at Singapore Management UniversityResearch Collection Lee Kong Chian School OfBusiness Lee Kong Chian School of Business2006Perceptual Fluency, Attitudes and Choice: SpecialSession: The Role of Metacognition in Consumers’JudgmentsAndrew A. MitchellUniversity of TorontoSeh-Woong ChungSingapore Management University, swchung@smu.edu.sgFollow this and additional works at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_researchPart of the Marketing CommonsThis Conference Proceeding Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Lee Kong Chian School of Business at Institutional Knowledge atSingapore Management University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business by an authorizedadministrator of Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University. For more information, please email libIR@smu.edu.sg.CitationMitchell, Andrew A. and Chung, Seh-Woong. Perceptual Fluency, Attitudes and Choice: Special Session: The Role of Metacognitionin Consumers’ Judgments. (2006). Advances in Consumer Research. 34, 30-30. Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School OfBusiness.Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/3530 / The Role of Metacognition in Consumers’ Judgmentscreated through an incidental noise mask is attributed to familiarity(Whittlesea, Jacoby and Girard 1990).In this research, we suggest that the fluency induced bycomputational complexity is misattributed to the analog distancebetween numbers. Results from four experiments were found tosupport this hypothesis. In experiment 1, fluency and numericaldistance was manipulated in a within-subjects design. Participantswere shown 24 pairs of prices; each pair comprised of a regularprice and a sale price. Participants were asked to evaluate themagnitude of the discount on a small-large semantic differentialscale by computing the difference between the regular price and thesale price. The price stimuli differed from each other in the magni-tude of the discount (small vs. large) as well as in the numbercomplexity (difficult vs. easy). Consistent with our hypothesis andcontrary to the rules of arithmetic, participants in our experimentsperceived the discount magnitude to be larger when the differencewas easier to compute (e.g., 5.00-4.00; difference 1.00) than whenit was difficult to compute (e.g., 4.99-3.98; difference 1.01). Thiseffect manifested across all levels of discounts as well as prices.Experiment 2 shows this effect is robust and manifests with judg-ments of price difference as well as judgments of weight difference.However, this effect manifests only when the judgment requiresmental computations. When the participants did not have to do themental computations to make the judgment, processing fluency hadno effect on judgments (Experiment 3). Finally, the observed effectseems to be on account of non-conscious misattribution of themetacognitive experience. When the participants were explicitlywarned that the computation is either easy or difficult, processingfluency had no effect on judgments (Experiment 4).“Perceptual Fluency, Attitudes and Choice”Andy Mitchell, University of TorontoSeh-Woong Chung, Singapore Management UniversityIn a series of studies we examine the relationship betweenperceptual fluency, attitudes and their accessibility and choice froma limited set of brands. We hypothesize that under these conditions,brand choice is a two-stage process. The first stage is a recognitionstage where certain brands will “stand out” in the environment. Thesecond stage is a choice stage, where consumers use informationabout the brands, which is stored in memory to make a choice.Previous research indicates that objects with highly accessibleattitudes “stand out” in the environment (Roskos-Ewoldsen andFazio 1992) and that perceptual fluency will also cause this tohappen (Jacoby, Kelley and Dywan 1989). Consequently, attitudeaccessibility and perceptual fluency are expected to influence thefirst stage. Previous research also indicates that beliefs, attitudesand their accessibility will influence the second stage (e.g., Fazioand Towles-Schwen 1999).These conjectures are tested in a series of experiments. In allthe experiments, the participants are provided with informationabout four hypothetical brands of personal music players that varyon five attributes so that there is a clear rank order of the brands onthe attributes. One brand is evaluated as very positive, the secondas slightly positive, the third slightly negative and the fourth verynegative. Both the attribute information and the attitudes providethe same rank order. During the experiment, the participants forman attitude toward each brand.In the first experiment, the perceptual fluency, attitude acces-sibility of the second best personal music player are manipulatedand the participants are asked to select which brand they wouldpurchase if they all had the same price under either high or lowmotivation and opportunity conditions. Under high motivation andopportunity conditions the participants are given as much time asthey want to make a decision and are told that if they select the bestbrand they are eligible to enter a drawing to win $25. Under lowmotivation and opportunity conditions the participants were told tomake a decision as quickly as possible.Under high motivation and opportunity conditions only atti-tude accessibility had an influence on choice while under lowmotivation and opportunity conditions, both attitude accessibilityand perceptual fluency were found to have independent influenceson choice. The response times of the choice process were notmeasured in this experiment, so it is possible that the low motivationand opportunity condition included both the recognition stage andpart of the choice stage in the choice process. In other words, thechoice of the brand with the highly accessible attitude may be dueto effects at both the recognition and choice stage.To examine this possibility we conducted a second experi-ment, which is similar to the first, only the perceptual fluency andattitude accessibility of the third best brand, which has a negativeattitude, are manipulated. In addition, the response times in thechoice task were measured. As expected, neither attitude accessi-bility nor perceptual fluency affected choice under high motivationand opportunity conditions. However, under low motivation andopportunity conditions, perceptual fluency has a significant effecton choice while attitude accessibility has a marginally significanteffect. A closer examination of the data indicates that with a mediansplit on the response times used when reaching a decision, all theparticipants who selected the third best brand, which had a negativeattitude made the decision quickly. In fact, all the participants whochoose the third best brand did so within 1.1 seconds.In a third experiment, we replicated the low motivation andopportunity conditions of the first experiment, however, we forcedthe participants to make a choice within 1.1 seconds. The resultsindicate a significant interaction between the effects of perceptualfluency and attitude accessibility on choice. Both high perceptualfluency and high attitude accessibility had significant effects onchoice. However, these effects were not additive.In summary, the results of our experiments indicate that therecognition stage lasts for approximately 1.1 secs and perceptualfluency and attitude accessibility affect this stage. If choices arebased on this stage, perceptual fluency and attitude accessibilitywill affect choice regardless of the valence of the attitude. Attitudes,attitude accessibility and attribute information will influence thesecond stage. In our studies attitudes and attribute informationprovided the same rank order information of the brands, so onlyattitude accessibility had an effect on choice when the attitude waspositive. These results indicate that even when attitudes are formedtoward the alternatives, they do not influence choice when it isbased on metacognitive processes.

Perceptual Fluency, Attitudes and Choice: Special Session: The Role of Metacognition in Consumers’ Judgments

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Perceptual Fluency, Attitudes and Choice: Special Session: The Role of Metacognition in Consumers’ Judgments

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