How to Study Consciousness in Consumer Research, A Commentary on Williams and Poehlman

Abstract

Consumer research can benefit greatly from more insight in unconscious processes underlying behavior. Williams and Poehlman's effort at more clearly conceptualizing consciousness and call for more research provides a welcome stimulus in this regard. At the same time, providing evidence for unconscious causation is fraught with methodological difficulties. We outline why it is vital to uphold standards of evidence for claims regarding unconscious processes, as it is precisely a lack of rigor on this front which has generated a countermovement by researchers sceptical of dual process models in general and unconscious processes in particular. We contend that the sceptics have offered valid causes for concern, which we leverage to formulate six concrete recommendations for future research on consciousness. Researchers should (1) specify the process level at which they claim evidence for unconscious processes, (2) not confuse unconscious influences with unconscious processes, (3) carefully choose between different operational definitions of awareness, (4) maximally satisfy four criteria for awareness measures, and (5) complement measurement with experimental manipulations of awareness. Finally, we recommend to (6) refrain from hard claims about unconscious causation that transcend the limitations of the evidence, recognizing that consciousness is a continuous construct. Author NoteSteven Sweldens is associate professor of marketing at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands (sweldens@rsm.nl) and distinguished research fellow at INSEAD. Mirjam A. Tuk is assistant professor of marketing at Imperial College Business School, Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, London, SW7 2AZ, UK (m.tuk@imperial.ac.uk) and visiting professor at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. Mandy Hütter is junior professor of social psychology at the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Fachbereich Psychologie, Schleichstr. 4, 72076 Tübingen, Germany (mandy.huetter@uni-tuebingen.de). 2To better understand, aid and protect consumers, it is imperative to have an accurate understanding of unconscious drivers of behavior. We therefore welcome Williams and Poehlman's (2016) effort to stimulate and more clearly conceptualize the study of consciousness in consumer research. Past research on consciousness has struggled with two major stumbling blocks. First, it is difficult to provide an accurate definition of consciousness, not least because we do not really know how the experience of consciousness originates. As a consequence, there has been much variation in how conscious versus unconscious processing have been defined and operationalized in past research. We believe Williams and Poehlman (WP) have made important progress here by restricting the definition of consciousness to awareness, highlighting its functions and distinguishing it from other features of automaticity. Second, even when researchers agree on a definition (e.g., "awareness"),...

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