Inferential Beliefs in Consumer Evaluations: An Assessment of Alternative Processing Strategies

Ford, Gary T.; Smith, Ruth Ann

doi:10.1086/209119

Cited by 115 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…First, in a process known as evaluative consistency, consumers examine known attributes to infer an overall impression of a product or brand and assume that missing attributes adhere to this impression (Beckwith and Lehmann 1975;Broniarczyk and Alba 1994;Cooper 1981;Dick, Chakravarti, and Biehal 1990;Nisbett and Wilson 1977). Second, in a similar but more complex process, known as probabilistic consistency, consumers examine a known attribute and infer a missing attribute level based on prior beliefs about the correlation between attributes (Downing, Sternberg, and Ross 1985;Ford and Smith 1987;Hoch 1984;Huber and McCann 1982;John, Scott, and Bettman 1986;Kardes and Sanbonmatsu 1993;Meyer 1981;Ross and Creyer 1992).…”

Section: Inferences About Forgotten Product Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Known Unknowns in Judgment and Choice

Walters¹

2014

PsycEXTRA Dataset

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This dissertation investigates how people make inferences about missing information.Whereas most prior literature focuses on how people process known information, I show that the extent to which people make inferences about missing information impacts judgments and choices. Specifically, I investigate how (1) awareness of known unknowns affects overconfidence in judgment in Chapter 1, (2) beliefs about the knowability of unknowns impacts investment strategies in Chapter 2, and (3) inferences about forgotten unknowns influence choices from memory in Chapter 3.Chapter 1 investigates how overconfidence can stem from neglecting to consider missing information. Most prior research has attributed overconfidence to people focusing disproportionately on evidence favoring the chosen hypothesis relative to its alternatives. In this iii chapter, I find that neglecting unknown evidence independently contributes to overconfidence. In a first study, respondents answered questions such as, "Which of these fast food items has more calories, a Subway sandwich, or a McDonald's cheeseburger? / How confident are you?" Using a process tracing technique, I found that participants who considered more missing evidence were less overconfident than those that thought about more known evidence. Meanwhile, participants who considered more unknown information answered the same number of questions correctly, resulting in better calibration. In two additional studies, I prompted participants to list unknowns before assessing confidence in their judgments. This "consider the unknowns" technique reduced overconfidence substantially, and was more effective than the de-biasing technique most often prescribed in the research literature ("consider the alternative"). Importantly, considering the unknowns was selective in its impact: it reduced confidence only in domains where participants were overconfident, but did not affect confidence in domains where participants were wellcalibrated or under-confident.Chapter 2 investigates how inferences about the knowability of missing information impacts investment choices. Recent research has found that people intuitively distinguish aleatory uncertainty that is inherently random or stochastic (e.g. What is the probability that a fair coin will land heads?) from epistemic uncertainty that is attributed to missing knowledge or information (e.g., Which company had a larger market capitalization at the end of 2015, Google or Apple?). In a series of surveys and experiments involving laypeople, experienced investors, and financial advisors, I found that investors who viewed stock market uncertainty as more epistemic/knowable searched for more stock information and were willing to pay more for financial advice, whereas investors who viewed stock market uncertainty as more aleatory/random diversify more. Similarly, when investors were primed to think about epistemic iv uncertainty they are more willing to pay for stock information whereas when they were primed to think about aleatory uncertainty they diversified mo...

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Section: Inferences About Forgotten Product Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Known Unknowns in Judgment and Choice

Walters¹

2014

PsycEXTRA Dataset

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“…This implies that aesthetically appealing product has also good usability [10]. In addition, according to Ford & Smith (1979)'s study of bank website, users think beautiful website is more comfortable to use than others [11].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influence of an Aesthetically Appealing Product on User’s Interest

Jeong

Suk

Lee

et al. 2009

KANSEI Engineering International

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Purpose of present paper is to investigate whether aesthetically appealing high involvement products are associated with greater interest (tactual experience, flow and recall of product information) than products are not aesthetically appealing. Another purpose is to observe difference of influence to user's interest (tactual experience, flow and recall of product information) between high involvement product (MP3 player) and low involvement product (Media player). For the experiment, fourteen emotional words were extracted and categorized into 8 aesthetic and 6 usability words. In a preliminary experiment, the subjects freely used three MP3 player and selected emotional words by a 7-point likert scale to distinguish aesthetic and usability and software product value. In the main experiment, it was hypothesized that users have more interest, flow, and recall more information in case of the aesthetically appealing but bad usability product than which has good usability but ugly. Therefore, we measured how much time subjects spent to use the product and asked them to make an assumption regarding the time spent by the group that has the same usability value. We then examined the time they spent and see the gap between the actual and estimated time. We also calculated the amount of menu information recalled via a questionnaire. And also we hypothesized that there are different result of user's interest, flow and recalled information between High Involvement Product (MP3 player) and low involvement product (Media player). In a previous study we observed user interest of low involvement product (Media Player). So at this time, we observed the gap between two groups of product. Results are discussed with significant influence of user interest in case that product is aesthetically appealing. But we didn't find any influence of recalled memory of aesthetically appealing product. And results showed that high involvement type of product (MP3 player) makes more interest to user in flow only.

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“…When people perceive that the information available about a target is incomplete or limited, they may draw inferences that go beyond the information given (Bruner, 1957;Ford & Smith, 1987;Huber & McCann, 1982;Jagacinski, 1991;Johnson, 1987;Meyer, 1981;Slovic & MacPhillamy, 1974). In social perception, a person or group may be assumed to have performed behaviors that are typical or average.…”

Section: Framework For Predicting a Set-size Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Broadening the Conditions for Illusory Correlation Formation: Implications for Judging Minority Groups

Shavitt¹,

Sanbonmatsu²,

Smittipatana³

et al. 1999

Basic and Applied Social Psychology

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Perceivers tend to overestimate the relative degree of association between an infrequent or distinctive category of behavior and a minority group or target, an illusory correlation effect with implications for numerous social processes including stereotyping and product perception. We argue that such illusory correlations can form under a broader set of conditions than has been previously shown. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that illusory correlations can emerge even when no distinctive behaviors are presented (i.e., in the absence of co-occurrences of infrequent events). Experiments 2 and 3 showed that perceivers are more likely to form strong illusory correlations when the difference in the amount of information describing majority versus minority groups is large rather than small. These findings support a process account suggesting that illusory correlations can form merely as a result of differences in the amount of information acquired about targets; minority group targets are assumed to have more moderate characteristics than majority group targets because of the relatively limited minority group evidence that is available. We discuss implications regarding stereotyping and intergroup relations as well as perceptions of consumer brands in the marketplace.People often make judgments about the predictive relations between social characteristics. Indeed, the perception of covariation among characteristics of the social environment (e.g., between ethnicity and behavioral tendencies) is important in a variety of social processes. Unfortunately, as numerous studies have demonstrated, covariation estimation is a difficult task and people commonly form illusory correlations, or overestimations of the relation between two characteristics or events (e.g., Chapman & Chapman, 1967;Pryor, 1986;Schaller & Maass, 1989;Shaklee & Mims, 1982;Stroessner, Hamilton, & Mackie, 1992).Past studies (e.g., Chapman, 1967;Hamilton & Gifford, 1976) have demonstrated that perceivers are particularly prone to forming a distinctiveness-based illusory correlation, or an overestimation of the relative degree of association between an infrequent category of behavior and a minority group. Hamilton and Gifford demonstrated the tendency to form such illusory correlations. Participants in their study read a series of sentences, each of which described a behavior by a member of one of two groups (Group A or Group B), and most of which were either desirable or undesirable. More statements described members of Group A than Group B (i.e., Group B was, by definition, the minority group), but the proportion of favorable to unfavorable statements was the same. Thus, there was no relation between group membership and the favorability of behaviors. Nevertheless, participants evidenced a distinctiveness-based illu-

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Inferential Beliefs in Consumer Evaluations: An Assessment of Alternative Processing Strategies

Cited by 115 publications

References 8 publications

Known Unknowns in Judgment and Choice

Known Unknowns in Judgment and Choice

Influence of an Aesthetically Appealing Product on User’s Interest

Broadening the Conditions for Illusory Correlation Formation: Implications for Judging Minority Groups

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