Omission neglect and consumer judgment and inference based on limited evidence.

Kardes, Frank R.; Posavac, Steven S.; Gaffney, Donald R.

doi:10.1037/0000262-023

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 80 publications

(141 reference statements)

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“…Finally, experiment 4 uses stimuli that had either full information or partial (missing) information to confirm the effects found in the first three studies. This study shows that when people are making a purchase decision with missing information, positive affect increases the likelihood one will report more thoughts related to the missing information (i.e., focused on non-presented or missing information), which results in less positive product evaluations and purchase intentions – that is, they are sensitive to missing information ( Kardes et al, 2006 , 2022 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…This phenomenon is known as omission neglect – or insensitivity to missing or unknown product options or features ( Sanbonmatsu et al, 1991 ). Omission neglect occurs when people process a stimulus as if they had full information even when some important information is missing (inattention to missing information) or they make global inferences that all missing information is consistent with the presented attributes, attitudes, exemplars from the category, or activated schemata ( Kardes et al, 2022 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The influence of positive affect on sensitivity to important omissions

Mantel

Montag‐Smit²,

Kardes³

et al. 2022

Front. Psychol.

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It is surprisingly difficult to notice when important information is missing (omission neglect) and yet, social media, advertisements, and other forms of communication typically only include one-sided information or positive attributes and omit opposing views or negative attributes. Even though it is surprisingly difficult to overcome this natural tendency, there are circumstances when decision makers are more sensitive to omissions. Understanding how and when decision makers can overcome this omission neglect tendency can be helpful to improve decision making in many situations. This paper investigates positive affect as a potential factor that can elicit sensitivity to omissions and alert decision makers to the need for additional information when important information is, in fact, missing. Four experiments use a consumer product choice situation to show that when decision makers are making an important decision, positive affect increases the likelihood that they will report a greater desire for additional product information (experiments 3 and 4) and temper their purchase interest in the target product. These results are shown using inference (experiments 1, 2, and 3) and by explicitly comparing a product choice with full and partial information (experiment 4). The results are discussed in terms of omission neglect literature as well as implications of the results for understanding the role of positive affect in information processing, judgment, and decision-making. These findings have implications for policy makers, marketers and others who are interested in message processing.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The influence of positive affect on sensitivity to important omissions

Mantel

Montag‐Smit²,

Kardes³

et al. 2022

Front. Psychol.

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“…We evidence that choice deferral may be an efficient strategy for consumers to avoid suboptimal decisions in contexts of choice sets described incompletely. Second, consumers tend to overestimate how much they know (e.g., Sanbonmatsu et al, 2012) and rarely are motivated to search for missing information (Kardes et al, 2022). We show how knowledge acquisition is important to debias omission neglect, but only when the decision is made sooner rather than later.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 79%

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

Hernandez

Filho²,

Gaffney³

et al. 2023

Judgm. decis. mak.

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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.

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“…Pushing a hypothesis to an implausible extreme helps researchers to define the boundaries of a hypothesis, as recommended by Janiszewski and van Osselaer (2022, this issue). In my research program on omission neglect, or insensitivity to missing information, my students and I continually attempt to increase the importance of a product attribute that is not mentioned in a product description (Kardes et al, 2021). In some of our recent studies, we discovered that consumers frequently neglect hidden fees, such as roaming fees, when evaluating cell phone plans.…”

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confidence: 99%

Commentaries on “Abductive Theory Construction”

Kardes¹,

Fischer²,

Spiller

et al. 2021

J Consum Psychol

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This paper assembles five comments on Janiszewski and van Osselaer's (this issue) article that promotes abductive research as a way to generate new psychological theory. The review process began by asking those making comments to be part of collaborative communication between themselves and Janiszewski and van Osselaer. The five comments arising from that process provide well‐honed insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the abductive research. The first commentary, by Frank Kardes, offers convincing evidence showing that the techniques of abductive thinking are similar to other explorative techniques currently being successfully used in deductive research. Eileen Fischer sees abductive thinking as integral to inductive and qualitative thinking as it facilitates the generation of new constructs and remaps established ones. Stephen Spiller explores the implication of starting from interesting and paradoxical data rather than from established theory. The research challenge then requires a focus on strategic sampling of methods, responses, and critical constructs that confirm or limit a provisional theory. Aparna Labroo articulates the benefits of abductive thinking to help resolve complex practical problems, but warns against the proliferation of multiple findings that may be difficult to validate. Finally, Bublitz and Peracchio celebrate the value of abductive research to help resolve social issues and enable the fruitful merger of publishable research with personal social action.

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Omission neglect and consumer judgment and inference based on limited evidence.

Cited by 3 publications

References 80 publications

The influence of positive affect on sensitivity to important omissions

The influence of positive affect on sensitivity to important omissions

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

Commentaries on “Abductive Theory Construction”

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