Baba Shiv

Heart and Mind in Conflict: The Interplay of Affect and Cognition in Consumer Decision Making

This article examines how consumer decision making is influenced by automatically evoked task-induced affect and by cognitions that are generated in a more controlled manner on exposure to alternatives in a choice task. Across two experiments respondents chose between two alternatives: one (chocolate cake) associated with more intense positive affect but less favorable cognitions, compared to a second (fruit salad) associated with less favorable affect but more favorable cognitions. Findings from the two experiments suggest that if processing resources are limited, spontaneously evoked affective reactions rather than cognitions tend to have a greater impact on choice. As a result, the consumer is more likely to choose the alternative that is superior on the affective dimension but inferior on the cognitive dimension (e.g., chocolate cake). In contrast, when the availability of processing resources is high, cognitions related to the consequences of choosing the alternatives tend to have a bigger impact on choice compared to when the availability of these resources is low. As a result, the consumer is more likely to choose the alternative that is inferior on the affective dimension but superior on the cognitive dimension (e.g., fruit salad). The moderating roles of the mode of presentation of the alternatives and of a personality variable related to impulsivity are also reported. Copyright 1999 by the University of Chicago.

Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness

Despite the importance and pervasiveness of marketing, almost nothing is known about the neural mechanisms through which it affects decisions made by individuals. We propose that marketing actions, such as changes in the price of a product, can affect neural representations of experienced pleasantness. We tested this hypothesis by scanning human subjects using functional MRI while they tasted wines that, contrary to reality, they believed to be different and sold at different prices. Our results show that increasing the price of a wine increases subjective reports of flavor pleasantness as well as blood-oxygen-level-dependent activity in medial orbitofrontal cortex, an area that is widely thought to encode for experienced pleasantness during experiential tasks. The paper provides evidence for the ability of marketing actions to modulate neural correlates of experienced pleasantness and for the mechanisms through which the effect operates.

Investment Behavior and the Negative Side of Emotion

Can dysfunction in neural systems subserving emotion lead, under certain circumstances, to more advantageous decisions? To answer this question, we investigated how normal participants, patients with stable focal lesions in brain regions related to emotion (target patients), and patients with stable focal lesions in brain regions unrelated to emotion (control patients) made 20 rounds of investment decisions. Target patients made more advantageous decisions and ultimately earned more money from their investments than the normal participants and control patients. When normal participants and control patients either won or lost money on an investment round, they adopted a conservative strategy and became more reluctant to invest on the subsequent round; these results suggest that they were more affected than target patients by the outcomes of decisions made in the previous rounds.

The Role of Emotion in Decision Making A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective

Decision making often occurs in the face of uncertainty about whether ones choices will lead to benefit or harm. The somatic-marker hypothesis is a neurobiological theory of how decisions are made in the face of uncertain outcome. This theory holds that such decisions are aided by emotions, in the form of bodily states, that are elicited during the deliberation of future consequences and that mark different options for behavior as being advantageous or disadvantageous. This process involves an interplay between neural systems that elicit emotional/bodily states and neural systems that map these emotional/bodily states.

The Impact of Anticipating Satisfaction on Consumer Choice

How do preferences change when consumers focus on the anticipated satisfaction with a purchase rather than choice? In a series of three studies, we show that preferences, both expressed and revealed, change depending on the degree to which anticipated satisfaction is evoked. These shifts in preferences arise because, compared to choice, anticipated satisfaction elicits a mental-imaging processing strategy that is both more effort intensive and qualitatively different. By providing direct evidence from thought protocols and by presenting evidence suggesting that these shifts in preferences vanish when mental imagery is discouraged or made more difficult, we show that the effect arises out of a processing strategy that requires effortful mental imagery of one or more of the options in the decision-making task. Finally, we demonstrate the uniqueness of the effect by showing that it cannot be generated with heightened processing or by an orientation that is directed toward the extent to which the options are liked. Copyright 2000 by the University of Chicago.

Nonconscious Goals and Consumer Choice

This work examines the process through which thrift versus prestige goals can nonconsciously affect decisions in a choice task. Drawing upon research on nonconscious goal pursuit, we present a theoretical framework detailing how consumer choices are affected by incidentally activated goals. We show that such primed goals have motivational properties consistent with goal pursuit but inconsistent with mere cognitive activation; the effects are greater with a longer time interval between the priming task and the choice and are less pronounced when the primed goal is satiated in a real, as opposed to a hypothetical, intervening choice task. Additionally, we show that subliminally evoked retail brand names can serve as the cues that activate purchasing goals.

Factors Affecting the Impact of Negatively and Positively Framed Ad Messages

This article examines the effects of negative and positive framing of ad claims on consume~s choices and attitudes. Propositions about how the extent of processing before choice affects the relative impact of claims-related versus advertising tactics-related cognitions are tested in three experiments. Findings suggest that when processing is limited, claims-related cognitions have a greater impact on choice, which results in the sponsoring brand being chosen more often when the ad claims are negatively framed than when they are positively framed. When respondents engage in more extensive processing before choice, tactics-related cognitions become more accessible and, if perceived to be unfair, result in an attenuation of the advantage of negative framing over positive framing. A different pattern of results is obtained when one examines brand attitudes rather than brand choice. Copyright 1997 by the University of Chicago.

Non-Conscious Influences on Consumer Choice

While consumer choice research has dedicated considerable research attention to aspects of choice that are deliberative and conscious, only limited attention has been paid to aspects of choice that occur outside of conscious awareness. We review relevant research that suggests that consumer choice is a mix of conscious and nonconscious influences, and argue that the degree to which nonconscious influences affect choice is much greater than many choice researchers believe. Across a series of research domains, these influences are found to include stimulus that are not consciously perceived by the consumer, nonconscious downstream effects of a consciously perceived stimuli or thought process, and decision processes that occur entirely outside of awareness.

Dissociating Valuation and Saliency Signals during Decision-Making

There is a growing consensus that the brain computes value and saliency-like signals at the time of decision-making. Value signals are essential for making choices. Saliency signals are related to motivation, attention, and arousal. Unfortunately, an unequivocal characterization of the areas involved in these 2 distinct sets of processes is made difficult by the fact that, in most experiments, both types of signals are highly correlated. We dissociated value and saliency signals using a novel human functional magnetic resonance imaging decision-making task. Activity in the medial orbitofrontal, rostral anterior cingulate, and posterior cingulate cortices was modulated by value but not saliency. The opposite was true for dorsal anterior cingulate, supplementary motor area, insula, and the precentral and fusiform gyri. Only the ventral striatum and the cuneus were modulated by both value and saliency.

Let Us Eat and Drink, for Tomorrow We Shall Die: Effects of Mortality Salience and Self-Esteem on Self-Regulation in Consumer Choice

We examine how making mortality salient affects consumer choices. We develop a new theoretical framework predicting when consumer behaviors will be more (less) indulgent when mortality is salient, arguing that individuals focus more of their limited self-regulatory resources on domains that are important sources of self-esteem and less on domains that are not important sources. In two domains, food choice and charitable donations/socially conscious consumer behaviors, high mortality salience led to less indulgent choices among participants for whom that domain was an important source of esteem and more indulgent choices for participants for whom the domain was not an important esteem source. (c) 2005 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..