Howard R. Pollio

Putting Consumer Experience Back into Consumer Research: The Philosophy and Method of Existential-Phenomenology

Existential-phenomenology is presented as an alternative paradigm for conceptualizing and studying consumer experience. Basic theoretical tenets of existential-phenomenology are contrasted with more traditional assumptions and methods used in consumer research. The metaphors used by each paradigm to describe its world view are provided and their respective implications for consumer research discussed. One phenomenological research method is detailed, and examples of how the method is applied and the type of data it produces are provided. An epistemological analysis reveals that existential-phenomenology can provide an empirically based and methodologically rigorous understanding of consumer phenomena.

The phenomenology of everyday life.

Preface Part I. Existential-Phenomenology and the Science of Psychology: 1. The nature of human experience 2. Dialogue as method: the phenomenological interview Part II. Grounding the World of Everyday Life: 3. The body as lived: themes in the human experience of the human body 4. Time in human life 5. The human experience of other people Part III. Selected Topics from Everyday Life: 6. Feeling alone 7. Making amends: the psychology of reparation 8. Love and loving 9. Falling apart 10. The meanings of death in the context of life Part IV. The Phenomenology of Everyday Life: 11. Toward an empirical existential-phenomenological psychology References Indexes.

The Spoken and the Unspoken: A Hermeneutic Approach to Understanding the Cultural Viewpoints That Underlie Consumers' Expressed Meanings

This article draws on the philosophical concept of the hermeneutical circle to explore the cultural viewpoints that underlie the meanings expressed by consumers. Phenomenological interviews were conducted with adult female consumers. The interviews are interpreted first by the identification of an exemplary image or event that we describe as a symbolic metaphor. We show that these symbolic metaphors highlight key personal meanings that each participant ascribed to her consumer experiences. We then use a hermeneutic logic known as intertextual analysis to show that these personal meanings reflect more general cultural viewpoints that are implicitly conveyed in language. These intertextual interpretations offer insights into the sociocultural meanings that underlie skeptical, nostalgic, and pragmatic consumer orientations. A concluding discussion is given to key implications and areas for future research that follow from this hermeneutic approach. Copyright 1994 by the University of Chicago.

Temporal properties of category recall

In two different experiments subjects were asked for an oral free-recall of 25-item word lists composed of five items from each of five different categories. Results indicated a great deal of irregularity in individual recall records, with long inter-response times (IRTs) occurring between words from different categories and short IRTs occurring between words from the same category. Results were interpreted in terms of a conception of memory as a reconstructive process in which only categories are retained, with individual words generated during the process of recall on the basis of how well their pattern of attributes matches the attribute pattern of the category.

Educational and Personal Characteristics of Four Different Types of Learning- and Grade-Oriented Students.

Abstract To discover personal and educational characteristics of learning- (LO) and grade-oriented (GO) students, over 200 subjects were divided into four groups: high LO-high GO; high LO-low GO, low LO-high GO, and low LO-low GO. All students completed the 16 PF, Myers-Briggs (M-B), Levenson Locus of Control (LOC), Achievement Anxiety (AAT), and Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes (SSHA) tests. Results indicated that H-L students produced highest scores on factors B, I, M, and Q1 of the 16 PF; scale N of M-B; scale I of LOC; the facilitative scale of AAT; and all scales of SSHA. They scored lowest on Q4 of the 16 PF, on scale S of M-B, on the debilitating scale of AAT, and on scale C of LOC. Students in the L-H groups scored lowest on scales I, M, and Q1 of the 16 PF, on scale N of M-B, on scale I of LOC, on the facilitating scale of AAT, as well as on all scales of SSHA. They scored highest on scale S of M-B and tied for highest on scale Q4 of the 16 PF. Students in the H-H group scored lowest on scales B, I, and Q4 of the 16 PF as well as on scale I of M-B and highest on scale E of M-B, on AAT (debilitating), and on scale C of LOC. Finally, students in the L-L group tied for highest on the 16 PF scale Q4 and on scale I of M-B and lowest on scale E of M-B and scale I of LOC. Results were discussed in terms of the personal and educational resources each student brings to the college environment and the way(s) in which these resources are used in coming to terms with the specifics of that situation.

The development of figurative language in children

Children in the third, fourth, and fifth grades were asked to do three different tasks in an attempt to determine their ability to use figurative language. Results for a Composition task showed that children produced a greater number of frozen than novel figures and that the absolute level of such usage decreased over grades. Results for a Multiple Sentences task revealed that children produced more frozen than novel figures and that both showed a marked increase over grade. Results for a Comparisons task indicated that figurative language increased over grade, and that for this task children used more novel than frozen figures. Taken in conjunction with earlier work, these data suggest that children are able to use figurative language well before theycan explain the exact nature of the relationship linking elements of the figure. In Piagetian terms, this implies that children use figurative language in the stage of concrete operations but cannot explain such usage until the stage of formal operations.

Figurative language and cognitive psychology

Abstract The past decade has witnessed the development of a significant body of research and theory concerning the areas of figurative language use and comprehension. The purpose of the present paper is to examine the broader implications of this research for contemporary cognitive psychology. The results of this examination reveal that cognitive psychology has dealt with figurative language as less important than literal language largely because of an implicit bias towards rationalistic philosophy and because of an unwillingness to deal with issues of ambiguity, novelty, beauty, and context; precisely those issues made salient by current research on figurative language.

A Behavioural Analysis of Figurative Language in Psychotherapy: One Session in a Single Case-Study

In an attempt to examine the frequency of occurrence and significance of figurative language in spoken discourse, a line-by-line analysis of such language in a single session of psychotherapy was performed. Results of such an analysis showed that for this particular case, figurative language occurred at a rate of between 3 and 6 figures per 100 words of text, and that novel, as opposed to frozen, figures tended to occur in extended bursts. These bursts were shown to relate to other aspects of the therapeutic process, particularly those involving patient problem-setting and problem-solving. In general, novel figurative language was seen to be a method whereby intimate personal qualities and problems could be talked about in a non-intrusive and therapeutically helpful manner.

The anomaly of anomaly

In order to determine whether mechanically generated sentences, often referred to in the literature as “anomalous,” are in fact anomalous, subjects in the present experiment were asked to do two different tasks: a paired-associates learning task involving anomalous sentences as responses, and a second task in which they were asked to interpret such sentences. These tasks were counterbalanced across different groups of subjects. Results of the interpretation task showed that a large proportion of subjects were able to give interpretations for anomalous sentences, while learning results indicated that anomalous sentences were more difficult to anticipate than natural sentencesonly when task order was Learn first, Interpret second. In the order Interpret-Learn, differences in ease of learning between anomalous and naturally occurring sentences did not appear. The results of this study demonstrate that anomalous sentences are interpretable, that a range of difficulty for such sentences can be established, that anomalous sentences are learned as easily as naturally occurring ones after interpretation, and that many of the interpretations given to such sentences are metaphoric in character. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for models of lexical organization.

Need metaphoric comprehension take longer than literal comprehension

To determine if metaphoric comprehension necessarily depends upon a more complex process than literal comprehension, 120 subjects in six different experiments were asked to code a series of sentences into one of the following logical sentence categories: analytic, synthetic, contradictory, anomalous, and metaphoric. Prior to this task, all subjects were given practice in learning to code examples of each of the various categories. Results of the present set of experiments revealed few systematic differences among the various categories in RT and a high degree of consistency in coding patterns across both the learning and RT phases of the experiments. Although procedural variations introduced for purposes of control produced clear and easily understandable changes in RT, coding patterns were essentially unchanged across the various experiments, suggesting that none of the categories could be considered as logically more basic than any other. The results were discussed in terms of contemporary semantic theory, where it was suggested that metaphoric recognition need not be conceptualized as depending on a more inferential level of semantic processing than literal recognition and that future theories must be more context-sensitive than those currently in fashion.