All lecture notes Economic and Consumer Psychology (6463PS008Y)

Economic and Consumer
Psychology
Lecture notes

Lecture 1: mental effort and ease
A tale of Two Systems
System 1: always runs up front
- Fast (first)
- Intuitive
- Easy questions
System 2: monitors system 1
- Slow (second)
- Effortful
- Lazy
- Hard questions

Dual processing models
- Elaboration likelihood model
- Heuristic systematic model

Elaboration likelihood model:
- Two routes from information to attitude change
 Peripheral route (system 1)
 Central route (system 2)
- Which route?  depends on the elaboration likelihood
 High likelihood  central route
 Low likelihood  peripheral route
- Premises of the ELM
1. People want to have correct attitudes
2. Elaboration likelihood depends on motivation and ability
3. Peripheral cues are most influential under low elaboration likelihood
4. Attitude change via the central route is
 More stable
 Stronger
 More predictive of behavior
- Factors that promote the central route
 Motivation
 Involvement with topic (in particular material outcomes)
 Accountability/responsibility
 Need for cognition/uncertainty reduction
 Ability
 Prior knowledge, expertise, intelligence (+)
 Repetition, experience (+)
 Distraction (-)
 Time pressure (-)

1

, - Peripheral cues
 Secondary features of the information or the context, e.g.:
 Repetition (logo)
o Mere exposure
 Number of arguments (many vs few)
 Source credibility (attractive, famous, reliable, expert)
 Product origin (e.g., wine from France)
 Product characteristics (new, improved recipe)
 Format/design (e.g., well-designed advert  positive affect)




- Nature of Cognitive Responses: Quality of Arguments
 In case of a high elaboration likelihood (central hood)
 strong arguments lead to positive thoughts on the opinion
expressed in the message
 weak arguments lead to negative thoughts on the opinion
expressed in the message
- Do you have strong arguments?
 repeat a few times (not too often)
 Make sure the text is comprehensible
 Non-distracting context
- Do you only have weak arguments?
 Offer the message only once
 provide enough distraction
 good peripheral cues
- Review credibility
Peripheral cues:

2

,  Source credibility (low vs high reviewer rating)
 Review consistency (low vs high)
 Review sidedness (one-sided vs two-sided) (high motivation + high
ability)
Central cues:
 Argument quality (weak vs strong) (no motivation or ability needed)
- Two-sided reviews are considered more credible/reliable for consumers, especially
for recipients with:
 Low involvement
 High expertise (?) (they’ll look at it as a central cue, because they can
look at the positive and negative aspects)
- Similar but different distinctions
 Head vs heart / cognition vs affect
 Conscious vs nonconscious
- What system 2 can(‘t) do
 Cognitive effort and pupil size
 Ego depletion
- Pupillometry: measuring cognitive effort
 more frequent auditory sequence increased pupil dilation
- Effortful consumer decisions
 If it gets too difficult, people are likely to fall back on heuristics
 best choice
 discounts
 reviews
- Capacity maxed out – the phenomenon of ego-depletion
 Self-control / willpower as a limited resource
 Ego depletion as prolonged effect of cognitive exertion
 Strength model of self-control
Causes:
 Thought suppression (e.g. avoid thinking of a white bear)
 Inhibit emotional response (e.g., to a scary movie)
 Inhibit behavioral response 9e.g., to someone who annoys you)
 Trying to impress others
 Making choices that involve conflict
 all involve so-called executive functions (e.g., planning, self-monitoring, self
control, working memory, flexibility)
Consequences, e.g.:
 Persisting less time in a handgrip task
 Reacting aggressively to provocation
 Deviating from one’s diet
 Overspending on impulsive purchases
 Performing poorly in cognitive tasks and logical decision making
- Some serious critiques
 Statistical
 Meta-analysis and replications are inconclusive
o Methodological limitations
o Publication bias

3

, o Small samples
o P-hacking
 Conceptual:
o What is the source of self-control
o What is the limit
- The source of willpower – Glucose?
- What is the limit? Role of motivation
 Willpower beliefs moderate ego depletion effects
 After a strenuous mental activity, your energy is depleted and you
must rest to get it refueled again
 After a strenuous mental activity, you feel energized for further
challenging activities
 reduces or reverses ego-depletion effect
 Thus: different from cognitive load
 Being able vs being willing
 Intelligence (if you might be able to) vs rationality (if you want to)

What system 1 can do
- Associative networks and priming
- Mere exposure
- Ease of processing

Knowledge structure: the associative network




Schema:
- Theory about how the social world works
- Reason why things that do not seem to have a lot in common can belong to one and
the same category

Priming:
- A prime is a stimulus that facilitates the process of memory search by providing
additional retrieval cues
- Causes spreading of activation in associative network


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