Lecture 3: How do consumers acquire and process information? Flashcards
What is attention?
Taking possession by the mind of one out what seems several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Withdrawal from some things by focalization and concentration.
Selective attentions
What we focus on.
Why do we have attention?
-Our brain cant handle everything at once: limited cognitive resources.
-Navigate complex environments.
-Focus on the important info and suppress distracting info.
Limited cognitive resources
Brain signaling and limited actions
Selective attention (2 ways)
Top-down: with a goal (directed, controlled)
Bottom-up: a distraction (automatic, captured)
Different top-down vs Bottom-up attentions
- Voluntary vs. involuntary
- Goal-directed vs salience
- Endogenous vs. exogenous
- Controlled vs. automatic
- Directed vs. captured
Impacts of Top-down
Strenght of goal (motivation/preferences)
Incentives (task instructions)
Stakes/risks
Predictability (familiarity of environment)
Mood
Bottom up impacts
Color/contrast
Movement
Size/position
Visual clutter (complexity)
Threat (emotional valence)
Impacts of selective attention that are in between bottom-up and top-down.
Reward, memory and previous experience
Stroop task
Name color of ink, not word. For example the word red is written in bleu and then you have to say bleu not red.
Competition between top-down (zeg kleur) and bottom-up (lees woord).
Cocktail party effect
Selective focus on one conversation (top-down), still processing surrounding voices (gender), but not content/language. But when you hear your own name than your attention is going to that direction (bottom-up).
Early vs. Late selection and memory
Perceptual processing –> semantic processing (meaning) –> response/memory
VS
Sensory input –> sensory memory–if attention–> short-term memory (rehearsal)–encoding–> (<– retrieval) long-term memory.
IF NO ATTENTION THAN NOT IN MEMORY!
The attention economy
Attention is a scarse resource (bounded rationality)
Much competition
Attention is monetized
What does “attention is monetized” mean?
Capturing attention offers opportunity for persuasion. Attention is the product (for intermediary); you pay for products with your attention (social media)
What are the individual and societal consequences of attention economy?
Pro: More personal media options, more ways to connect, more free services, better attentional capture.
Con: Social media potentially reduced well-being, political polarization (propaganda) and spread of misinformation.
Stages of acquiring and processing information
1) Pre-attentive scanning
2) Focal attention
3) Evaluation
Pre attentive scanning
General, non-goal-directed surveillance of the environment (rantje van bewustzijn)
Looking at perceptual features (colors/lines), semantic features (concepts/meaning), emotions and hedonic fluency.
What is hedonic fluency?
When something is fluent (easy to understand) –> higher evaluation –> misattribution of the pleasantness.
Familiarity leads to easier processing which leads to liking it more.
What is goal fluency?
Sequences activating similar goals: When asking about intentions before behavior it increases likelihood of behavior (question-behavior-effect). Dus als je bijvoorbeeld vraagt wat iemands doelen zijn voor het eten en degene zegt afvallen dan gaat die gezonder eten.
Focal attention
Focus on certain information in short-term memory, top-down and bottom-up influences.
What are the features that attract focal attention?
Salience/novelty and vividness
Salience/novelty (bottom-up)
Contrast to environment, suprise (for example humor bottom-up+top-down). Stronger for lower processing motivation/ involvement, may protect from reduction in attention to familiar items.
Vividness
Using emotions (fear), individual differences, depends on active goals.
Onderzoek naar vividness
2 verschillende product type: experiential (champagne) and functional (frying pan) dan pp score of vividness. For the frying pan (functional), only individuals high in imagery respond more to vividness
For the champagne (experiential), all respond more to vividness
Familiarity/ repetition
- Familiarity can increase processing
fluency, leading to increased brand
attitudes - Too much repetition can lead to
annoyance, reducing brand attitudes - Longer-term, annoyance fades but
repetition leads to increased brand
memory (relevant for products)
Do sex and humor attract?
Sex attracts attention but it distracts from the brand. Congruence is important for both. Humor is pleasant which becomes associated with the brand. Sex and Violence do not sell.
3) Evaluation
Categorization
Understanding claims
Connecting information presented to existing memories, knowlegde and schema’s
Categorization
Coca cola is a soda but also coffee. It should be congruent, our association is the soda not the coffee. But can be the same vibe example different types of machines.
Typicality
Prototypical products are more liked but less salient reducing attention. First product in a category has novelty, leading to deeper processing and more extreme evaluations. New product becomes ”prototypical” to which others are compared, focus on
attributes brand does best.
Assimilation
Overestimate similarity within category.
Contrast
Overestimate differences between categories
Moderate dissimilarity
Balance between novelty and clear link (similiarity)
Assimilation & Contrast study
Atypical unfavorable and typical favorable highest score. Typical: assimilation, Atypical: contrast.
Misleading claims
- Rely on inferences beyond literal statements
- Literally true, but imply something different
- “Beer may be best in the world”
- Omit information
- “Dentists recommend X brand of toothpaste” (how many, which?
Implies majority) - “Brand X relieves pain longer” (than what? Implies competitor)
- Juxtaposition
- “be cool, buy brand X” (independent statements, imply relationship)
- Reverse cause and effect
- “if you can see it, you can make it”
Illusory truth effect studie uitkomst
- Participants see health claims,
whether they are true or false, 1x or 3x - After 30 min or 3 days, participants
see new and old statements and
categorize as true, false, or new - Delay reduces accuracy generally
- Misremember false as true more than
reverse (True is “default”) - Older adults more likely to
misremember for repetition and delay
Self-Schema
- Traits, values, and beliefs
about self, how you think of
yourself, guides attention and information processing - Higher motivation to
process information
congruent with self-schema = Amplifying effect - Motivational matching has 20% more effect.
Meta-Cognition
Thinking about thinking:
Thinking abour other motives (skepticism)
Thinking about your own inner states and thoughts (ease of retrieval and hedonic fluency)
Ease of retrieval (onderzoek)
Write or read, 3 or 7 arguments about public transport. Reading 7 leads to stronger attitudes (more) but writing 7 leads to weaker attitudes ( difficult–> lower confidence –> weaker).
Balance of attention and persuasion
- Supply of advertising rising faster
than attention (limit of population) - Ability to block advertising limits its reach (switch channel, leave room, look at phone during commercials, use ad-blockers)
- Context of exposure influences
balance between attention and
persuasion - Higher attention: persuasion is
possible - Lower attention: need to first attract
attention
Costs of “Annoying” Advertising
Door meer competitie voor attention wordt er meer gebruik gemaakt van bottom-up attention grabbing en dat kan irritant zijn. Short-term gain from ads making money vs long-term loss of engagement. Consumers are distracted and frustrated and worse memory recall.
