Association for Consumer Research Annual Meeting Jacksonville 2010

October 7, 2010. 2:00pm-6:00pm
 

Co-chairs

Aparna A. Labroo, University of Chicago

Angela Y. Lee, Northwestern University

Description of the Preconference

The fact that the body is linked to the mind has never been an issue of contention among philosophers, psychologists, consumer researchers or the general public. However, recent developments in the advancement of knowledge have seen a fundamental shift in our understanding of the nature of the relationship between the mind and the body. The dominant view in the past, echoed by philosophers as early as Rene Descartes who used a steam-engine metaphor, envisioned a mind-body separation such that the mind is the “controller” that moved the body. The idea is that thoughts reside in the mind; hence it is the brain that fuels the body. More recent research suggests that this relationship between the mind and body is not as unidirectional or distinct as previously claimed. Rather, our body may, at least in part, be steering our mind.

The goal of this preconference is to investigate the extent to which this change in assumption marks a new way to understand consumer choice, to systematically consider the role our bodies play in shaping our thoughts, perceptions, motivations, feelings, comprehension, and learning, and to set forth an agenda for future research. Thus, the objective of the proposed preconference is fourfold: (a) to consolidate our understanding of recent findings in consumer research on embodied cognition – the idea of how our bodily states might be helping us think; (b) to align these emerging views with existing perspectives and findings in consumer research, spanning across cognition, motivation, and affective processes, and to reinterpret existing findings according to this new perspective; (c) to discuss ways in which this new perspective provides distinct insight into understanding consumer choice, including cognitive, affective, motivational, inter-temporal dynamic choice, self and self identity issues; and (d) to develop a framework that integrates the idea that the body informs the mind as the mind informs the body in a dynamic way to better understand consumer behavior and set forth an agenda for future research on embodied cognition and consumer choice.

The preconference includes 8 presentations of 20 minutes each, with roughly 10 minutes for discussion after each talk. The preconference will run from 2:00-6:00 pm on October 7, 2010. To attend, please pre-register by sending an email to preconference.embodiment@gmail.com. Pre-registered participants pay $10.00 at the door (cash only), if you simply show up, you are welcome to attend but you pay $20.00 (cash only). The preconference is sponsored by ACR and the proceeds will be donated back to ACR. All doctoral students and post doctoral participants who pre-register by email will receive a waiver for their registration fee.

Program

Abstracts of the Presentations

1.

The Scaffolded Mind:

How Early Foundational Concepts Passively Guide Judgments and Decisions

Lawrence Williams*, University of Colorado at Boulder

Josh Ackerman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Recently, cognitive theorists have asserted that human thought is intimately linked to bodily states. Guided by such theorizing, we propose conceptual scaffolding as a psychological mechanism by which concepts especially important for interacting with the physical environment (e.g., physical distance) shape the development of abstract concepts for which people lack direct experience (e.g., psychological distance). We explore the consequences of conceptual scaffolding by showing how bodily sensations, basic perceptual cues, and motor actions can meaningfully alter judgments and decisions. By considering scaffolding, researchers and managers can make more nuanced predictions regarding how external contexts will influence consumer behavior.

Email: Lawrence.Williams@Colorado.EDU

2.

Embodied Morality:

Understanding Moral Functioning Through Physical Cleanliness

Chenbo Zhong*, University of Toronto

Traditional schools of thought consider morality a function of reason (e.g., Kohlberg, 1969). Recent developments in moral psychology, however, challenge the primacy of reason and emphasize the dominance of intuition and emotion (Haidt, 2001). Drawing upon the emerging literature of embodied cognition (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), this paper attempts to reconcile these seemingly polarized perspectives by suggesting that moral reasoning is both abstract and metaphorical and is grounded in the concrete experience of physical cleanliness. A number of experiments show that not only moral transgressions induce a literal sense of dirtiness that urges physical cleansing but also that bodily cleanliness hints moral purity, licensing harsher moral judgment of others. This approach of embodied morality may not only provide a theoretical framework that houses both reason and intuition but also illuminate why emotion disgust has such an important place in moral judgment.

Email: Chenbo.Zhong@Rotman.Utoronto.Ca

3.

Seeing Time with the Mind's Eye:

Space-Time Interdependence in Consumer Intertemporal Decisions

B. Kyu Kim*, University of Southern California

Gal Zauberman, University of Pennsylvania

James R. Bettman, Duke University

While future time is a key piece of information to be processed for many decisions consumers make in everyday lives, it is not clear what inputs are mentally represented and processed when people judge future duration, in which time is not directly experienced. We suggest that future time is mentally construed, rather than directly perceived, thus future time perception is influenced by other more bodily experienced cognition like spatial distance perception. Throughout four studies, we demonstrate that the distance on a hypothetical map or the distance to the city where participants will retire influence their subjective perception of prospective durations.

Email: byungkim@marshall.usc.edu

4.

Physically Short and Conceptually Lightweight:

Does Eye Movement and Syllable Length Influence Magnitude Representations?

Rashmi Adaval*, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign

Hao Shen, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Building on the idea that metaphorical representations are grounded in bodily sensations, we discuss how people make sense of bodily sensations when they conflict with other sensory input and activate different representational units; and how bodily sensations – visual and verbal input (eye movement and articulation) – might influence common representational units. Results across several studies show that eye movement and articulation of number of syllables can affect magnitude representations. Since magnitude representations are in a common unit (i.e., there is a general representation to code big and small quantities of time, space, and numerosity) the activation of this magnitude representation influences time estimation, distance estimation and even other relatively more complex judgments like complexity of a theory.

Email: adaval@illinois.edu

5.

Neonatal Sunlight Exposure Reduces Human Dietary Flexibility

Siegfried Dewitte*, Leuven University

Caroline Goukens, Maastricht University

Sabrina Bruyneel, Leuven University

Dietary flexibility increases the risk of exposure to toxins and pathogens but reduces vulnerability to famine and malnutrition. This suggests that the optimal degree of dietary flexibility may vary from one region to the next, and from one individual to another. Drawing on the literatures on neonatal programming, season-of-birth effects, and neuroscientific evidence for neonatal sensitivity to sunlight exposure, we suggest that human dietary flexibility may display phenotypic plasticity triggered by sunlight exposure in the neonatal period, as an environmental proxy for food abundance. One cross-sectional international study and two lab studies demonstrate that neonatal sunlight exposure reduces humans’ acceptance of novel flavors. These results attest to the importance of the first months in human life in the development of taste preferences.

Email: Siegfried.Dewitte@econ.kuleuven.be

6.

Hunger in the Belly, Chaos in the Mind, and the Genesis of Creativity

Aparna A. Labroo*, University of Chicago

Ravi Dhar, Yale University

People’s interpretation of their environment can create interoceptive states that guide future actions. Across four studies, we show that chaos (mess) or emptiness in the environment can impact people’s creativity in a task, and this effect on creativity depends on whether people associate the environmental cues with their brain or their belly. We find that associating emptiness with the belly or chaos with the brain can create an internal state of feeling unsettled and a need to take action, and that in turn improves their performance on creativity tasks such as a chain-link puzzle, the Remote Associates Test, in a word fragment completion task, and in a picture completion task. The findings highlight the role of interoception in consumer decision making.

Email: alabroo@chicagobooth.edu

7.

Mimicry Induces Similarity Processing

S. Christian Wheeler*, Stanford University

Dirk Smeesters, Erasmus University

Jia (Elke) Liu, University of Groningen

Mimicry occurs spontaneously when individuals interact. Whereas most research has examined the effects of mimicry on behavioral and attitudinal outcomes, the present research explores how mimicry affects cognitive processing and consumer outcomes. Because mimicry signals similarity and congruity, being mimicked could instigate similarity processing. Consistent with this idea, we show that being mimicked leads to (a) generating more similarities between both rather similar stimuli (television shows) and rather dissimilar stimuli (a shark and a dog), (b) perceiving greater fit between a parent and extension brand, (c) slower response latencies in detecting differences between two pictures, and (d) greater choice deferral.

Email: wheeler_christian@GSB.Stanford.Edu

8.

Perspective Taking and Embodiment

Angela Y. Lee*, Northwestern University

Dongwon Min, Dankook University

The results of four studies show that the extent to which people’s judgment and behaviors are influenced by environment cues are moderated by their perspective taking. We show that high perspective taking participants exposed to weight loss strategies (study 1) and marathon runners (study 2) versus those in the control condition evaluated products that facilitate a weight loss goal or a running goal more favorably and they evaluated products that impede a weight loss goal or running goal less favorably. These effects were not observed among the low perspective takers. Study 3 provide evidence that differences in embodiment underlies the effect of perspective taking by showing that high perspective taking participants exposed to marathon runners were less able to squeeze a handgrip relative to their low perspective taking counterparts, as well as to those in the control condition. In Study 4, we provide further evidence that embodiment enhances persuasion by showing that high perspective takers responded more favorably to high imagery appeals than low perspective takers; perspective taking had no effect on participants’ response to low imagery ads.

Email: aylee@kellogg.northwestern.edu