When people describe themselves they sometimes feel that the descriptions they use are not influenced by material context. But in fact, material possessions do influence how we see the identity of others. Material possessions also influence how people see themselves and how they want themselves to be. They give people control, independence and emotional comfort, all of which are important psychological functions. The link between material possessions and identity seems to be of central psychological importance.

Material possessions play a huge part in our everyday live. The television channels are full of advertisements and people seem to always talk about the clothes, cars or other stuff of others. The most material possessions we own are to make life more comfortable and controllable. People use cars to get from one place to another. Yet, it seems that material possessions that make our life easier also serve other psychological functions. The car you buy, for instance, can show others that you are part of a certain group. People who buy sports cars are seen as active and rich. Advertisements use symbolic links between consumer goods and identity of the buyer. Advertisements seem to suggest that a person is not good enough without the product that is being advertised and that the person can come closer to his or her ideal self if he or she buys the product. Most people would think that we are not that naive to believe advertisement and that we are clever enough to know that material goods are not part of our internal identity. This chapter, however, will try to show that material possessions are seen as integral parts of us and that they play a big part in the construction of self identity.

Parts of the self

There are many cultures that believe that material possessions are part of owns identity. Indians were buried with their weapons, because the others didn’t want to become contaminated with the identity of the deceased person. Researchers also shows that people see material possessions more closely to the self than to not-self. When asked in an open-ended interview to describe oneself, many people name material possessions. Material possessions are often seen as self-extensions of the identity and it is difficult to draw a line between material goods and the self-concept. The mere ownership effect means that owning a product makes it more attractive to us. People want to have positive self-image and they will therefore enhance what they own to enhance themselves. Research has shown that when people received feedback that they failed on a task, they displayed a stronger mere ownership effect. Self-image seems to be bolstered by an object. Because we use possessions for defining and evaluating the self, our self-esteem would be lessened when we lose a possession. Theft of property can involve more psychological trauma than we might think. Residential burglary probably has the strongest impact, because the home is seen as an identity shell. It is a place for privacy and has many possessions that are symbols of the self. The items reflect our history, personal value and attitudes. People can get seriously traumatized by this. People who lost their possessions because of natural disasters can also have severe psychological trauma.

Control

A cross-cultural study has been conducted that looked at the meaning of and reasons for possession. The participants in that study very children, adolescents and adults from America, Israeli from cities and Israeli kibbutzim. Kibbutzim are highly collective and don’t give too much about possessions, while the Israeli from cities and the Americans are individualistic. Furby proposed that infants want to control object (this is a universal motivation of the human) and this might become dangerous when children learn how to walk. Adults will occasionally try to stop them from touching certain things and the infant will (therefore) get attached to the things he or she is allowed to touch and see these things as belonging to them, while he or she will have no attachment to the things he or she isn’t allowed to touch and will see these things as belonging to someone else. Possessions draw a boundary between what is self and what is other. Furby also proposed that for adolescents and adults possession are important because they offer control over the social environments and because they are closely linked to the self. Research has supported the first claim. Many studies have shown that people use possessions to enhance control over their life. In the previous piece, it was told that people show a stronger ownership effect when they have been told that they didn’t do well on a task. Another research showed that when people are confronted with their own mortality, they focus more on material possessions. The second part of Furby’s claim (that material possessions are linked to the self) is controversial, because studies have different findings on this topic. One study looked at the link between possessions, values and attitudes. Possessions were divided into two groups: instrumental possessions and symbolic possessions where the former is a means of transport or a tool and the latter could be an expressions of the self or a sign of the possessor’s status. The data showed that there was a link between possessions (whether instrumental or symbolic) and values.

Symbols

Goffman’s classic study of self mortification shows how possession can be used to maintain self-identity. In his text he explains how prisoners are literally stripped of their identity, because their belongings are taken away from them. Not only do these prisoners feel humiliated, but they also feel like a number, because they no longer possess the things that make them into their own person (clothing, rings, chains). Another research shows that when you wear something that doesn’t define you as a person (like wearing a hoody or a cap) you can overcome certain boundaries that you normally would not have done (like hurting somebody). Other research has found that people who lived in elderly homes and were able to keep their belongings coped better than people who were not able to bring their belongings to the elderly home. They felt more in control, less helpless and more supported by staff.

The Symbolic Self-completion Theory proposes that people use material possessions to compensate for inadequacies in their self-concept. Material symbols can create and enhance identity. Material symbols can help us to get closer to our ideal self. A feminine symbol is wearing makeup and high heels. A young woman might wear makeup and high heels to show others (and herself) that she is feminine. Not everybody can use every symbol: symbols have to fit in with a person’s age, gender or social role. Research has showed that business students who lacked good qualifications showed more relevant material symbols, such as suits, briefcases and watches than students with good qualifications. Another study showed that law students made more use of material symbols of particular identity when they lacked experience in identity domains than practicing attorneys. This study also showed that first-year students made more use of material symbols than students further advanced in their study. This study unfortunately doesn’t show why students did this. Is it because the students really felt that their identity as lacking some things or because of peer pressure? Maybe there is yet another reason.

Wealth, status and group membership

Clothes are really strong symbols. The clothes somebody wears help us to identify which group the person is affiliated with and what his or her socio-economic status is. Some possessions serve as status symbols. Your house interior shows much about your status. Status symbols can also change over time. When things become easier available, they cease to serve as status symbols because they are not exclusive anymore. Once the television was a symbol of affluence, now almost everybody has it. The people who don’t have it are seen as poor. There are trickle-down and trickle-up effects. Low-status groups adopt status symbols of groups that are more affluent than they are until these groups adopt new ones to differentiate themselves. Sometimes people also adopt symbols that are not related to high-status but from rebellious subcultures, like punks. Fashion can have a big impact as it is adopted by different social groups. At an individual level though, people also chose certain symbols to differentiate themselves from other social groups. When another group also uses the same symbols, they will abandon these symbols and chose new ones as to differentiate themselves from others and communicate identity.

Stereotypes are usually ascribed through personal qualities. The writers of this article were curious as to whether there are stereotypes related to material possessions. They used three different social groups for this study (students, unemployed and business employees) and asked them to list what they thought were the favourite possessions of themselves and of the other two groups. The results showed that members from other groups were perceived as being more similar than they actually are: people listed possessions for other groups as less diverse than the possessions for their own group. Also, differences between groups were perceived as greater than they actually were. This is also found in other studies of discrimination. Results show outgroup homogeneity and between-group differentiation.

Material possessions show us which socio-economic group somebody belongs to and people hold stereotypes associated with these groups. This should also mean that first impressions of a person differ depending on which materials they are surrounded with. Are the objects of higher, middle or lower wealth? To test this hypothesis, participants were showed one of two videos.

In both videos a young man or woman comes home from his or her job, walks into the kitchen and goes to the living room and sits down with a newspaper. Almost everything in the videos is the same, except that in one of the videos the kitchen is high tech and a designer pine kitchen, while in the other video the kitchen is basic and not high tech. Also, in one of the videos the car that is driven by the person is expensive, while in the other video the car is rather small. The participants were from two different social backgrounds, an affluent middle-class and a working-class. The middle-class participants saw the affluent video as more similar to their background, whereas the working-class saw the less affluent video as more similar. According to the Social Identity Theory people form more positive impressions of people who are more similar to one owns ingroup. So according to this, people from the working-class should form a better first impression of the working-class than the affluent middle-class. But according to the wealth stereotypes, the two social groups should both like the affluent middle-class group better because they have more expensive possessions. The results showed that the wealth stereotypes were right: both social groups thought that the person with the expensive possession was more intelligent and more in control and therefore made a better impression. These attributes are valued culturally. Not everything was seen as positive though. The affluent person was seen as less warm and less expressive.

Integrative model of the functions of material possessions

Researchers have asked participants to list their favourite possessions and tell why their possessions are important to them. First, a distinction is made between functional-instrumental uses of possessions and symbolic-expressive functions. Functional-instrumental functions can be further divided into use-related uses and emotional uses. When you want to get from one place to the other, a car is use related. When this car also symbolizes the independence or sex-appeal of the owner, it has emotional use (the owner feels better about himself).

The symbolic-expressive functions can also be divided. One of these functions is categorical symbolism. Possessions can serve as signs of social identity. People can express their social standing, status, group and wealth. The second function is that of interpersonal relationships. The third function is that of self-expressive symbols. They are signs of personal identity and represent a person’s value, attitudes and qualities. Materials don’t have to be one of these uses, they can be several.

Differences in functions

The feelings towards certain possessions change through a lifetime. Infants usually develop a relationship with one or two material objects during the first two years of their life. This can be a transitional object and this teaches the child autonomy and gives the child emotional comfort through symbolising a person (mom) when he or she is not physically present. The child also learns to draw a boundary between the self and the external world. This, however, does depend on the culture. Most children from the Western society have an objects they take to bed, whereas children from Africa and India do not have such an object.

One research showed that younger persons found possessions important if they had a function for establishing autonomy and independence for them. Older people liked possessions more if they had a symbolic status for them, like photographs. Older children (age 10) named sports equipment and toys as the most important possessions because they give them feelings of enjoyment and freedom. Young adults liked material possessions like cars and jewelry because of their memorabilia and the enjoyment these things provide. This all has to do with different needs for the different ages. Whereas young people need security, old people have already formed bonds and want to remember and look back at those.

Possessions can differ for different cultures. The US has an individualist culture and privileges an independent self-construal and identity is autonomous and defined by personal goals. Collectivist cultures privilege an interdependent self-construal and identity is connected with that of others and defined by group goals. In Niger, for instance, people felt more connected towards certain possessions because of their status with the community and shared values. It seems that possessions symbolize personal identity in individualistic cultures and social identity in collectivistic cultures.

There is also a difference between men and women when it comes to their possessions. Men prefer action-oriented goods (like vehicle) and look more at the practical, control- and activity-related features of the possessions. Women choose sentimental possessions and they look at interpersonal relations of possessions and the emotional significance. This has to do with the way men and women construct their identity: men have an independent form of identity and women an interdependent form of identity. Men have instrumental and self-oriented perspectives whereas women have relational and symbolic perspectives. Gender differences are relative and not absolute.

One of the most common ways for companies to make a product more desirable is to add more and new features. However, products with social benefits are increasingly popular: examples are products that are fair trade or environmentally friendly. The researchers in the article try to investigate what the effects of a green label on the purchase decisions are and what role firm communication has in this. When a firm created a new, green product, they can choose to state that the green benefit was intended; they could also state that the green benefits are just a side effect of the product.

Although the first option seems more preferable, literature shows that products that have green benefits as side effect are more popular by consumers than products whereby the green effect was intended.

Intentions may have influence on people’s judgements. For example, intended crimes are generally regarded as less moral than unintended crimes. Although there are lots of studies that investigate the influence of intentions on behavior, there are only few that concern the role that firm intentions may have on consumer behavior. In fact, the study described in the article has the hypotheses that green products may be evaluated worse if they are communicated as “intended to be green” than if a firm communicated the green effect as being just a side effect of the product.

Past research suggest that there’s a link between intentions and perceived effort. In case of an intended green product, consumers may believe that the firm devoted greater resources towards the greening of the product. In this case, intentions can be linked to the allocation of resources. Consumers may believe that if there are more resources used for the greening of the product, there are fewer resources invested in other quality aspects. Of course, this perception of quality may have strong influence on purchase intentions.

In the article, three hypotheses are important. The first one states that consumers believe that firms invest fewer resources in product quality when the green enhancement is intended (versus unintended). The second one states that consumers therefore infer lower product quality when green improvements are intended (versus unintended). The last one states that consumers will be less likely to buy a product when the green benefits are intended (versus unintended). To test the hypotheses, a series of four studies was conducted.

First study

The first study tested the central hypothesis that consumers are less likely to purchase a product when the green benefits are intended versus unintended. In the study, there were three conditions: intended green enhancement, unintended green enhancement and a control group. 303 participants were randomly assigned to these conditions. Their task was to read a description of two new products that claimed to be significantly better for the environment (except of the control group, in their descriptions was no claim). Next, the participants had to answer questions concerning purchase intent, product quality and resource allocation.

The outcomes confirmed the hypothesis: participants showed higher purchase intentions for the unintended green products. They also believed that companies diverted more resources away from product quality, in order to make intended green products. Intentions had also influence on the perception of product quality: participants rated product quality higher in the unintended condition than in the intended condition.

Second study

The second study consisted of two related sub-studies, each soughing to address an alternate explanation for the intended versus unintended effects. Experiment 2a was almost the same as the first experiment, but a fourth condition was added: this was the “care-about-both”-condition and described that the firm intended both green benefits and quality improvement. 404 participants took place in this study. Experiment 2b presented a new scenario in which the firm’s focus laid on the improvement of a particular dimension. In the intended condition, participants read that this improvement and green enhancement were both important. In the unintended condition, the focus laid on the improvement, but the green enhancement was mentioned as side effect. In this study, 514 adults took place.

The findings of study 2a were in line with the outcomes of the first study. The purchase intention for the care-about-both-condition was lower than in the unintended condition. There was no significant difference in quality perception between the care-about-both and the unintended condition. There were also no significant differences in resource allocation found between the care-about-both and the unintended condition. Also the outcomes of study 2b were in line with the former findings.

Third study

Previous studies confirmed that consumers are less likely to buy a intended green product versus an unintended green product. However, two categories of benefits can be differed. Green effects can be inherent to the product itself: examples are less harmful chemicals or the level of biodegradability. On the other hand, benefits like fair trade reflect the firm’s actions and are separate from the product characteristics. It is likely that there’s a key difference between those two categories; thus, there may be a key moderator that could explain the effects of firm intentions on purchase intentions.

The researchers predict that if benefits that are inherent to a product’s composition are intended, people will be less likely to buy them. On the other hand, in cases that the benefits are separate from the product's composition, they may be even more positive evaluated when intended.

The study was a 2x2 design, with the variables intended versus unintended and inherent versus separate. 400 participants were randomly allocated to one of these four conditions. They all had to read a description of a all-in-one cleaner; depending on the condition, some claims were made. Next, the participants reported their purchase intent, perception of the product’s cleaning ability, agreement with resource allocation and overall liking of the firm.

The outcomes of purchase intention confirmed the expectations: people in the inherent condition showed less purchase intentions when the benefits were intended versus unintended. However, benefits separate from the product were rated higher when intended. Intended benefits were estimated to draw more resources away from quality; however, the intention of benefits led to greater liking of a firm. Also other effects were visible. For example, intended green benefits had negative effects on the quality perception of a product, but only when the benefits were inherent to the product and vice versa.

Fourth study

The forth study focused on the effects of intention in general. The former studies all focused on green, environmentally friendly or fair trade products; the forth study was concerned with health perception. 295 adults were recruited from an online survey pool. All of them had to read an article about a new way to produce ice cream: half of them read that this method was developed because of both the health and taste benefits; the other half read that the method was developed to improve taste, but had healthiness as side effect. Next, the participants had to answer questions about the perceived quality of the product and resource allocation. Lastly, there was a manipulation check to confirm that the participants were able to recall if they read about intended or unintended benefits.

In line with the outcomes of former studies, people in the unintended condition believed that the quality of the ice cream was better, compared to people in the intended condition. People in the unintended condition were also more likely to think that firms drew resources away from quality improvement. There was no significant difference in purchase intention between the two conditions.

Conclusion

The idea that the intention of being green actually has negative effects on purchase intent may be ironic. However, studies 1 and 2 confirmed this statement. Experiment 3 identified an important underlying moderator: benefits inherent to a product have other effects on consumer’s perception than benefits separate from the product. Finally, the fourth study showed that the effects of intention are generalizable and may have influence on other dimensions.

Self-control, also known as willpower, is an essential ability. It allows us to override our direct temptations, so we could focus on other ambitions. The lack of self-control caused, and still causes, many woes in human society. Therefore, it is important for social sciences to study this phenomenon.

A central role in the theory of self-control is formed by the existence of an energy resource in the self. Self-controlling acts draw on this energy source, causing depletion. This state of mental exhaustion is called ego depletion and has played a central role in many studies. Because of the diminished energy resources, ego depletion leads to decreased abilities to control oneself.

What is ego depletion?

The article presents an alternate model that could help explain why an act of self-control at one time causes impairments on other self-controlling tasks at a time afterwards. The authors of the article propose that self-controlling behavior leads to shifts in both attentional focus and motivational orientation. Those two processes are interrelated an can be seen as two meshed gears: because the motivation shifts from controlling behavior to impulsive acts of behavior, the attentional focus will change. Thus, ego depletion is not the mysterious result of energy resource depletion: it is simply a shift in motivation and attention.

Research on ego-depletion states that the self has a limited resource of energy, out of which self-controlling behaviors draw their energy. But, what is that exact resource? Studies from Gailliot, Baumeister, and colleagues showed that acts of self-control consume glucose, and that a state of ego-depletion can be cured by drops of glucose. In that way, the mysterious energy resource could just be a metaphor for blood glucose levels. However, the glucose findings are controversial: the studies could not prove that acts of self-control do not reliably reduce glucose levels in the blood. There may be a link between those two, but the relationship is probably more complex than the study outcomes imply.

Other studies also challenged the resource model. A study by Muraven and Slessareva showed that ego depletion is more a motivational deficit rather than a resource deficit; research by Clarkson, Hirt, Jia, and Alexander showed that ego depletion may be more driven by subjective perceptions rather than by a diminished energy resource. Studies by Tice, Baumeister, Shmueli and Muraven had the outcome that positive affects could have influence on the level of ego depletion.

The mechanistic model of ego depletion

Although the existence of an energy resource may be a myth, the question what makes self-control limited hasn’t been answered. As mentioned before, two processes play a central role in causing ego depletion, respectively motivation and attention.

The process of motivation can be split in two separate processes. The first one is the will to control oneself. Self-control can require hard work, and after the job is done, people may feel that they owe a break. In other words, they are not motivated to regulate themselves anymore. This vision is consistent with the before-mentioned glucose theory and many studies had outcomes that supported this idea of motivation. However, those studies did not adequately distinguish a lack of willpower and a lack of ability. More research needs to be done to find out if depletion is really an effect of diminished motivation.

Not only the level of motivation is important: after one’s become ego-depleted, he or she will be stronger inclined to act on impulse. Studies find that acts of self-control lead to more approach-motivated impulse strength. But once again, more research is required.

The process of attention can also be split in two apart processes. The fist one concerns the need that someone feels to control himself. Self-control may fail in cases people don’t notice they have to control themselves. Cybernetic loop models can help to explain this process: they explain control with three components, namely goals or standards, comparators or monitors and effectors or operators. According to this theories, self-control may fail as a result of problems with the operators of control, missing the ability to regulate oneself. It can also fail due to problems with monitoring: in that case, people don’t have the insight of discrepancies between their goal state and their current state. Studies show that participants who exert self-control, have more difficulty with attentional control in further tasks that require self-control. The other attentional process mentioned is the possibility of rewards. When depleted, people tend to focus on rewards and pleasure. This is caused by motivation systems, like the behavioral activation system, the fight-or-flight system and the behavioral inhibition system.

As mentioned before, the processes motivation and attention interact. Shifts in motivation lead to shifts in attention; the reverse is also possible. If people don’t recognize the cues for the need to control themselves, they will focus more on rewards: their attention will shift away from control and towards the gratification of impulses.

The mechanistic model integrated with other models

Though the process model isn’t in line with the common used resource model, it sure align with other theories. One of these theories is the attentional myopia model of self-control by Mann and Ward. According to this model, failing self-control could be the result of a too strong focus on central cues, instead of more peripheral. This is in line with the processes of attentional shift and the focus on rewards that play a central role in the process model. Another model comes from research by Kivetz, Simonson, Mukhopadhyay and Johar. Their studies suggest that self-control fails because people don’t want to control themselves, rather than just lacking abilities to regulate themselves. Again, there are similarities with the motivational process from the process model.

Most theories think that we form judgments on the basis of information that is available at that time. According to this, we should evaluate something more favourable when more positive characteristics come to mind. However, it is not just that simple. Sometimes information can’t be brought that easily to mind and new information can’t be processed as easily as old information. Because of this, judgments and decisions deviate from what we might predict on basis of accessible information. Subjective experiences seem to add implications to the making of the decision and usually the decision will be the opposite to what the accessible information seems to imply. Accessible information, metacognitive experiences, the perceived information value of these experiences and the naive theories used to interpret these things can cause complexities.

What if somebody asked you to make a list of the ten best cafeterias in Amsterdam. The first two will probably come quickly to mind, but the other eight might be difficult to recall. What will this difficulty tell you? That you don’t know many cafeterias? That you don’t know much about Amsterdam? That you have other things in mind and can’t concentrate on the cafeterias? All these things cause a difficulty of recall. One naive theory will use as explanation that it is easy to recall things when there are many things. Another naive theory suggests that it is hard to recall things when you are preoccupied with something else. These different theories may have different conclusions.

One study asked participants to recall either six or twelve examples of their assertive or unassertive behaviour and afterwards they were asked to rate their assertiveness. When people were asked to recall six things, they rated themselves as more assertive after recalling the assertive things than after recalling the unassertive things. But when people were asked to recall 12 things, the opposite effect happened. People who were asked to recall 12 examples of assertive behaviour rated themselves as less assertive than people who were asked to recall 12 examples of unassertive behaviour. People who recalled 12 assertive behaviours rated themselves as less assertive than people who had to recall 6 assertive behaviours. Because it was more difficult to come up with twelve examples than with six, people felt that they were not as assertive after all, or else it wouldn’t be so difficult to come up with 12 examples.

Naive theories

One of the naive theories mentioned before, is that the more exemplars exist, the easier it is to bring some to mind. Frequent exemplars are easy to bring to mind, therefore frequent and also more typical for their category. Examples that come to mind are relatively typical. Experienced ease of recall resulted in judgments that were consistent with recalled content and difficulty of recall resulted in judgments opposite to the recalled content. One study found that students liked Tony Blair more when they had to recall a few rather than many favourable thoughts about him.

Another study found that students reported using their bicycle more often after recalling a few rather than many instances of bicycle use. Another set of naive theories is about representations in memory. Categories that are well represented in memory are easier to recall than categories that are not well represented in memory. When people can recall things more easily, they will be more positive about the thing recalled. One study found that people were more positive about their childhood when they were asked to recall four childhood events than twelve childhood events. People think that when things are more important to them they are also better represented in their memory than things that are unimportant. Accessibility seems to be connected with personal relevance and judgments of interest. There are also multiple naive theories. These are combinations of the previous mentioned theories. One study showed that the ease of recall increases when people’s confidence in the recall increases. Higher confidence in the recalled can come into existence because there are many examples, because the person pays much attention to the question, because the person knows much about the subject or because the person has a good memory about the subject. There are different naive theories that can be used, but sometimes you can draw wrong conclusions when you use one theory to explain certain things. When you are asked to recall many examples of an event and you can’t find many, you may think that there aren’t many, that the events happened a long time ago, that your memory is poor for the certain event, that you are not very interested in the subject and so on. Some explanation excludes the others, while sometimes you may also choose the wrong explanation.

People base their decision making often on the likelihood of a particular event, however, they estimate the likelihood of events with the help of heuristics. Heuristics can be useful because they make the assessment of probabilities easier but they can also lead to systematic errors. Judgements are often made based on information that is not completely valid. Subsequently, this information is processed according to heuristic rules which leads to errors in the estimation. An example is the estimation of distance based on clarity. An object that has a higher clarity is perceived as being closer which is partly true but not always. In this article three heuristics leading to several biases are described.

Representativeness

The representativeness heuristic is used “when probabilities are evaluated by the degree to which A is representative of B, that is, by the degree to which A resembles B’’ . This heuristic can lead to bias when people are asked to estimate the likelihood that a description of certain personal characteristics belongs to someone who is engaged in a particular profession. If this occurs there are several factors that are not taken into account.

Base-rates

People should take base-rates into account but they often show insensitivity to prior probability of outcomes. In some professions are more people engaged than in other professions. If probability estimates are based on representativeness, prior probabilities will not be considered. This has been studied in experiments in which the base-rats were manipulated after which the subjects had to estimate the likelihood that someone was engaged in a certain profession based on descriptions. For instance, in a group of 70 engineers and 30 lawyers, the odds of being an engineer are higher than those of being a lawyer. Results show that participants base their evaluation on whether the description was stereotypical (was representative of a certain group) instead of prior probabilities. However, they did use prior probabilities if no additional information was provided to them. When no specific evidence was provided, the base-rates are accurately used but when useless evidence was given, the base-rates were neglected.

Insensitivity for sample size

Also in estimating the probability of getting a particular result in a sample drawn from a specified population, the representativeness heuristic is often used. People assume that if in a random sample the average height of men is 180 centimetres, this will be the average height in the population as well. People do not take the sample size into account. An experiment in which they had to estimate the distribution of average height for various sample size found that people produce the same distribution for all sample sizes. This was even the case when it was emphasized to take sample sizes into account. In another study people were told about a large hospital and a small hospital and that about 50% of the babies born were boys. At some days the percentage of boys reaches 60% and it was asked whether this would happen more often in the small or large hospital or that it would be about the same. People think that it happens as often in small as in large hospitals but according to sampling theory, the expected amount of days on which more than 60% of the born babies are boys is much greater in the small hospitals because a large sample is less likely to deviate from 50%. In addition, people do not take posterior probability into account. Posterior probability refers to the probability that a sample has been drawn from one population rather than from another. Estimations are often only based on sample proportion and not by the size of the sample which is necessary to know in order to estimate the posterior odds, which are often being underestimated.

Misconceptions of chance

Misconceptions of chance refers to the expectation that the sequence of events generated by a random process will be representative even if the sequence is very short. For instance, people estimate it to be more likely to get the sequence H-T-H-T-T-H than the sequence H-H-H-T-T-T because the first looks more randomly chosen. Also, H-T-H-H-H-H is estimated to be more unlikely because the fairness of the coin is not shown in this sequence. It can be concluded that people expect the essential characteristics of a process to be reflected even in a very small sample, this is called locally representativeness. One study found that these false estimations are also present in experienced research psychologists, who, as a result, used to small samples and overestimated their results.

Insensitivity to predictability

Predictions are often made based on representativeness, for instance, if one is asked to estimate the future profit of a company based on a short description, this will be influenced by the favourability of the description. In these kind of situations, people often use only favourableness and do not consider the reliability of the descriptions.

Illusion of validity

People often make predictions based on the outcome that fits best with certain input, that is, the outcome that is most representative of the input. the extent to which one is confident about his prediction also depends heavily on representativeness but not on reliability, therefore it is called an illusion of validity. This occurs in selection interviews, although it has been shown that they are highly fallible, they are still frequently used. In addition, redundancy (expressing statements multiple times to increase reliability) in input decreases the accuracy while it increases confidence.

Misconceptions of regression

Often, regression to the mean can be observed. This refers to the fact that individuals scoring high on one test score somewhat lower if they take the same test again whereas individuals who score low the first time, are more likely to score higher on the second test. This kind of regression is often not taken into account if decisions have to be made in daily life, maybe because people have the idea that the outcome should be representative of the input. because of this misconception, the effectiveness of punishment is overestimated and the effectiveness of reward is underestimated.

Availability

People often estimate probabilities of frequencies based on the ease that something pops up in their minds. An example is how often a certain event has occurred among your friends. A problem is that availability Is not only dependent on frequency and probability, therefore, basing decisions on availability leads to biases. These biases can be the result of the retrievability of instances (how difficult is it to retrieve a similar situation). This is influenced by familiarity, since familiar events come easier to mind. salience, referring to certain concepts being activated, is another aspect that is of influence. People can also be biased because of the effectiveness of a search set. This can be illustrated with a task in which people are asked whether there are more words starting with an r or with an r as third letter. they start thinking of as many words as they can and it is just easier to search for words by their first letter. Another bias is the bias of imaginability which refers to people generating instances on which they base frequency estimates. How easy they can construct instances determines their estimation of frequency. This has been tested by the question how many different committees you can form of k members if there are 10 people. The answer is maximal 252 for k=5. If the answer is based on imaginability, one would think of much more small committees than of large committees which contrasts the correct bell-shaped function. Risk estimation based on what comes easily to mind can lead to under and overestimation. The occurrence of two events at the same time is also often misinterpreted. People perceive correlations between things that are actually not correlated. This is called the illusory correlation.

Adjustment and anchoring

People often base their estimates on a starting value that they adjust to get a final value. the adjustment of the starting value is often wrong because different starting values lead to different final estimates, this is called anchoring. Giving people arbitrary starting values influences the estimate despite rewarding for the right answer. In addition, anchoring can take place in case of incomplete computation. This occurs when people have to do a multiplication with higher numbers at the beginning, they will overestimate the outcome. There can also be biases in the evaluation of conjunctive and disjunctive events. This happens when people are asked to bet on a conjunctive or a simple event whereas the conjunctive event has a lower probability of success compared to the simple event. Because of anchoring, the overall probability will be overestimated in conjunctive problems and underestimated in disjunctive problems. This is also why people underestimate probabilities of failure in complex systems. In decision analysis, experts are asked to assess a quantity such as the average value of the Dow-Jones on a certain day in the form of a probability distribution. A judge is someone who is calibrated which means that he can assess a certain percentage of quantities correctly. Getting probability distributions for a certain quantity can be done in two ways: 1. Asking the subject to select values that correspond to specified percentiles of his probability distribution and 2. By asking for the probability that a true value will exceed some specified values. Nevertheless, these methods do not yield the same results. It can be concluded that the success of calibration goes together with the used procedure to obtain the results.

Discussion

Several judgemental heuristics are described in this article and it has become clear that everyone can be affected by the resulting biases, both laymen and experienced researchers. Interestingly, people do not discover the principles of sampling and regression themselves even though they have been exposed to them their entire life. This is mainly because people do not attend to the relevant instances in life. The main contribution of modern decision theory is that it gives us a subjective interpretation of probability that can be applied to all kinds of events while being embedded in a general theory of rational decision. Although there is no formal way to test the compatibility of probability judgements with all the beliefs of the judge, compatibility of his judgements with his own knowledge, heuristics and biases is the aim of a rational judge.

One important requirement for marketing is understanding consumers. Sellers and developers need to recognize the decision-making process that individual customers and groups of customers undergo. Nowadays, in the modern digital world, it is really important to understand word of mouth (WoM) and the role of social media (Facebook and Twitter). The use of social media is one of the top three breakthroughs for marketing in 2008. In the past years, there has been an increase in the number of potential channels for addressing people, like television channels (telemarketing) and the rise of the internet and because of this, marketers should reconsider their focus on mass media efforts. It is important to know how information communicated through mass media (external influence) and then spread through WoM (internal influence) affects the process of consumer adoption. This means that the new product diffusion has great importance. Many studies have looked at the role and measurement of WoM. Bass suggested forty years ago that the dispersion of new products and practices can be studied by suggesting aggregate modelling. This type of research tries to explain how marketing mix strategies can affect new product diffusions and the studies found that WoM effectively encourages people to start using a product. There are also other types of modelling which researchers have used to study WoM. The current study used agent-based simulation models to investigate the role of WoM in processes of diffusion.

Agent-based simulation models are useful when the population is heterogeneous or when the topology of the interactions is heterogeneous. This methodology also allows to incorporate findings from other fields that focus on individual differences and social network structures (for explaining the process of WoM). But these social marketing interactions have complex dynamics and because of this, it is difficult to predict outcomes. Consumers can use social networks to express their opinion about a product, read reviews online or influence each other by using the product in a visible way. To address all these different influences, multi-agent simulation models use different WoM dynamics and investigate various viral marketing strategies of product diffusion in a social network. These models look at different types of heterogeneity, like the different consumers, the network structures that may affect consumer decision making and the various types of influence that consumers can have. There is limited empirical evidence for the assumption on which these models are based. There are only a few studies that relate individual agent properties to their network positions.

The current study investigates how the knowledge and personal characteristics of influential consumers affect the adoption process. The writers think that different types of influential consumers possess varying characteristics, which implies their varying influence on the consumers around them. The writers mark three different types of consumers:

Innovators/ early adopters: they influence other consumers through their innovative behaviour and knowledge about a specific product

Market mavens: they may not have knowledge about a specific product category but they have knowledge about markets in general

Opinion leaders: they represent a combination of innovative behaviour and market knowledge

Opinion leaders and early adopters have similar characteristics and the writers think that opinion leaders are early adopters and vice versa. However, there is a difference between these two. The concept of early adopters refers only to the position of the consumer in the adoption process and the concept of opinion leaders refers to the influence those consumers have on others. Opinion leaders are therefore interesting to study.

There are many studies that have attempted to understand the roles and attributes of opinion leaders. Studies found that their central position, innovativeness and interpersonal influence may affect their influence. There are two important types of interpersonal influence. The first one is informational and the second one is normative influence. The former refers to the tendency to accept information from other people as evidence of reality. Opinion leaders often influence other people by giving them advice and directions about their purchase or use of a product. The latter type of influence refers to the tendency to conform to the expectations of others. Normative opinion leaders will show social pressure and social support and will in that way influence the decision-making process of the consumer. People want to have meaningful social relationships and they will therefore show behaviour that is approved by others, like adopting a product to appeal to other people who have that same product. The situation as well as the product will determine which type of influence is more important. Privately consumed goods will go more together with the informational influence, whereas publicly consumed goods will go together with both types of influence.

When you compare an opinion leader to somebody who seeks their advice, you will notice that the opinion leader has more experience or expertise with the product, has been exposed to more information about the product, exhibits more innovative behaviour with the product and shows higher levels of involvement with the product category. There have been many studies about the characteristics of opinion leaders, but no research combines their characteristics.

The study

The writers of this article wanted to assess the assumption that opinion leaders have more contact, exert different types of influence and are among the earliest adopters and they conducted an empirical study. In that study they considered the role of opinion leaders in the diffusion of free Internet games for children. This study helps to distinguish between normative and informative influences and helps to show more about how children influence each other. This study also notes the influence of different characteristics of opinion leaders, which can help give some insight into how influential affect the behaviour of others. The writers assumed that opinion leaders play an important role in the diffusion of information about products and the products themselves. They therefore investigated the diffusion of both information and product. Opinion leaders may influence diffusion by increasing the speed of diffusion and/or increasing the maximum adoption percentage. The writers also decided to investigate two factors which may affect the role of opinion leader in the adoption process. These are the use of mass media by firms and the number of opinion leaders within the network. These two factors might affect how the opinion leader influences the speed of the information or product diffusion and the maximum adoption process.

Hypotheses

The writers of this article focus on three main characteristics of opinion leaders. They think that an opinion leader’s innovative behaviour might enhance the adoption percentage rate. Opinion leaders exert social pressure and social support, so their normative influence makes it more likely that followers adopt the product as well. The writers hypothesized that innovative behaviour by opinion leaders results in a higher adoption percentage, and that that effect is stronger if normative influence is more important to followers.

As said before, opinion leaders spread information by giving advice and directions to costumers. That active, informational influence may increase the speed of information diffusion. The follower is more likely to follow the opinion leader, because the opinion leader has more expertise. This means that the informational influence of the opinion leader enhances the speed of information diffusion. Both types of influence are important, but the writers think that opinion leaders and followers differ in the type of influence that is more important to them. The second hypothesis of the writers is that for opinion leaders the importance of normative influence relative to informational influence is lower than it is for the followers. The lower importance of normative influence leads to a higher adoption percentage and this adoption percentage increases more when the importance of normative influence for opinion leaders decreases.

The third hypothesis of the writers is that opinion leaders are better at judging products, which results in a faster information and product diffusion.

According to the writers, there are also other factors influencing the role of the opinion leader and they also had two hypotheses about these factors. According to the writers, Word of Mouth should be more likely than mass media to activate people to act upon received advice. There are many scientists who think that Word of Mouth has the most important influence in the consumer making decision-process. However, there are also many scientists who say that high mass media by firms can increase the speed of information diffusion, since more people come aware of a product. If mass media are extensive, than Word of Mouth may become less important as a means to make people aware of the product and this means that there will be a decrease in the role the opinion leader plays in the information diffusion process. The fourth hypothesis is that less extensive use of mass media by firms leads to a stronger influence of the opinion leader’s product-judgment quality on the speed of information and product diffusion.

For some products, there are many opinion leaders. This is because for some things, many people have an opinion. Almost everybody has an opinion about music and movies. Social media makes it relatively easy to share opinions and influence a great number of other people. With complex and extensive products, like computers and cell phones, people should be less likely to make a decision on the basis on messages on Twitter or Facebook. There will be no big group of opinion leaders, because it takes time to become an expert about these products. Fewer opinion leaders will also probably result in a lower adoption percentage. Their fifth hypothesis is that a smaller percentage of opinion leaders in a network enhances the influence of innovative behaviour of the opinion leaders in terms of increasing the adoption percentage. This is especially the case if normative influence is important to followers.

Empirical study

In the empirical study, the writers wanted to know more about the Word of Mouth behaviour of children. This was done in the context of the diffusion of free Internet games. The games in the study invite children to make their own radio or television program. They can be used easily and messages can be send to friends to invite them to see the creations. Children may also talk about these games at school. The investigate the role of children as opinion leaders, the writers used an online questionnaire. The writers used three big online applications. Visitors of the three sites can see the work of others. On the sites, only the best news items are broadcast and so it is an honour if the children’s news items are broadcast on the site. If a child wishes to get his or her news item broadcast on the main site, he or she is probably sensitive to normative influences because wanting your news item to come on the main site, means you care about what others think of your work. To identify opinion leaders, the writers used an opinion leadership scale and they defined the 29,4% who score highest on the scale as opinion leaders (OL). The other 70,6% of the subjects are followers or non-leaders (NL).

Results

They found that opinion leaders exhibit more innovative behaviour than followers do. They also found that the opinion leader children were more involved with the product than the other children and talked more about it, even when they were not using the product. They are also more likely to involve others in the use of the product (such as inviting them to join). The data also shows that opinion leaders do not know more about the product than followers, but they can help others better in using the product. The finding that opinion leaders can help others indicates that they are more capable of interpreting the information they receive and this might be the result of their higher involvement in the product and more expertise with the product. However, it was difficult to obtain information about the actual interactions patterns. The writers did find that opinion leaders used more sources than followers, but that mass media is equally important to both groups. Because opinion leaders used more social sources, they were likely to take a more central position in the network. Also, opinion leaders score high on both informational and normative influence, whereas followers score high on normative influence but not so high on information influence. This supports the second hypothesis: for opinion leaders, the importance of normative influence is lower than for followers. With the help of these results, the writers include three characteristics of opinion leaders in their model. The first one is that opinion leaders are better at judging product quality. Even if they do not know more about the product, they can better interpret the information they receive. The second one is that normative influence is less important for opinion leaders than it is for followers. The third one is that opinion leaders are more innovative than followers. The data also suggests that opinion leaders take a more central role in the network.

The simulation study

The writers developed an agent-based model to test their hypotheses. The model distinguishes between informational and normative influences. Opinion leaders or non-leaders can decide to adopt the product on the basis of the product quality (informational influence) or because the neighbouring agents adopt a product and the agent may feel social pressure to adopt the product as well. In their research, the writers vary five parameters systematically. These five are the innovativeness of opinion leaders, the weight of normative influences, the number of opinion leaders in the network, the reach of mass media and the quality of the product judgment of opinion leaders. They used a certain reference model and the specific parameters and value distributions can be found in the tables of pages 193 and 194 of the article. To test whether opinion leaders have an influence on the product diffusion and the adoption percentage of a product, the writers compared it to another model that excludes opinion leaders.

Results

The writers found that if opinion leaders are active in social networks, information spreads faster, the product diffuses faster over the network and the adoption percentage is significantly higher than in a network without opinion leaders. The capability of opinion leaders to judge product quality is important to the speed of information and product diffusion. Informational influence has a dominant effect on the adoption speed of the product and on the speed of information sharing. The lower sensitivity to normative influence of opinion leaders and their innovative behaviour is more important for the adoption percentage.

The writers found that if followers become more sensitive to normative influence, the adoption percentage declines. This can be due to the stronger effect of innovation behaviour when informational influences increase in the network. But it is more likely that this effect is driven by the low adoption percentage. Opinion leaders can’t force the network to surpass a threshold when the normative pressure against the adoption of the product is higher than the normative pressure in favour of the adoption. The writers also found that a more extensive use of mass media further decreases the effect that opinion leaders have on the speed of information and product diffusion. This is because consumers become aware of the product at a later point in time.

The findings are valuable for marketers because they may help explain why some products fail and they also suggest strategies for introducing new products. It is difficult to ensure that enough people adopt the product to make the product successful. Opinion leaders may be innovative, but they may not be numerous enough to make the product a success. Through online social networks, opinion leaders can reach many people and thus exert their normative influence. In their study, the writers found that opinion leaders immediately recognize a good application and therefore also quickly initiate the diffusion process. Also, they affect the popularity of the online application. The opinion leaders from the study involved other children in the application and they are able to help other children sometimes to use complex applications. Other children might be discouraged to use complex applications without the help of opinion leaders. The writers also found that there needs to be a focused campaign (and not just the random use of mass media) to reach the opinion leader who can initiate the diffusion process. This campaign can only be successful if the opinion leader adopts the product and starts talking about it. If the normative influence in the network is too strong, than opinion leaders might not adopt the product. So a marketing campaign focused on opinion leaders seems to be most successful if opinion leaders do not care that much about normative influence and if the importance of normative influence in the network is relatively low.

The writers found that opinion leaders play a significant role in the adoption process and spread of information about products. Opinion leaders exert normative and informational influences. They also found that opinion leaders are early adopters. Opinion leaders are not (only) influential because of the number of relations they have. All these characteristics should be taken into account when investigating the role of influential consumers.

The importance of handwashing

Diarrhea is the main cause of death in children under the age of five worldwide. The most effective preventive measure for diarrhea is handwashing by the primary caregivers, especially after giving food or potential contact with stool. In most developing countries (and even many developed countries) this remains a challenge. Health promoting agencies therefore focus mainly on the development and implementation of handwashing programs. The effectiveness of these programs is increased when they are based on multiple behavioral theories.

RANAS

RANAS is the Risk, Attitudes, Norms, Abilities, Self-Regulation approach, a multi-theoretical framework to design water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) interventions in developing countries. The RANAS approach uses quantitative identification of the social-cognitive factors that determine the key behavior in the target population, and selects behavior change techniques (BCTs) expected to target exactly these factors for intervention development. In a study in Ethiopia, the following determinants of handwashing were found:

• The descriptive norm: behaviors typically practiced by and therefore copied from others.
• The injunctive norm: behaviors typically approved or disapproved of by others.
• Impediments: anticipated barriers and distractions to a behavior.
• Forgetting: forgetting to execute a behavior at a specific time or situation.
• Inconvenience of the present handwashing technique.

The BCTs selected to target these factors were public commitment, facilitating resources, and reminders. These proved far more effective than a standard education intervention, showing that using theory-based interventions is indeed preferable.

Mechanisms of change

A public commitment (making a promise to oneself or the public) is linked to an increase in commitment strength and the injunctive norm. In addition, seeing others commit should affect the descriptive norm. Public commitment should also serve as a reminder, to counter forgetting. Impediments can be decreased by providing resources, such as installing a handwashing station and making water and soap more easily accessible. Using the handwashing infrastructure provided should lead to increased motivational and volitional self-efficacy. This is the belief that one is able to initiate and execute the behavior and the belief in one’s capability to maintain the behavior and recover from relapse. Time and energy already invested by the household should serve to create more commitment to using the handwashing stations by enhancing the injunctive norm. Because they are constructed in public areas, the descriptive norm should also be enhanced. The authors of this article set out to test these assumptions in southern Ethiopia.

Research design

This article tested the change processes of two handwashing interventions, a public commitment intervention with reminder and an infrastructure promotion intervention with reminder. These conditions were compared to an education-only intervention. The interventions were developed to be theory-based and tailored to the target population.

Effectiveness of the interventions

Infrastructure-promotion with reminder and education, alone and in combination with public commitment with reminder, largely predicted changes in social-cognitive factors as expected. The interventions’ effects on handwashing were mediated by these social-cognitive factors. Motivational self-efficacy and social norms were enhanced, while impediments and forgetting were decreased.

Volitional self-efficacy

However, volitional self-efficacy was only affected by infrastructure-promotion with reminder in combination with public commitment. It is possible that the public commitment bolstered the infrastructure-promotion’s effect on volitional self-efficacy.

Food-related versus stool-related commitment strength

It seems that only food-related commitment strength, but not stool-related commitment strength, was affected by the interventions. This shows that these two types of commitment strength should be considered separately when designing an intervention.

Injunctive norm and commitment strength

Public commitment with reminder did not increase the injunctive norm and commitment strength. This difference may have been caused by the subjects not having to read their intentions to the group, but only pledge for themselves. The effect of the reminder in the form of the commitment sign (a headscarf) was also not found, likely because the subjects also forgot to wear the headscarf since they were not accustomed to it. When developing an intervention, the commitment signs need to be designed to ensure that they are made public and are seen as a request to engage in the target behavior.

Conclusion

This study shows that theory-based population-tailored interventions are more successful in changing handwashing than a standard education intervention. The interventions that were used successfully changed the critical social-cognitive factors in the target population. This emphasizes the importance of investigating interventions’ underlying change processes.

BulletPoints

• Diarrhea is the main cause of death in children under the age of five worldwide. The most effective preventive measure for diarrhea is handwashing by the primary caregivers, especially after giving food or potential contact with stool.
• RANAS is the Risk, Attitudes, Norms, Abilities, Self-Regulation approach, a multi-theoretical framework to design water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) interventions in developing countries. The RANAS approach uses quantitative identification of the social-cognitive factors that determine the key behavior in the target population, and selects behavior change techniques (BCTs) expected to target exactly these factors for intervention development.
• This study shows that theory-based population-tailored interventions are more successful in changing handwashing than a standard education intervention. The interventions that were used successfully changed the critical social-cognitive factors in the target population. This emphasizes the importance of investigating interventions’ underlying change processes.

Exam ticket

• Write down and explain the two hypotheses and the main results of the paper ‘Beyond purchasing'.

In recent years, people increasingly use smart energy technologies, such as photovoltaic solar panels and electric vehicles (EV). Such smart energy technologies can significantly reduce fossil energy use and the emission of greenhouse gases. However, to do so, it is important not only to adopt smart technology, but also to use it in a sustainable way. The present study aims to provide insight into which factors affect the likelihood of using EVs in a sustainably way.

Which factors affect whether EV adoption encourages other types of sustainable energy behavior?

Spill-over effects reflect the extent to which engaging in one sustainable energy behavior affects the likelihood on engaging in other sustainable energy behaviors. Spill-over affects can be positive and negative. A positive spill-over effect refers to the situation in which engagement in one sustainable energy behavior increases the likelihood of engaging in other sustainable energy behavior. However, the reverse can also occur: when people feel licensed to counteract (thus not engaging in sustainable energy behavior) after doing a ‘good job’ by engaging in certain sustainable energy behavior. This is called negative spill-over effect.
In prior studies, it is found that people are more likely to show positive spill-over effects, when the initial sustainable energy behavior increases environmental self-identity. Environmental self-identity is the extent to which you see yourself as a type of person who acts environmentally-friendly. To encourage positive spill-over effects, it is thus important to identify which factors support the likelihood that using EV increases one’s environmental self-identity.
The present study examines whether the motivation for EV adoption is key in developing environmental self-identity, and hence to create a positive spill-over effect. More specifically, when a person adopts using EV for environmental reasons, the likelihood that this persons perceives his or her choice to adopt an EV as a sustainable choice, increases. Vice versa, when people adopt an EV for other reasons (for example financial or technological reasons), they are less likely to develop environmental self-identity, thereby lowering the likelihood of a positive spill-over affect.

In sum, the present study examines two hypotheses:

1. The more people adopt an electric vehicle (EV) for environmental reasons, the more likely the EV adoption is to increase environmental self-identity, thereby promoting consistent sustainable energy behavior (positive spill-over effect).

2. The more people adopt an electric vehicle (EV) for other (here: financial and technological) reasons, the less likely the EV adoption is to increase environmental self-identity, thereby not promoting consistent sustainable energy behavior (negative spill-over effect).

How is the (positive) spill-over effect studied?

To study which factors affect whether EV adoption encourages other types of sustainable energy behavior, two studies are conducted, which are summarized below.

Study 1

Participants were recruited via Dutch for a and Facebook pages, devoted to EV’s. All participants possessed an EV. Of the 112 people who started the questionnaire, 74 completed the questionnaire. Most participants were highly educated men with a relative high income. This is also the typical profile of EV users.
The participants were shown different environmental, financial and technological motivations to adopt an EV and asked to indicate how important those reasons where for their decision to adopt an EV. Some examples of motivations are given below:

• Environmental motivation: my EV emits little CO₂.

• Financial motivation: I pay little or no vehicle tax for my EV.

• Technological motivation: An EV is equipped with the latest technology.

In addition, they measured how often participants engaged in several other types of sustainable energy behavior. These sustainable energy behaviors were subdivided in the following four categories:

1. Sustainable EV use (e.g. I charge my EV with renewable energy)

2. Direct energy saving behavior (e.g. I shower less than 3 minutes)

3. Indirect energy saving behavior (e.g. I buy seasonal products)

4. Energy efficient investment behavior (e.g. My house has double-glazed windows)

Each mediation analysis was conducted separately in PROCESS macro for SPSS with bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals. Thus, each analysis analysed the effect of one adoption motivation (independent variable) on sustainable use of EV and other types of sustainable energy behavior (dependent variable) via environmental self-identity (mediator), controlling for all other adoption motivations.
The results partly support the first hypothesis: the more people adopted an EV for environmental reasons, the stronger their self-identity, which next was positively related with direct and indirect energy saving behavior, but not to sustainable EV use and energy efficient investment behavior. In other words: environmental motivation is a mediator for both direct and indirect energy saving behavior, but environmental behavior is not a mediator between environmental motivation and sustainable use of the EV.
The results partly support hypothesis 2: non-environmental motivations (financial and technological) resulted in a lower likelihood to strengthen environmental self-identity and to encourage consistent sustainable energy. It is important to understand that the results did not show a negative relationship between non-environmental motivation and development of environmental self-identity, but a positive and significant relationship, which was much weaker than the relationship between environmental motivation and environmental self-identity. Furthermore, financial motivation to adopt an EV did not lead to a higher likelihood of using the EV in a sustainable way via environmental self-identity.

Study 2

A second study is conducted aimed to replicate the findings of study 1 with a larger sample. In addition, some items of adoption motivation are changed with the aim to increase the internal consistency of the financial and technological EV adoption motivation scales.
Participants are members of a Dutch organization, which connects the Dutch electricity grid with the public charging stations for EVs. Participants are recruited via e-mail. The final sample consisted of 251 people, of which, again, the majority male (231), highly educated and a relatively high income.
The same instruments are used, except some adaptions for the financial and technological motivational scales. Consequently, the internal consistency of these scales increased, but remained somewhat low for the financial EV adoption motivation scale. Most scales used a 7-point scale ranging.
This second study confirmed both hypotheses. Thus,

1. A mediating relationship is found for environmental motivation to adopt an EV  strengthen environmental self-identity  sustainable use of the EV (and several other types of sustainable energy behavior)

2. It is found that, when people about an EV for non-environmental (thus: financial or technological) reasons, this is not consistently related to environmental self-identity and sustainable energy behavior.

What is the take-home message from this paper?

Because this study conducted two cross-sectional questionnaire studies among individuals who already had adopted an EV, rather than focusing on behavior induced in a lab setting, the external validity of these two studies increased.
This study shows that having environmental reasons to adopt an EV increases the likelihood to strengthen one’s environmental self-identity, which in turn increases the likelihood to use the EV in a sustainable way. In contrast, when people adopt an EV for other (financial or technological) reasons, this behavior is less likely to strengthen one’s environmental self-identity, which in turn does not increase the likelihood of using an EV in a sustainable way.
The current study is the first to show that motivation for engaging in initial sustainable energy behavior can play an important role in promoting positive spill-over effects. More specifically, other study already showed the first relationship (environmental reasons strengthen environmental self-identity) but this study adds to prior findings by proving the second relationship (strengthened environmental self-identity increases the likelihood of consistent sustainable energy behavior). Future studies could aim to replicate these findings by other smart technologies, such as solar panels. In addition, other samples could be used (this study merely focused on male, highly educated and with a relatively high income). Finally, policy makers are recommended to emphasize environmental, rather than financial or technological reasons for adopting an EV, because people seem more likely to use the EV in a sustainable way and to engage in other types of energy saving behavior, when they adopt an EV for environmental reasons.

BulletPoints

• Hypothesis 1 is confirmed: environmental motivation for EV adoption leads to strengthened environmental self-identity, which in turn leads to sustainable use of the EV (and several other types of sustainable energy behavior)

• It is found that, when people about an EV for other than environmental (financial or technological) reasons, this is not consistently related to strengthening environmental self-identity and, in turn does not increase the likelihood to show sustainable energy behavior.

A new, popular science is the sensory science. This science has a multidisciplinary character and unites psychology, chemistry, food technology and food chemistry to try and understand eating and drinking behaviour as well as trying to make more accepted food products. Every type of science wants to be considered a ‘real’ science and therefore these sciences want to use experimental paradigms. Sensory food science has borrowed experimental paradigms that were valid in other fields, but this was not completely a smart thing to do. In borrowing paradigms from other fields, sensory food science forgot the true nature of the phenomena studied. This was especially the case for the application of psychology. As you all know, psychology is the study of human behaviour and its explicit (conscious) and implicit (non-conscious) determinants.

Sensory psychologists are usually trained in the higher senses (these are visual and audition senses) and they apply the same methods on the lower senses (smell, taste and touch) without really seeing these sensory types as different. Our vision and audition are involved in the spatial orientation and they are strong inborn mechanisms and they guarantee that almost all humans perceive the same direction, forms and distances in a similar way. Our lower senses in the nasal cavity do not have strict inborn mechanisms, but rely on learning. At birth, children don’t like bitter but do like sweet, but later at life we can learn to eat bitter things. This is actually an advantage to our human race, because we are omnivores and can readily adapt to multiple food sources. But there is one consequence and that is that there are large differences in what people perceive and like. Our vision and audition are almost always in the centre of our conscious attention, but the lower senses almost never are. Because of the difference in conscious attention, it is easier to describe visual forms than flavours. But flavours and smells are stronger related to emotions than visual experiences. This may all have serious consequences for the paradigms used in psychological research of the different senses. The current practices in sensory science and consumer research are not always satisfactory from a psychological point of view.

The problems

The problems psychologists are faced with, are that food science research and consumer research are rather diverse. But most of them are related to fallacies that are known to psychologists, because they occur in the same way in psychology.

The fallacy of consumer uniformity

Some people assume that behaviour differs in degree, but not in essence. This fallacy assumes that all subjects in an experiment are comparable and that they perform the same task in the same way. This is one of the most studied fallacies and there is much debate about how to deal with individual differences. Some scientists want new scaling methods, because they may reduce individual variability. There has been not much attention paid to the underlying factors that determine the individual differences.

For instance, one might ask whether people perceive a certain stimulus differently or whether they perceive the task differently. If they perceive the stimulus as different, is this a matter of learning? And if they perceive the task as different, is it due to a difference in understanding the instructions or is it because they use different problem-solving strategies.

When you ask someone how familiar a certain product is, he or she may think that you want to know how often he or she has encountered this product or he or she might think that you want to know how much this product resembles other products.

That person will look into his or her memory, but in the first case he or she will think about the number of encounters with the product, whereas in the other case he or she will scan other products he or she knows for similarity. The question asked should be replaced with a more specific question.

Another mistake based on the uniformity fallacy, is the use of stimulus categories that are based on averaged results from other studies. For instance, in a certain study the writers stated that six pleasant and six unpleasant odours were used. But you need to study the pleasantness of an odour in the group and treat the data on the basis of the individually perceived pleasantness. For instance, one research found that the odour of lavender is liked by the people who recognize it, but disliked by people who don’t recognize it. Also, many studies do not balance for gender and some of them even don’t state the proportion of men and women in the study. Women are more sensitive to odours and flavours than men and also have probably better memory for known odours and this should be taken into account in a study. People should also take into account the different groups. For instance, there are people who bite chocolate and those who suck it. These two groups differ considerably and when one wants to make a certain chocolate product, he or she needs to take these differences into account.

It certainly does pay off the take differences into account. It is however difficult to know beforehand in what respects consumers of a product may differ. This can only be solved by observation and analysis of consumption behaviour and should be tested by analysing a representative group of consumers. Sensory science has come much further with the help of multivariate analysis and segmentation of subjects. But researchers should take into account that situations can influence a person. A certain woman can be seen as a rigid cook when she cooks Sunday dinner for her husband and kids, but she can be seen as a convenience seeker when she prepares food on weekdays after work.

The two situations and their accompanying roles may create very different demands in the same person. Scientists need to ask themselves, how consistent people are.

The fallacy of consumer consistency

The fallacy of consumer consistency is based on the idea that consumers don’t change. Most of the methods in sensory food and consumer science are based on this idea. These sciences want to look decent and assumed that an experiment when repeated under the exact same circumstances will produce the same results. But, what these scientists don’t keep in mind is that consumers really can change. The consumers has a memory and the second encounter with a certain product may not mean the same as the first encounter with that product. In some studies, this won’t matter, but in hedonic judgments and choice processes (in which more personal interest is involved), it will play an important role. It can be shown that changes in preference and choice do take place and in such degree that it can cast a doubt on the predictive validity of hedonic and consumer studies that rely on single measurement sessions. Many recent studies have shown that less than 50% of the participants stayed by their first choice of a certain product.

Psychological theories about choice and preference behaviour also show/predict that there will be a change rather than stability of such behaviour. the mere exposure theory of Zajonc says that the more people are exposed to new stimuli, the more they will like them. There have been studies that found this to be true, but for a number of stimuli there is also a clear decrease of liking to be found. Many researchers therefore argue that Zajonc’s theory represents a special case of Berlyne’s arousal theory. Berlyne made a distinction between diversified exploratory behaviour and exploratory behaviour. In the exploratory behaviour stage a consumer is in a conflictual state because he or she has not much information about the nature of a stimulus and curiosity and novelty will therefore prevail. In the diversified behaviour state, the consumer is no longer in the conflictual state and therefore other stimulus properties, like arousal and stimulus complexity, become predominant. According to Berlyne, there is an inverted U-form relationship between arousal potential (perceived complexity) and liking. This means that for each individual there is an optimal arousal potential level for different stimuli this optimal level is different for different people and depends on learning and experience.

Exposure to stimuli that are a bit more complex than the optimal level would make the subject change his optimal level in the direction the more complex stimulus and exposure to stimuli of a lower than optimal complexity level would leave the optimal level unchanged. Research looking at this has found that products with a stimuli lower than the optimal complexity level leads to product boredom. Product boredom can help explain why certain products flop. According to Walker, prolonged experience with a stimulus, even one of optimal complexity, will reduce its perceived complexity to some extent. If one accepts the idea that this is the cause of product boredom than one should not introduce the most liked product for introduction in the market.

It is better to introduce a slightly less liked, but more complex product. There is also another cause of flops and this is slowly rising aversion. This slowly arising aversion occurs in products that are well liked, but at the same time have a minor defect that raises a slight feeling of doubt in the consumer. The feelings of doubt will grow and the positive feelings about the products will slowly diminish as a result of habituation. Over time, the consumer will dislike the product. This phenomenon is different than product boredom. Product boredom leads to indifference with regard to the product and slowly rising aversion leads to real dislikes. Raising perceived complexity will solve the problem of product boredom, whereas with slowly rising aversion, the source of the minor dissatisfaction must be identified and eliminated.

Single hedonic measurements are good to measure immediate acceptance, but they will not provide information about long term appreciation of a product. There should be combination of repeated laboratory testing with intermediate well controlled exposure will give us that information. Shifts in perceptual measurements do also occur. Certain foods are too complex in flavour to grasp all the aspects of them at once. Sensory adaptation plays a big role in shifts. Also, foods and drinks are eaten in different combinations and this may influence the perception of them.

The fallacy of conscious choice

This fallacy is based on the implicit idea that people are reasonable and make rational choices. Most people see themselves as autonomous and they think that they make decisions based on rational grounds, except in extremely emotional situations. We rationalize our motives and often over-stress certain points in our story to make other people understand us better and we under-stress some socially undesirable aspects of our decisions. In science too, we favour certain hypotheses over others without knowing exactly why. This means that it even may occur that the right hypothesis is never tested or it will get tested, but may have difficulty to get generally accepted or published. In psychology and sensory science, the fallacy of conscious choice becomes dangerous, because putting a question to a subject will always result in an answer, even if the question is actually unanswerable. People may be polite and might not want to disappoint the researcher or they don’t want to look stupid and they think up an answer. Subjects try to guess what the subject of an experiment is and they respond in the way they think the investigator would want to hear. They give socially desirable answers or think of answers instead of saying that they do not know. Because many people give answers, it strengthens the investigator’s conviction that his question was perfectly legitimate. Researchers should not base conclusions on these answers. People usually don’t analyse what they eat or drink, and if they try to do so, they will have difficulty finding words for their feelings and thoughts about a product.

Direct questions, or ‘why’ questions are bad. Indirect questions about certain food preferences are much better, especially when they are about the frequency of behaviour and not about feelings. Direct questions are not always as easy as they seem and can lead to misleading conclusions. This is especially the case when generally accepted ideas about desirable behaviour and about the relation between eating and health are involved. There are certain investigators who report the results obtained from questionnaires about attitudes and values without checking whether these results are related to actual food choice.

Perceptual fallacy

The perceptual fallacy is based on the assumption that what can be observed will be remembered and that what is not perceived can’t be remembered. Most of sensory and consumer research is based exclusively on perception and the role of memory is often forgotten. Even in most studies of experience, one would expect that memory of previous experiences with the product or products that look like that particular product plays a major role, but many researchers remain with only studying perception. They may study the perception of the packaging on the perception of the product, but not what is remembered about the product itself. Research has shown that stimuli that remained implicit and unnoticed in the learning phase, were later remembered. Studies have also shown that unconsciously learned odours and flavours are remembered in everyday life. Everyday experiences show that we have learned more about a product without any previous analysis. For instance, if your favourite chocolate bar tastes different, because the makers have changed certain properties of it, you will realize that you have learned unconsciously a lot about the properties of that chocolate bar, without having analysed all the ingredients and the tastes of all the ingredients. Also, research suggests that what people remember and the way in which they remember it, may depend on the meaning it has to them.

The situational fallacy

The situational fallacy is based on the assumption that perceptual situations are only defined by objective criteria and not by the subjects’ conscious and subconscious intentions. People can change with their intention the situation and the things around you can show different meanings which are closely related to their previous experience with them or their knowledge about them. Things are never without meaning for the perceiver and for psychologists, there are no pure sensations that exist independent of meaningful perception. When researchers ask ‘why’ questions, they will maybe not receive an honest answer (discussed above). True meaning is often based on very intricate and often hidden motives and they usually can’t be brought to consciousness. Also, if they can be brought to consciousness, it is difficult to express them verbally. So meaning can’t be measured by blunt questions, but with indirect and less verbal methods. Hedonic responses need to be measured in a more meaningful context.

There are three misunderstandings, which often occur in research about the influence of context on the perception of food:

Food context: this is the combination with other foods, food packaging, naming and culinary tradition.

The eating situation: the physical and social environment in which the food is eaten.

The individual: food aversions and food preferences, food expectations and variety seeking tendencies.

Researchers can’t ask people directly about these food properties. A situation-oriented approach should be done to figure certain things about food preferences out. In this approach a consumer is not seen as a fixed individual with constant characteristics, but as someone who has many roles in his or her life and who has different intensions and wishes in these roles. In different situations, different roles become apparent. A family dinner is a different situation than dining in a restaurant with friends. Certain cravings, like wanting to eat a chocolate ice-cream, are acceptable in some situations and not in others. For instance, when you’re alone at home you can have that ice-cream, but when you’re at a friend’s house, you can’t just ask for an ice-cream.

But how can situational-oriented research be carried out? Researchers can evoke situations with the help of visual and/or auditory means and give the consumer food. Then the consumer is asked to rate how well this food would be appreciated in the situation and how often he or she would like to eat it in that situation. But there are some difficulties. People may have much more in common in the way they experience situations than it seems at first site. Much of our personal history is influenced strongly by cultural traditions, by the school system and common values and beliefs of our generation.

Communication of feelings would be impossible if situations were really private and completely individual. Another problem is evoking the situations in the laboratory. When you try to evoke situations with visual cues, you need to make sure that all your participants can relate to these cues. People from different cultures, have different eating habits. Some cultures eat with their hands, while others only use forks. Some cultures sit on the floor, while others sit at the dining table on chairs. It is therefore difficult to show visual cues, unless you show general situations. Auditory stimulation is better, because one can imagine his or her own private situations.

The conclusion of the writers is that we need to try to get aware of certain fallacies. There may be a strong dissociation between what we think and do on the one hand and what we actually are and actually do on the other. Most of our actions are implicit and when we think about them, it is difficult to find words for them.

Usually food research looks at the physical and chemical product characteristics. This is also revered to as ‘hard sciences’. The psychological sciences look at the use of a product, the consumer side of it, its choice and its perception. The Total Product Experience is important in the hard sciences. The Total Product Experience is built on four principles:

Top-down effects: ideas, expectations, information and emotions in combination with direct sensory perception affect the liking and perception of the product.

Unconscious influences: a lot of information about products and their sensory perception is consciously and volitionally available to the consumers.

Multi sensory perception: humans use all their sensory systems to perceive products and the systems interact in many ways.

Consumer-product interactions: oral ingestion is not the only interaction consumers can have with a food product. The interaction is much wider.

The following text will be about these four principles.

Multi sensory perception

Human beings possess more senses than the five most people know. Everybody knows that our senses are hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling and tasting. Many distinct sensory systems are put together under the sense of touch and the internal senses are usually ignored altogether. There are actually twelve distinct sensory systems that can be distinguished! Often, the senses of cold, heat and pain are overlooked, but these are very important in food perception. All those systems can interact in numerous ways. There are a lot of interactions, think about handling, preparing and consuming food. Almost every system is involved in food consumption. You look and see the food, you smell the food, you feel the food, its texture in your mouth and you can even hear the sound the food makes when you break it into small pieces in your mouth. But you can also feel the carton when you open u food box and hear the cracking noise a wrapping paper makes. Interactions between flavour, taste and texture are and will always be important for food products and with the recent developments in multisensory science, you are able to use these interactions to a larger extent than seems to be happening right now. Internal states, like emotions, also need to be studied because they can be seen as contributing to multisensory interactions.

Top-down effects

There is an overlooked interplay of conception (forming ideas and understanding abstractions) and perception. When the stream of information comes from the sensory system, this is called bottom up. However, this information does not build the total picture of what we perceive of a food product. There is much more information that we add to this picture and this comes from our brains. For instance, we may have previous experience with a product, memories of an advertisement about this product and our own thoughts and ideas which all exert their influence on how you perceive and what you perceive. One study presented subject with a certain odour. The subjects who were told that the odour came from a cheese liked the odour more than subjects who were told that the same odour was a body odour. The brain regions that were activated depended on the cognitive labels received. Another study showed a similar effect. Participants were told that they would receive a very sweet drink and other participants were told that they would receive a not-so-sweet drink. The very sweet label resulted in the activation of the primary taste brain region. These top down effects as labels can impact low-level neural perceptual processes. It seems that they change the perceptual reality of the subject. Research has also found that emotions have shown to exert these types of influence on food perception, but many of these influences are often unconscious.

Unconscious influences

According to studies, many of the emotions, perceptions and sensations related to a food product will remain out of our conscious awareness. Many food impressions are stored in memory inattentively and these impressions help to build our total experience of a product, they affect our dislikes and likes, they shape our expectations and in doing so they affect our buying behaviour. Consumers usually can’t relate the motivation for their food choice reliably. Behaviour is not always the result of consciously willing it. Some researchers speak about adaptive unconscious, which guides us through a complicated environment and helps us with decisions through intuition. This is all happening without our conscious knowledge and even without the possibilities of knowledge (people can’t observe how they are unconsciously categorizing things, just as they can’t observe how their stomach works). This has a big implication for food choice. It is difficult to talk to consumers to find out anything about their motivation for buying certain products. The only thing you will receive, is the part of the conscious awareness, shaped through an explicit reasoning process. But this might be unrelated to any psychological process that actually makes the consumers’ behaviour. So basically you will only get information about how consumers reason explicitly and how they express themselves about products. This can be useful for advertisement purposes, but it is of limited worth in understanding how consumers’ purchase behaviour and dislikes are shaped. Research has shown that sensory perceptions can be stored in memory and that they can later shape choice in an implicit way (the consumer is not aware of it). So it seems that there are sensory perceptions being processed outside our awareness but stored in our memory. Even the experience of smell and taste are things one is not completely aware of.

Unconscious influences of emotions are also possible. Inductions of affective states can take place without the subject being aware of it.

Consumer-product interaction

Usually people think that the eating or drinking experience begins when somebody puts foods or drinks in their mouth. But, the interaction between the consumer and the product takes place long before ingestion occurs. The first contact somebody has with a product is usually hearing about it, seeing it in the store or seeing an advertisement or commercial. Then, the consumer might feel the packaging material or look at it in more detail. When you buy a product in a shop, you will have to open the packaging, unwrap it, perhaps shake it. It will be eaten directly or prepared and our senses of smell, sight, taste, pain, audition and temperature will work together to build a sensory experience out of all those impressions. The liking or disliking of the product will be passed on to the memory. In this way, the Total Product Experience will emerge. This is the combination of events, memories and sensations that occur during, before or after the sensation proper. The different disciplines involved in product development can be harmonized by the use of the Total Product Experience.

Conclusion

With all that being said, what good is it for the consumer scientists? We have known the principles for a while, but scientists have not explored their methodological consequences fully. The only thing that is fully explored, is multisensory perception. There are many studies about consumption that look at multisensory perception. The effect of cognition on perception should be explored more thoroughly. It is not difficult to produce a product with a good taste, but it is hard to present this product in such a way that consumers repeatedly want it. Top-down effects, like packaging, information and marketing will make the difference. Scientists must find a way to understand the interplay between cognitive input, perception, liking and purchase behaviour. They also need to look more at consumer-product interactions. Some studies about food behaviour are done without the consumer actually using the product, in the form of questionnaires. Other studies only focus on the in-mouth aspects of a product. Studies should not only look at product-oriented sensory testing, but also look at consumers and a product-as-marketed. Researchers do know that there are many non-rational effects on choice and behaviour, but there are not many resulting innovations in the field of food perception. Sensory science is developing from a product oriented approach to a wider field with an increasing psychological and consumer-oriented view.

Introduction

The aim of the current article is to establish a connection between the effects of olfactory stimuli on information processing and research on priming. In addition, guidelines with regard to how odors can be used to prime people are described.

Priming in the social sciences

Priming involves stimuli that are influencing higher-order cognitive and behavioral processes although the individual is not aware of this being the case. Higher mental processes refers to judgement and social behavior. Environmental stimuli can prime (influence) behavior, for instance perceiving a stimulus can influence your behavior. Four different types of priming are described by Loersch and Payne (2011):

Semantic priming (looking for categories)

Construal priming (judgement)

Behavior priming (action)

Goal priming(motivation)

Which type occurs is dependent on the situation one is in, therefore, the different priming types can all have different effects depending on the situation and personal characteristics. Next to these categories, priming can be divided into”

Perceptual priming (when the perceptional characteristics of the prime and the target are equal, this is not the same as semantic priming).

Repetition priming (quicker processing of stimuli that have been presented multiple times. The stimulus becomes the prime)

Affective priming (when there is an unintentional influence of a first affective response, which acts as a prime, on the processing of a target stimulus).

The ideo-motor action principle, developed by William James, states that if a cognitive representation becomes activated, the likelihood that an action will follow increases. Spreading of activation (nodes in memory activate each other), can also lead to priming. This all happens without taking effort and involuntarily. In cognitive psychology, the lack of awareness is seen in light of the capacity to perceive a presented stimulus whereas in social psychology, it is about being unaware of the influence that stimuli can have, regardless of whether one is able to see the stimulus or not. Being influenced without being aware of it is called subliminal priming whereas being aware of it is called supraliminal. Both types have been found to be effective.

Properties of olfaction

Odorants are the chemical substances that can cause the experience of an odor, thus, the odor is only an experience. Odor objects are odors stored in memory, they consist of one perceptual event but can be elicited by different odorants. Odorants are less frequently noticed by people than those of other sensory systems. This can be caused by the fact that the source of odorants are more difficult to recognize. Odors are also perceived differently depending on the attentiveness level. People adapt easily to odors but although you do not notice the odor anymore, it can still have an effect. Given that priming works best if one is unaware of it and that odors are adapted to quickly, they are very appropriate to use in priming. Odors can also trigger emotions which makes them interesting for affective primes. People have difficulties naming odors, therefore, odor object identification is vulnerable to ambiguity. This has consequences for the priming because it will be harder to establish a clear link between an odor and a target.

The most important dimension of odors is their valence, which can range from unpleasant to pleasant. Other dimensions are intensity, edibility and familiarity which, from an evolutionary perspective, can lead to approach or avoidance behavior. A relevant question is whether priming with odors is different from priming with visual stimulation.

Motivation priming

Odors are as well-functioning as visual stimuli in preventing us from running into environmental hazard. Because the link between stimuli and action is very clear in these situations, it can be argued that this does not count as priming. Odors can also be goal primes. For example, food odors can cause people to start eating which is used in the supermarket where it smells of freshly baked bread. In a study in France, presenting odor of melon led to people choosing melon as starter more often whereas pear, often eaten as dessert, led to more fruit desserts chosen. This shows that odors can result in goal priming but in different ways.

Semantic and construal priming

It is the question whether the odor of camembert cheese primes words related to other French foods (or maybe cheeses) or also to a French sport event (Tour de France). From a semantic perspective, the camembert odor might function as a prime for French food or cheese, however people might not be able to identify the smell as being French or being cheese. It is dependent on the interpretation which effects will be elicited and also the valence can vary according to interpretation. Therefore, from a valence perspective, the camembert can lead to affective responses because one can like or dislike the smell leading to increased accessibility of other liked or disliked products. The word camembert is expected to evoke a shorter reaction time when other French words are presented, measured with a Lexical Decision Task. The priming can also be based on autobiographical memory. Camembert might activate concepts as being on holiday in France. Another priming route is based on mood which means that mood at time of a judgement is used in making a judgement. Odors can also function as mood enhancers that subsequently lead to certain behaviors that are associated with a particular mood state. Odors are problematic in semantic priming but can be explained by alternative routes such as memory.

Applications of odor priming

It can be concluded that odors can lead to behavioral and goal primes because of their valence. Odors can be good affective primes because they are evaluated mainly in terms of good or bad. Based on how they are being evaluated, odors can lead to approach or avoidance behavior. This is already used in, among others, stores, at the workplace and in health care settings. However, odors can only called primes if people stay unaware of their influence, therefore it is better to use only small amounts of odor. Specific priming is possible with semantic priming but not if odors are used because it is difficult to know how an odor is being categorized by the individual. It is better if odors fit a category that is common and a prototype for the category. A study in which semantic olfactory priming was shown has been conducted by Holland et al. (2005). In this study a citrus odor led to increased cleaning behavior because of the activation of a cleaning concept. In another study of Dijksterhuis et al. (2013) subjects were presented with 3 different odors (2 pleasant and 1 unpleasant) that were not noticed. Cleaning actions were counted and in the unpleasant condition, less cleaning was recorded. This study shows that, in addition to semantic priming, other priming types are of influence. Namely, the affective value of the odor might explain the difference in cleaning. Being able to name an odor interferes with the implicit priming effects, probably because spreading of activation is different because of cognitive input.

Priming with odor via memory can lead to consumers buying more goods, however, memories are personal so the effects on buying behavior can vary a lot. The focus can be on odors linked to pleasant experiences, to enhance a product’s attractiveness (odor of sunscreen is associated with holidays). The focus can also be on the relation between an odor and an experience. This has been studied with subjects doing tasks in a room where an odor was spread. Subsequently, different odors were presented and the most appropriate one for the room had to be chosen by the subjects who did not explicitly recognize the odors.

Multi-modal priming

Laboratory settings can interfere if an association between an odor and a concept has to be established. Subjects often report that they smell computers or rubber. A solution would be to establish cross-modality correspondences using combinations of olfactive stimuli and stimuli of other modalities, such as pictures. Another option is to create an appropriate context, for instance with pictures, in addition to the odor. By doing so, the odor will be more likely to work as semantic prime than affective prime. Degel and Koster (1998) describe recommendations for effective odor priming:

The test does not supply explicit information about stimuli.

The test acknowledges the nonverbal character of odor perception and memory

The test allows perception of odors in a situation which is for the most part a biotic, normal everyday situation (this is why priming in laboratories is often ineffective).

Priming is a promising concept, especially olfactory priming, nevertheless, a lot of future research has to be conducted in order to get to know how priming has to be applied accurately.

Theories that look at goal pursuit usually look at conscious choices that guide behaviour. But psychology also looks at non-conscious processes, as it seems to be an important factor for human behaviour. Many studies look at memory, attention, judgment, social perception and emotional appraisal and it seems to be that non-conscious determinants are no exceptions. In this article, the writers look at the non-conscious activation of goals. The writers think that goals can be triggered outside of awareness and get completed. There is no conscious intervention needed for this. This is because non-consciously activated goals will cause the same processing and same attention of information that is relevant for the goal and will overcome obstacles in the same way as consciously activated goals. The hypothesis therefore is that whether a goal is activated consciously or non-consciously, it will guide the behaviour and cognition that is needed to reach the goal.

Many researchers have seen the impact of non-conscious processes on behaviour, but they still believe that goal pursuit needs to be instigated by an act of conscious will. In other words, they don’t believe that goals can’t be activated without conscious will. The writers of this article, however, think that goals can be activated without conscious instigation. The writers think that goals are represented mentally just as other concepts are. Goals will therefore also become capable of automatic activation. When a goal is constantly activated in the same situation, the goal will become automatically activated when the person encounters that situation. The goal representation and the association of the situation will be linked together. This will eventually result in an unconscious process, because no activation will be needed for the goal. The contextual cues would be enough to activate the goal. Automatic goals are in line with a person’s valued goals and purposes.

Similarity between conscious and non-conscious goals

Chartrand and Bargh found that goals activated by environmental cues operated as effectively as when consciously chosen. They conducted an experiment in which they gave participants a Scrambled Sentence Test. In this test the words of a sentence were presented in a scrambled order and the participant was asked to put the words in the correct order. Some participants were exposed to words related to judgment and impression formation (judge, evaluate), while other words were related to memorization (absorb). The participants were asked to form an impression of a certain person and those participants that were primed with the impression formation words, had better free recall of the behaviours of the person they had to form an impression of than participants who were primed with the memorization words. These results show that primed information-processing goals have the same outcomes as goals that were consciously activated by will.

Experiment 1

In the first experiment participants were asked to fulfill a word-search puzzle. This was a 10x10 matrix of letters which contained 13 words to be found. There were two conditions in which participants could be put in. One condition was the high-performance goal condition and the other the neutral condition. As you can imagine, the participants in the neutral condition received a word-search puzzle with neutral words in it, like shampoo and river. The participants in the high-performance goal were asked to find words relevant to the concept of high-performance. Some of these words were ‘success’, ‘compete’, ‘strive’, ‘master’ and ‘achieve’. The words that had to be found were listed below the puzzle. After this puzzle, the participants were asked to do three other experimental word-search puzzles. This was the dependent measure of the study. These puzzles had three themes: foods, bugs and colours. This means that the words that were supposed to be found in those puzzles had to be from that particular category. The words that had to be found were not listed below the puzzle. In each puzzle, there were ten words hidden. The total number of words found in the three experimental puzzles was the dependent variable. The results of this experiment were that participants in the high-performance goal condition did better on the experimental word puzzles that participants in the neutral condition. This means that performance goals can become non-consciously activated and that they can regulate behaviour towards fulfilment of the desired outcome. Some critics might argue, however, that the participants wanted to find as many words as possible and that this means, in fact, that there is a conscious goal in place. This is the reason why the writers of this article conducted another experiment.

Experiment 2

The second experiment was basically a resource-dilemma task. The participants played against another presumed participant and they had divide the resources amongst themselves. They could choose to take everything for themselves or to cooperate. The dilemma was that if both participants took the maximum for themselves, the resources would quickly run out. So the participant basically had to choose between gaining the highest self-profit, or cooperating for the good of all. The participants were free in every choice they made. There were 2x2 conditions in this experiment: participants were either primed to be cooperative or not primed at all and they either had no conscious goal or a cooperation conscious goal. First participants received a variation of the Scrambled Sentence Test. In the priming condition, participants received words related to the concept of cooperation (like helpful, honest and tolerant). Afterwards, participants participated in a resource-management game. The participants were asked to take the role of a fisherman (there were two types of fishermen). The lake the fisherman fished in had 100 fish. They were told that the total amount of fish was not allowed to go below 70 fish. In every round the participant caught 15 fish and he or she had to decide how many fish he or she wanted to keep and how many fish he or she wanted to return to the lake. The participants all got a piece of paper on which they could see what would happen if they kept the fish and what would happen if they returned the fish.

There were two types of roles of fishermen. One fishermen type was primed with the conscious-cooperation-goal-condition and the other did not receive a conscious goal.

The participants in the conscious-cooperation-goal condition were explicitly told to cooperate as much as they could. There were a couple of rounds and in each round the participant had to decide what to do. Afterwards he or she had to wait until the other participant (which in fact were just the experimenters) had made his or her decision. After each round the participants received messages about how many fish there were in the pool. They always received the message that there were more than 70 fish in the pool. After five rounds (the participants didn’t know how many rounds the game would last) they were done and had to fill in a questionnaire with questions about cooperation. One of these questions asked how important it was to the participant to act in a cooperative manner during the game, while another was how successfully they felt in their cooperation.

The results showed that in the priming condition and the conscious-goal condition people cooperated. There was more cooperation in the conscious-goal condition. There was also much cooperation in the goal-priming condition and this shows that there is no conscious goal needed for the activation of a goal. There were no differences found between the answers on the questionnaire. The third experiment will look more at this.

Experiment 3

The writers thought that the priming task could influence the behaviour of participants. In a couple of studies some priming tasks have produced ambiguously relevant behaviour. The writers of this study were afraid that participants from the first study might have noticed that the priming task wanted to prime high performance and as a result they made the conscious decision to perform the best they can. Also, the writers thought that perceptual priming could have mediated between the goal-priming manipulation and the effects. They decided to use a delay manipulation. They did this to dissociate the perceptual and behaviour consequences of the priming manipulation. The delay manipulation means that the half of the group that received a certain priming task did the experimental task immediately after the priming task and the other half did it five minutes later. The participants in the no-delay task first had to draw their family tree. They had five minutes to do this. After this task, participants had to do a priming task in which they were primed to a neutral of high-performance condition. The participants in the delay condition were first assigned to the priming task and then to the family-tree task. Then they were either assigned to the word search task, this was the performance task, or to the impression-formation task (to read a story about a person and form an impression of this person). People in the delay condition had to wait five minutes after completing the priming task to begin with the independent measure, whereas people in the no-delay condition could do the independent measure immediately.

The results show that perceptual priming effects decay over time. The writers found that participants in the high-performance-goal related stimuli who were assigned to the impressions formation task saw the target person more as a high achiever than the participants in the neutral priming task. These effects, however, vanished after the five minute delay. In the word-search task, people in the high-performance condition performed good on the task, whether there was a delay or not.

Performance on the word-search task was even better for the participants in the delay situation than participants in the non-delay situation! This experiment shows that the performance in the high-performance-goal priming condition was due to the non-conscious activation of the goal to perform well.

Experiment 4

In the fourth experiment participants were again primed with either a high-performance-goal condition or a neutral prime. They then were asked to do a word-search task. In the previous experiments, participants received 10 minutes to complete this task. In this experiment, however, the time was cut short and while the participants were doing the task they were told through the room intercom system that they had to stop. This was two minutes after starting the task and the writers wanted to do this so they could see what the high-performance participants would do when they did not get enough time to fulfill their goal. In every room there was a hidden camera and the researchers wanted to see whether participants in the high-performance condition would continue working on their task to try and receive a higher score. After the stop sign, the participants could have continued for three minutes, because the experimenter came to collect the papers three minutes after the stop sign. The results showed that the participants in the high-performance condition kept working on the word-search task. Apparently, the non-consciously activated goal seems to be stronger than the consciously activated goal to stop performing.

Experiment 5

In the fifth experiment the researchers wanted to find out whether participants with a high-performance prime would want to keep going on with the Scrabble-word task or do another tests which was very enjoyable. Participants first did a word-search test with either a neutral or high-performance-goal prime. Afterwards they saw a set of seven letters on a projector screen and had to write down as many words as possible from the projector. This was the Scrabble-word task. But after one minute, the experimenter secretly switched the projector off (with a hidden button under his desk). He pretended that he was surprised and that he thought that the projector bulb was broken. He told the participants that he would leave the room to get another projector bulb. By the time he got back he said there was not enough time to complete the whole experiment and that the participants could choose whether they wanted to finish the Scrabble-word task or do a cartoon-humour rating task.

This cartoon-humour rating task meant that they had to rate how funny certain cartoons were. This task was obviously more fun than the Scrabble-word task. The results showed that a much higher proportion of the high-performance participants kept on doing the Scrabble-word task instead of the cartoon-humour rating task.