Knowledge that Transforms

The path to happiness is not always clear. Research suggests that even money (when one has enough to take care of basic needs) does not enhance happiness. This Research Dialogue explores how individuals can take steps to use money in a way that does increase happiness. In addition, four commentaries provide suggestions above and beyond money as possible paths to happiness, as well as the reason why money may not lead to happiness.

Consumers are frequently invited to ask questions in everyday life. The current research provides an initial examination of how inviting consumers to ask questions influences their attitudes and intentions. Two experiments show that inviting questions can have a positive or negative effect depending on whether consumers actually ask them. Experiment 1 shows that merely inviting questions has a positive effect, but that this effect reverses when consumers actually ask questions. Following a similar logic, Experiment 2 shows that inviting questions has a positive effect under low involvement conditions, but a negative effect under high involvement conditions where the likelihood of generating questions is higher.

Previous research has shown that there are cultural differences in self‐concept consistency across situations. However, little is known about cultural differences in preference consistency over time. The present research examined whether Americans are more consistent in their preferences over time than are Japanese. As hypothesized, there were cultural differences in self‐reported () and actual () preference consistency over time. Further, cultural differences in preference consistency at the individual level () were found to aggregate into collective level differences () in the consistency of preference trends, such as the popularity of baby names. Implications and future directions are discussed.

Prior research has consistently demonstrated that people are reluctant to trade a good they own for an alternative good, particularly when the alternative (or “target”) represents a substantial departure from the “endowment”. We demonstrate that the endowment effect can be reduced by first making participants consider trading their endowment for an intermediate alternative (which shares some characteristics of the endowment and some characteristics of the target). We find that this “intermediate alternative effect” operates primarily by shifting one's reference point in the direction of the target alternative. Even when the intermediate alternative is not adopted, the extent to which one's endowment is treated as a reference point is weakened, which can also facilitate subsequent trading.

We make a distinction between primarily effort‐based and skilled‐based tasks and examine the correspondence between emotion and task. We reverse attribution theory results wherein failure to expend effort engenders regret and accomplishing tasks with skill engenders pride, and propose these emotions as antecedents to effort‐based and skill‐based behaviors. Specifically, pride (regret) produces higher self‐efficacy, behavioral intentions and sign‐ups when the task (CPR training) is portrayed as skill‐intensive (effort‐intensive) compared to effort‐intensive (skill‐intensive) or easy. Our research highlights the value of integrating an attributional analysis of tasks into an appraisal theory of emotions and suggests mechanisms that might underlie this relationship.

When consumers mentally unpack (i.e., imagine) the reasons for product failure, their probability judgments of future product failures are higher than when no mental unpacking is undertaken. However, increasing the level of mental unpacking does not lead to monotonically increasing effects on probability judgments but results in inverted U‐shaped relationships. Using a two‐factor structure, we propose that when consumers undertake mental unpacking, there will be two conflicting processes; while imagining causes for an event will lead to greater perceived probability, the greater difficulty in generating reasons for an event will lead to lower perceived probability.

Individuals' decisions are not only influenced by their immediate objective and the relevance of the available information to the attainment of this objective. When several different cognitive procedures could be used to make a decision, the nature of this decision can depend on the procedure that happens to be used. The selection of this procedure, which might come into play at different stages of cognitive functioning, can be affected by factors that are totally irrelevant to the judgment or decision to be made or to the goal that is being pursued. In fact, procedures that have been employed in one situation can influence behavior in a quite different situation in the pursuit of a quite unrelated objective. Examples of these effects are reviewed and interpreted in terms of three basic principles of cognitive functioning that pertain to cognitive efficiency, knowledge accessibility and the impact of subjective experience.

We tested the hypothesis that Faith in Intuition (FI) would moderate implicit–explicit attitude relationship strength for attitudes formed via associative processes, but not propositional processes. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that FI moderated I–E relationship strength for attitudes formed via evaluative conditioning. High FI people had stronger I–E correlations. Experiment 2 showed that FI did not moderate I–E relationship strength for attitudes formed via propositional reasoning. Those low in Need for Cognition (NC), however, showed stronger I–E correlations than those high in NC. The importance of considering trait variables in combination with the method of attitude formation is discussed.

Research shows that scent enhances memory for associated information. Current debate centers around scent's immunity to “retroactive interference,” i.e., reduced memory for earlier‐learned information after exposure to additional, subsequently‐learned information. This paper demonstrates that scent‐enhanced memory is indeed prone to retroactive interference, but that some of the information lost is restored using a scent‐based retrieval cue. Two process explanations for interference effects are proposed, with the evidence providing more support for an inhibition rather than a response competition explanation. The results enhance our understanding of the encoding and retrieval of olfactory information from long‐term memory, and reasons why interference occurs.

When making purchase decisions, consumers want objective product specifications and seek direct product comparison. The present research demonstrates that consumers can make better decisions (i.e., choose what yields a better consumption experience) if objective specifications are removed and direct comparison is inhibited than if not, and this is true even if consumers cannot experience the target products themselves at the time of choice (such as in online shopping). The reason is that consumption is largely subjective and non‐comparative, and decisions based on subjective and non‐comparative information are often more compatible with consumption. In general discussion, we explore the boundary conditions of our findings and the implications of this research for a new way of marketing that emphasizes subjectivity over objectivity and non‐comparison over comparison.