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A theory-first paradigm tends to be the dominant approach in much academic marketing research. In this approach, a theory is borrowed, refined, or developed and then tested empirically. In this challenging-the-boundaries article, the authors make a case for an empirics-first approach. “Empirics-first” refers to research that (1) is grounded in (originates from) a real-world marketing phenomenon, problem, or observation, (2) involves obtaining and analyzing data, and (3) produces valid marketing-relevant insights without necessarily developing or testing theory. The empirics-first approach is not antagonistic to theory but rather can serve as a stepping-stone to theory. The approach lends itself well to today’s data-rich environment, which can reveal novel research questions untethered to theory. The present article describes the underlying principles of an empirics-first approach, which consists of exploring a domain purposefully without preconceptions. Using a rich set of published examples, the authors offer guidance on how to implement empirics-first research and how it can lead to valuable knowledge development. Advice is also offered to scholars on how to report empirics-first research and to reviewers and to editorial teams on how to evaluate it. The ultimate objective is to pave a way for the empirics-first approach to enter the mainstream of academic marketing research.

Contemporary developments in material duplication promise product alternatives that are physically and sensorially indistinguishable from incumbent offerings. When fully realized, such duplicate offerings should obsolete the incumbents as a consequence of wider availability and lower monetary and social costs. Disruption will be impeded, however, if consumers favor incumbent products on the basis of non-material qualities. The authors show that the influence of such qualities depends on both the product category and characteristics of the consumer. In particular, when a creator is central to the product and when the consumer is inclined toward extraordinary beliefs, the influence of origin looms especially large. By contrasting origin and substance, the present research exposes dualistic thinking in consumers’ product evaluations, enriches prior research on authenticity and extraordinary beliefs, and contributes to the stubborn problem of technology adoption.

The authors argue that appreciation of the biological underpinnings of human behavior can alter the beliefs and actions of multiple marketing stakeholders in ways that have immense welfare implications. However, a biological perspective often deviates from the lay perspective. The realization of improved welfare depends in part on narrowing this gap. The authors review biological evidence on self-control and report ten empirical studies that examine lay response to biological characterizations of self-control. The authors contrast lay response with scientific understanding and then offer implications of biology—as well as the gap between the scientific and lay perspectives—for policy makers, firms, consumers, marketing educators, and scholars. The authors also identify opportunities for future research. They conclude that marketing scholars can and should play an active role in narrowing the gap between the scientific and lay perspectives in the service of both theory development and human welfare.

We propose that autonomy is a crucial aspect of consumer choice. We offer a definition that situates autonomy among related constructs in philosophy and psychology, contrast actual with perceived autonomy in consumer contexts, examine the resilience of perceived autonomy, and sketch out an agenda for research into the role of perceived autonomy in an evolving marketplace increasingly characterized by automation.

This chapter reviews prior research and reports original data that speak to the potential influence of brand, category, and attribute labels on sensory perception. A focus on experiential consumer behavior addresses activities that are common within the universe of consumption but rarely investigated from a cognitive or linguistic perspective. The few studies conducted within the consumer context have a similar cross-cultural flavor but a substantive focus outside of color perception. The work of B. H. Schmitt and S. Zhang demonstrates how linguistic differences can influence product perceptions and choice, consistent with the Whorfian perspective. Although centered on cross-cultural effects, it is also consistent with a larger body of within-culture consumer research that has examined the way in which category or brand labels can influence categorization and evaluation. Research has provided robust evidence that well-known brand names can influence and even overwhelm taste perception in preference tasks.

This article examines the relationship between food technology acceptance and the public’s food literacy, defined in terms of consumers’ scientific understanding of food technology. The research investigates four food technologies—food irradiation, genetic modification, biofabrication, and bug-based food—that have immense implications for consumer and societal well-being. The findings reveal complex relationships between consumer understanding of these technologies and acceptance that arise from the multidimensional nature of resistance. Using these results, the authors develop a framework for predicting and addressing consumer resistance to food technology. In addition, they explore the effectiveness of knowledge-based interventions that illustrate how marketing can enhance food literacy, reduce technology resistance, and enhance well-being. Finally, they describe how their findings also speak to the food policy, food marketing, food socialization, and food availability dimensions of the “food = well-being” paradigm.

Product aesthetics can enhance consumer welfare in numerous ways. Aside from simply making products more pleasurable, product aesthetics can also influence the inferences that consumers make about functional attributes. In some instances, an attractive design can accurately provide information regarding utility. In other instances, however, an attractive design can be a misleading signal that prompts consumers to assume more utility than justified. Across five studies, the present research examines whether aesthetics can exert an unwarranted influence on the estimation of missing attribute information in favor of an aesthetically superior product. We show that aesthetics can bias consumers’ inferences about functionality, sometimes overriding other more diagnostic information. Boundaries to this effect are also identified that may serve to correct the bias and preserve consumer welfare.

The conviction one holds about free will serves as a foundation for the views one holds about the consumption activities of other consumers, the nature of social support systems, and the constraints that should or should not be placed on industry. Across multiple paradigms and contexts, the authors assess people's beliefs about the control consumers have over consumption activities in the face of various constraints on agency. They find that beliefs regarding personal discretion are robust and resilient, consistent with their finding that free will is viewed as noncorporeal. Nonetheless, they also find that these beliefs are not monolithic but vary as a function of identifiable differences across individuals and the perceived cause of behavior, particularly with regard to physical causation. Taken together, the results support the general wisdom of libertarian paternalism as a framework for public policy and highlight current and emerging situations in which policy makers might be granted greater latitude.

The Attachment–Aversion Relationship Model proposed by Park, Eisingerich, and Park represents the latest in a series of attempts to expand, refine, and validate the increasingly popular concept of brand relationships. We find much value in the effort. We suggest, however, that researchers should avoid indiscriminate use of the term and focus on identifying the unique contribution that the notion of brand relationships can make to theory and practice. We also note how the present model could be expanded to achieve this objective.

Thirty years ago, Hirschman and Holbrook (1982) advocated greater attention to hedonic consumption and the myriad ways in which consumers seek pleasure and enjoyment. A thorough review finds that the topic has much appeal and that consumer research has made significant progress toward understanding some of its parameters. However, many questions remain unanswered, particularly with regard to understanding the sources of pleasure, the manner in which consumers seek it, and the ways in which consumers might alter their hedonic consumption decisions to maximize pleasure and happiness. We assess three decades of research on hedonic consumption, emphasizing areas of greatest potential for future exploration.

The modal scientific approach in consumer research is to deduce hypotheses from existing theory about relationships between theoretic constructs, test those relationships experimentally, and then show “process” evidence via moderation and mediation. This approach has its advantages, but other styles of research also have much to offer. We distinguish among alternative research styles in terms of their philosophical orientation (theory-driven vs. phenomenon-driven) and their intended contribution (understanding a substantive phenomenon vs. building or expanding theory). Our basic premise is that authors who deviate from the dominant paradigm are hindered by reviewers who apply an unvarying set of evaluative criteria. We discuss the merits of different styles of research and suggest appropriate evaluative criteria for each.

A series of experiments demonstrates that consumers exhibit aversion to waste during forward-looking purchase. These experiments further reveal that such behavior is driven by distaste for unused utility, a reaction that is shown to be distinct from an aversion to squandering money. Waste aversion is especially pronounced when consumers anticipate future consequences and deprivation is salient. In addition to demonstrating robustness across consumers and marketing contexts, the results also demonstrate how waste aversion can lead to self-defeating behavior in which consumers forego desired utility. Finally, the present research demonstrates and discusses the implications of waste aversion for a variety of marketing issues, including buy-rent markets, bundling, and the fundamental distinction between goods and services.

The present research investigates the manner in which product form communicates functional performance, and examines how the form of a product can alter judgments about feature function. In a series of experiments, product form is pitted against objective information about feature function to understand how conflicting visual and verbal cues are reconciled. The findings indicate that when a product's form suggests a particular level of functional performance, consumers naturally incorporate that information into judgments of feature performance, even when presented with conflicting feature information from an objective source. The role of consumer attention in the process is also explored. The results suggest that product developers may be able to improve perceived performance by focusing design efforts and marketing communications on specific features that visually communicate functionality.

As goods commoditize more quickly in terms of functionality, design is increasingly becoming a critical point of differentiation. The present research examines the interaction of aesthetic design and product evaluation, testing the conventional wisdom among practitioners that “what is beautiful is good.” Three studies examine how design influences feature processing when aesthetics and feature performance conflict. Study 1 reveals a bias in the direction of the unattractive product—a negative aesthetic effect—and provides initial evidence that this bias stems from thoughtful reconciliation of incongruous information and a consequent elaboration of the conflicting dimension. Studies 2 and 3 examine boundary conditions.

Managers use numerical data as the basis for many decisions. This research investigates how data on prior advertising expenditures and sales outcomes are used in budget allocation decisions and attempts to answer three important questions about data-based inferences. First, do biases exist that are strong enough to lead to seriously suboptimal decisions? Second, do graphical data displays, real-world experience, or explicit training reduce any observed biases? Third, are the observed biases well explained by a relatively small set of natural heuristics that managers use when making data-based allocation decisions? The results suggest answers of yes, no, and yes, respectively. The authors identify three broad classes of heuristics: difference-based (which assess causation by comparing adjacent changes in expenditures to changes in sales), trend-based (which assess causation by comparing overall trends in expenditures and sales), and exemplar-based (which emulate the allocation pattern of the observations with the highest sales). All three heuristics create biases in some situations. Overall, exemplar-based heuristics were used most frequently and induced the greatest biasing of the three (sometimes allocating the most to an advertising medium that was uncorrelated with sales). Difference-based heuristics were used less frequently but generated the most extreme allocations. Trend-based heuristics were used the least.

This research investigates the effects of across-consumer price comparisons on perceived price fairness as a function of culture. Collectivist (Chinese) consumers are more sensitive to in-group versus out-group differences than individualist (U.S.) consumers. The collectivist perspective orients consumers toward the in-group and heightens concerns about “face” (i.e., status earned in a social network) that arise from in-group comparisons. Process evidence for the causal role of cultural differences derives from manipulated self-construal and measurement of the emotional role of shame evoked by face concerns. Finally, in a robustness test, an alternative operationalization of the in-group/out-group distinction extends the findings to the context of firm relationships.

Consumers often form firm beliefs about the future performance of a vendor based on an initial interaction with that vendor. Research in decision science suggests that generalizing from small samples is ill-advised but nonetheless common. A smaller stream of research indicates sensitivity to the representativeness of a small sample. We argue that perceived representativeness depends on the causal inferences prompted by the nature of the consumption experience. Moreover, such inferences may be so specific to the consumption experience that broad statements about consumers' propensity to generalize from one experience to others may themselves be ill-advised.

Perceptual discrimination is fundamental to rational choice in many product categories yet rarely examined in consumer research. The present research investigates discrimination as it pertains to consumers’ ability to identify differences—or the lack thereof—among gustatory stimuli. Three experiments reveal systematic bias resulting from the presence of common visual and verbal product cues. Particularly noteworthy is the finding that the amount of bias induced by a subtle, nonevaluative cue can far exceed the bias induced by overt and well‐established evaluative cues. In addition, the effects these cues have on perceptual discrimination diverge from the effects they have on preference.

Prior research suggests that consumers are forgiving of a price increase that is commensurate with increased vendor costs. We argue that the perceived fairness of the price increase will also depend on the alignability of the cost and price increases, such that alignable increases will be perceived as more acceptable than nonalignable increases. Moreover, we predict that when a cost increase is nonalignable, consumers will be more receptive to a service price increase than a goods price increase. Evidence from a series of experiments supports both predictions.

Personality research has fueled debate over whether human judgment should be characterized as accurate or error-prone. Research from the thin-slice tradition suggests that a degree of accuracy can be obtained when least expected. Consumer psychologists tempted to join the debate may be better served by identifying the contexts under which accuracy is most likely and least likely to be observed and by exploring the causal mechanisms underlying each outcome. In so doing, the substantive scope of consumer research may be expanded to include decision contexts that have been largely ignored but are of considerable importance. Moreover, decision processes may be illuminated that can inform the more useful debate over deliberative versus nondeliberative decision making.

This article presents an introduction to and analysis of an emerging area of research, namely decision neuroscience, whose goal is to integrate research in neuroscience and behavioral decision making. The article includes an exposition of (1) how the exponential accumulation of knowledge in neuroscience can potentially enrich research on decision making, (2) the range of techniques in neuroscience that can be used to shed light on various decision making phenomena, (3) examples of potential research in this emerging area, and (4) some of the challenges readers need to be cognizant of while venturing into this new area of research.

Results from 4 experiments suggest that currencies such as loyalty-program points are overvalued. Different allocations of the same quantity of points across the same number of purchases (e.g., 100 points for each first, 200 for each second, 300 for each third purchase vs. 200 for each first, second, and third purchase) yielded irrelevant trends and should have led participants to ignore loyalty points as a basis for choice. However, choices were influenced by points even when consumers were provided with other truly discriminating information (e.g., price) and the irrelevance of the loyalty points was readily discernable. This implies that irrelevant information can influence choice when other, easily justifiable bases for decisions are available and, therefore, that irrelevant information can function as more than a tie-breaker. Other implications for research on irrelevant attributes, medium effects, intertemporal choice, and loyalty programs are discussed.

Prevailing wisdom assumes that brand equity increases when a brand touts its desirable attributes. We report conditions under which the use of attribute information to promote a product can shift the locus of equity from brand to attribute, thereby reducing the attractiveness of extension products. This effect is moderated by the degree of ambiguity in the learning environment, such that prevailing wisdom is refuted when ambiguity is low but is supported when ambiguity is high. Copyright 2003 by the University of Chicago.

A series of studies demonstrates that consumers are inclined to believe that the selling price of a good or service is substantially higher than its fair price. Consumers appear sensitive to several reference points-including past prices, competitor prices, and cost of goods sold-but underestimate the effects of inflation, overattribute price differences to profit, and fail to take into account the full range of vendor costs. Potential corrective interventions-such as providing historical price information, explaining price differences, and cueing costs-were only modestly effective. These results are considered in the context of a four-dimensional transaction space that illustrates sources of perceived unfairness for both individual and multiple transactions. ispartof: Journal of Consumer Research vol:29 issue:4 pages:474-491 status: published

While consumer choice research has dedicated considerable research attention to aspects of choice that are deliberative and conscious, only limited attention has been paid to aspects of choice that occur outside of conscious awareness. We review relevant research that suggests that consumer choice is a mix of conscious and nonconscious influences, and argue that the degree to which nonconscious influences affect choice is much greater than many choice researchers believe. Across a series of research domains, these influences are found to include stimulus that are not consciously perceived by the consumer, nonconscious downstream effects of a consciously perceived stimuli or thought process, and decision processes that occur entirely outside of awareness.

When attempting to portray the attractiveness of a brand vis-a-vis its competitors, an ad may make global claims about superiority or specific claims about one or more attributes. A special case of latter is the piecemeal ad in which the advertised brand is compared to a competitor on one attribute, a different competitor on a second attribute, another competitor on a third attribute, and so on. The present research demonstrates the effectiveness of this technique and explores the parameters of its influence. We find that piecemeal messages are persuasive because they make seemingly strong claims in a believable manner. Consumer skepticism appears to arise only when conditions for scrutiny are very favorable.

Consumer knowledge is seldom complete or errorless. Therefore, the self-assessed validity of knowledge and consequent knowledge calibration (i.e., the correspondence between self-assessed and actual validity) is an important issue for the study of consumer decision making. In this article we describe methods and models used in calibration research. We then review a wide variety of empirical results indicating that high levels of calibration are achieved rarely, moderate levels that include some degree of systematic bias are the norm, and confidence and accuracy are sometimes completely uncorrelated. Finally, we examine the explanations of miscalibration and offer suggestions for future research. Copyright 2000 by the University of Chicago.

A series of experiments illustrates a learning process that enhances brand equity at the expense of quality-determining attributes. When the relationship between brand name and product quality is learned prior to the relationship between product attributes and quality, inhibition of the latter may occur. The phenomenon is shown to be robust, but its influence appears sensitive to contextual variations in the learning environment. Tests of process are inconsistent with attentional explanations and popular models of causal reasoning, but they are supportive of associative learning models that portray learners as inherently forward looking. P urchase decisions are based on predictions of product performance. Consumers base their predictions in part on product cues and are accurate to the extent that they have properly learned the relationship between the cues and performance. Consumer research has devoted little attention to this learning process despite its fundamental importance (Hutchinson and Alba 1991; Meyer 1987). In the present research we examine consumer learning of product cues as predictors of product quality with particular emphasis on the distinction between brand and attribute cues. To illustrate, consider the cases in which consumers rely strictly on either brand or attribute cues to predict quality. If consumers learn the relationship between product attributes and quality, they will differentiate among brands that possess different attributes and treat as commodities those brands that share the same attributes. Once the predictive rule is learned, it may be applied to any new brand that possesses the attributes. In contrast, consumers who rely strictly on brand cues will ignore the underlying attributes and may incorrectly differentiate physically identical brands. The latter case is important because it can be costly and is not uncommon (such as when consumers pay high premiums for branded drugs that are chemically identical to their generic counterparts). An appealing explanation of this phenomenon is that consumers are unaware of the attributes of these brands. Indeed, firms attempt to foster such ignorance by making attribute information difficult to find or process (Bergen, Dutta, and Shugan 1996; Hoch and Deighton 1989). The present research investigates whether consumers will routinely learn the determinants of product quality when attribute cues are *Stijn M. J. van Osselaer is assistant professor of marketing, University of Chicago. Joseph W. Alba is distinguished professor of marketing, University of Florida. This work was supported by the Beatrice Foods Co. Faculty Research Fund at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. The authors thank Alan Cooke, Joffre Swait, Chris Janiszewski, and Bart Weitz for their helpful comments. freely available and processing is unconstrained. We suggest that learning can be suppressed even under these relatively favorable conditions due to the learning phenomenon known as blocking.

The intensity of price discounting by retailers and manufacturers raises important questions about consumer price judgments. In the extreme, discounting can take the form of frequent but shallow discounts or deep but infrequent discounts. The research reported here explores the effects of these strategies on consumer estimation of price levels for competing stores and brands. In an initial experiment in which subjects made brand choices over time, a depth effect was observed that contrasted with the frequency effect found in previous research. Subsequent experiments identified the conditions under which depth (vs. frequency) characteristics of price data dominate consumers' price-estimation judgments. Frequency information is more influential when sets of interstore or interbrand comparative prices exhibit complex and overlapping distributions (hence creating processing difficulty); in contrast, a depth bias occurs when prices have a simpler, dichotomous distribution. These results place pragmatically meaningful limitations on the influence of frequency information and illustrate the importance of context in determining consumer price judgments in a promotional environment. Copyright 1999 by the University of Chicago.

The authors examine the implications of electronic shopping for consumers, retailers, and manufacturers. They assume that near-term technological developments will offer consumers unparalleled opportunities to locate and compare product offerings. They examine these advantages as a function of typical consumer goals and the types of products and services being sought and offer conclusions regarding consumer incentives and disincentives to purchase through interactive home shopping vis-à-vis traditional retail formats. The authors discuss implications for industry structure as they pertain to competition among retailers, competition among manufacturers, and retailer-manufacturer relationships.

A widespread practice in grocery store advertising is to compare the advertised store's prices to a competitor's prices on multiple items. An important, but largely unexplored, issue is how this information is processed and used in conjunction with prior beliefs to influence price perceptions. In our initial studies we manipulated prior beliefs and two data-based cues--frequency of price advantage and magnitude of price advantage--to determine their relative influence on consumer price perceptions. Results indicate that prior beliefs affected price perceptions but that the frequency cue exerted a dominating influence. Several follow-up studies demonstrate the robustness of this phenomenon across a variety of presentational and instructional conditions. Coauthors are Susan M. Broniarczyk, Terence A. Shimp, and Joel E. Urbany. Copyright 1994 by the University of Chicago.

Research on the ability to assess covariation traditionally has employed dichotomous variables as stimuli and has consistently reported a tendency to perceive covariation where none exists-a tendency exacerbated by prior beliefs about the existence of a relationship. A smaller, more recent literature reports relatively accurate performance when the stimuli are continuous. Five experiments are presented that employ continuous variables while exploring the case in which correlations in the data conflict with expectations. Based on recent findings, performance on a prediction task is used as the dependent measure. Experiment 1 shows a lack of reliance on the data, due primarily to a failure to base responses on a valid but nonintuitive predictor. From the remaining experiments this performance can be attributed to attentional and strategic factors during study and a reluctance to rely on predictors that lack a conceptual connection to the criterion.

Three experiments examined the effects of situational factors on the ability to learn simple rules for classifying products and estimating prices. In each experiment, multiattribute information about stereo speakers was presented to subjects in a training phase. However, only one attribute was diagnostic. Analytic processing (i.e., the ability to isolate the diagnostic attribute in a subsequent test of product knowledge) was measured. Results showed that analytic processing varied significantly as a function of memory load, processing goals. type of information search, and the relative perceptual salience of product attributes. Surprisingly little holistic (i.e., multiattribute) processing was observed among nonanalytic subjects. Most of these subjects relied on a small subset of attributes, often placing heavy emphasis on a single nondiagnostic attribute. Copyright 1991 by the University of Chicago.

This chapter reviews research regarding the potential influence of frequency information in the competitive marketplace. Consistent with findings obtained in other contexts, consumer research demonstrates how misperception of true frequency can affect decision variables. Consumer research further demonstrates that frequency cues can be a determining influence on behaviour irrespective of accuracy of encoding, even when pitted against more diagnostic product cues. This research also suggests that the influence of frequency information varies as a function of a variety of factors internal and external to the consumer.

International audience; Les auteurs examinent les conséquences du commerce électronique pour les consommateurs, les distributeurs et les producteurs. Ils prennent pour l'hypothèse qu'à court terme les développements technologiques offriront des opportunités incomparables concernant la localisation et la comparaison des offres de produits. Ils étudient ces avantages comme une fonction des buts du consommateur typique et des catégories de produits et services recherchés, et ils proposent des conclusions relatives aux avantages et aux inconvénients perçus dans l'achat interactif à domicile par rapport aux formes de distribution traditionnelles. Les auteurs discutent enfin les implications de leur recherche pour les structures industrielles, en termes de concurrence entre distributeurs, entre producteurs, et de relations producteurs — distributeurs.

Traditional explorations of inference making have examined consumers' reactions to product descriptions that lack information about salient attributes. Such studies frequently report systematically lower evaluations of incompletely described alternatives along with a generally low incidence of unprompted attribute-to-attribute inference. We argue that the nature and likelihood of an inference are dependent on the cues available at the time of decision making, and that some cues may exert a disproportionate influence on inference behavior. In several experiments in which subjects were presented with competing cues that implied different values of a missing attribute, we show that intuitive beliefs about the relationships between attributes are perceived as a particularly reliable basis for interattribute inference. Strong beliefs appear capable of superseding other compelling cues and may induce consumers to generate inferences spontaneously. Copyright 1994 by the University of Chicago.

Recent research has identified two factors that influence consumer perceptions of a brand extension: brand affect and the similarity between the original and extension product categories. However, surprisingly little attention has been paid to other associations specific to the brand itself. The authors perform three experiments to explore the relative importance of these associations. The experiments reveal that brand-specific associations may dominate the effects of brand affect and category similarity, particularly when consumer knowledge of the brands is high. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for managerial decision making and the process by which consumers evaluate brand extensions.

The purpose of this article is to review basic empirical results from the psychological literature in a way that provides a useful foundation for research on consumer knowledge. A conceptual organization for this diverse literature is provided by two fundamental distinctions. First, consumer expertise is distinguished from product-related experience. Second, five distinct aspects, or dimensions, of expertise are identified: cognitive effort, cognitive structure, analysis, elaboration, and memory. Improvements in the first two dimensions are shown to have general beneficial effects on the latter three. Analysis, elaboration, and memory are shown to have more specific interrelationships. The empirical findings related to each dimension are reviewed and, on the basis of those findings, specific research hypotheses about the effects of expertise on consumer behavior are suggested.

ion Information that has been selected because it is important and/or relevant to the schema is further reduced during the encoding process by abstraction. This process codes the meaning but not the format of a message (e.g., Bobrow, 1970; Bransford, Barclay, & Franks, 1972). Thus, details such as the lexical form of an individual word (e.g., Schank, 1972, 1976) and the syntactic form of a sentence (e.g., Sachs, 1967) will not be preserved in memory. Because memory for syntax appears to be particularly sparce as well as brief (e.g., J. R. Anderson, 1974; Begg & Wickelgren, 1974; Jarvella, 1971; Sachs, 1967, 1974), the abstraction process is thought to operate during encoding. Additional support for the notion that what is stored is an abstracted representation of the original stimulus comes from studies that demonstrate that after a passage is read, it takes subjects the same amount of time to verify information originally presented in a complex linguistic format as it does to verify that same information presented in a simpler format (e.g., King & Greeno, 1974; Kintsch M Bransford, et al., 1972; Brewer, 1975; Frederiksen, 1975a; Kintsch, 1974; Norman & Rumelhart, 1975; Schank, 1972, 1976). One formalized presentation of this idea is Schank's conceptual dependency theory (1972). The theory asserts that all propositions can be expressed by a small set of primitive concepts. All lexical expressions that share an identical meaning will be represented in one way (and so stored economically) regardless of their presentation format. As a result people should often incorrectly recall or misrecognize synonyms of originally presented words, and they do (e.g., Anderson & Bower, 1973; R. C. Anderson, 1974; Anisfeld & Knapp, 1968; Brewer, 1975; Graesser, 1978b; Sachs, 1974). Abstraction and memory theories. Since considerable detail is lost via the abstraction process, this process can easily account for the incompleteness that is characteristic of people's recall of complex events. In light of the abstraction process, the problem for schema theories becomes one of accounting for accurate recall. Schema theories do this by borrowing a finding from psycholinguistic research, to wit, that speakers of a language share preferred ways of expressing information. If both the creator and perceiver of a message are operating with the same preferences or under the same biases, the perceiver's reproduction of the input may appear to be accurate. The accuracy, however, is the product of recalling the semantic content of the message and imposing the preferred structure onto it. Thus, biases operate in a manner that is similar to the "probable detail" reconstruction process. Biases have been documented for both syntactic information (J. R. Anderson, 1974; Bock, 1977; Bock & Brewer, 1974; Clark & Clark, 1968; James, Thompson, & Baldwin, 1973) and lexical information (Brewer, 1975; Brewer & Lichtenstein, 1974). Distortions may result from the abstraction process if biases are not shared by the person who creates the message and the one who receives it. More importantly, the ab

Other studies have reported that when subjects are presented with outcome feedback they are unable to remember their original knowledge state (the “knew-it-all-along effect”). In the present studies, feedback was followed by manipulations which were intended to invalidate it. In the first experiment, we failed to discredit the feedback and so report a knew-it-all-along effect under circumstances different from those reported elsewhere. In the second experiment, the discrediting instructions were successful and the effect was disrupted. Contrary to previous interpretations, the latter results indicate that feedback information is not automatically assimilated and that people can access their prior knowledge state, if the circumstances require.

The present article addresses four important issues raised by Dominowski in his comments on our earlier article. First, we present evidence that our characterization of Gestalt theory is the view accepted by present-day psychologists and is also the view espoused by the Gestalt psychologists themselves. Second, we consider Dominowski's argument that the facilitation brought about by hints in our experiments as, in reality, support for Gestalt theory. Closer examination of the claims of Gestalt theory does not support Dominowski's interpretation of the data from our earlier article. Third, we examine in more detail our alternative interpretation of the data from our experiments. Fourth, we examine the roles proposed by Dominowski for the terms fixation and insight in psychological theory. In his comments on our earlier article (Weisberg & Alba, 1981), Dominowski (1981) raises a number of points, which, if correct, would seriously dilute the importance of our findings. In the present paper, we consider four issues raised by Dominowski. First, Dominowski argues that our earlier paper presents a mistaken characterization of Gestalt theory. Second, he questions whether the data concerning facilitation through hints in reality support Gestalt theory, contrary to our conclusions. Third, Dominowski argues that our explanation of our results is not very helpful. Fourth, he argues that we were being rash in suggesting that the terms insight and fixation be dropped from explanations of problem solving. Gestalt Theory Dominowski argues that our characterization of the Gestalt theory of problem solving is not accurate, and presents several quotes to support his claim. Two points should be made in response. First, and perhaps most important, the view we examine in our first paper concerning sudden and direct solutions to problems is the interpretation of Gestalt theory accepted by most present-day psychologists, which we briefly allude to in that