Effect of Attachment of Two Process Systems on Decision Making
1. Introduction
Common sense suggests that consumers believe they make more satisfied decisions as they consider their choice options more closely. Imagine Ms. A is planning a tour trip for the summer vacation. She identified two contenders but has not decided which one of them to go.
One spot is Paris and another is New York. Each of the cities has its own characteristics and distinguishing features. To a more satisfied decision, she acts rationally. She deliberate extensively and rehashing the features of the two options. For several days later, she finally makes her decision to Paris. However, as she books the ticket to Paris, rather than feels satisfied with her choice, she is hit by a feeling of unease about her decision. And New York seems better than she thought before the choice. The purpose of the effortful decision process is for a more satisfied choice, yet it is the process in cognition induces affective reaction which leads to undesirable effects. The effortful decision process is to make a more satisfied choice, but it is also the process that makes the choice become not so charming.
Nonetheless, in our daily life, sometimes people cannot perform rationally, especially when they are cognitively busy or impeded. For example, some students study less efficient when they listening to music than when they study in quite environment. Things that interrupt or impede the cognition work hereafter called cognitive load. The cognitive load is believed to disrupt more conscious, controlled processing without disrupting nonconcious, automatic processing (Gilbert, Pelham and Krull, 1988). As the decision maker’s working resource is occupied by other unrelated issues, some people make their decision mostly by their feelings.
Generally, there is a dual-process system people commonly use to make decisions. Stanovich
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and West (2001) describe the traditional processes which partitioned into two main families – traditionally called intuition and reason – as system 1 and system 2. The systems are
separately described as System 1 is an associative and feeling based process and system 2 is a deliberated and rule-based process (Kahneman and Frederick, 2002). As a matter of fact, as people deliberating the decision options, they are using the system 2. For people using feelings and intuitions to make decision, they are using the system 1. In short, system 1 is relative affective and system 2 is relative cognitive. And when people with higher cognitive load, their cognitive system 2 are impeded, thus they decide more based on the affective system 1.
People often being reminded to be rational rather than to act impetuously, especially when they making decisions. That is using the more rational and deliberative system 2.
However, deliberate the advantages of each choice alternative can increase the psychological proximity to the options. This kind of prefactual thinking about the choice options might bring could induce the attachment (Carmon and Ariely, 2000; Dhar and Wertenbroch, 2000;
Hoch and Loewnstein, 1991). The emotional attachment is a relationship-based construct that reflects the emotional bond connecting an individual with a consumption entity, i.e., brand, person, place or object (Park and Macinnis, 2006). Once people attach to the option choices, they may induce the sense of ownerships (Areily, Huber and Wertenbroch, 2005; Carmon, Wertenbroch and Zeelenberg, 2003). To be specifically illustrated, the ownership is based on the “perceptions of people” rather than the “fact.” Thus, while facing to make decision, choose one among the options become having to forgone the others. Losing an object is an experience of unpleasant, yielding to psychological discomfort and people often view their feelings as information when they make judgment (Pham, Cohen, Pracejus and Hughes, 2001;
Schwarz, 2001). Thus, the feeling of losing the nonchosen option may induce the postchoice discomfort. People may further take the discomfort as information changing the evaluation of
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the foregone option, that the nonchosen options seem better than they were before the choice.
People percept to choose a more satisfied choice requires a thoughtful decision process, that is, via a rational system 2 process. Apparently, consumers are willing to execute a more effortful decision process to get a more satisfied or accurate choice. However, it might is the process trying to reduce the possible negative feeling generated after choice that reversely induces postchoice discomfort. To be more specifically, we propose another possible way of people attach to objects via their decision process rather than the presentation mode of the objects (Carmon and Ariely, 2000; Dhar and Wertenbroch, 2000; Hoch and Loewnstein, 1991). Further, the effect as a matter of fact relates to several underlying issues and this research could contribute to them. Firstly, we only know a few about the relationship between accuracy maximization, negative emotion minimization and effort minimization metagoals in consumer goals (Bettman et al., 1998). Such as, Drolet and Luce (2004) discover that when people trying to prevent negative emotion via preventing trade-off the options’ attributes. But with a little cognitive load, they less focus on the goal of reduce negative emotion, thus trade-off the attributes which is the appropriate way to make decision. In this research, we hope to render some discussion to the decision goal conflict topic by discuss the other aspect, maximize accuracy.
Second, one thing to notice is the common effect of cognitive load may interrupt the process people try to use. They may thus make decision based on the affective system 1. In this research we examine one possible consequence of the usage the two process systems. We adopt the concept of dual-process systems, however, we can still contribute to argue the myth that people using the rational system 2 make more satisfied choices than using affective system 1.Finally, the evaluation of a option is not only depend on the option itself, sometime the decision process may render some output that also affect the evaluation of the final choice.
For instance, scholar found that some affects generated from the decision process can change
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the assessment of a new product (Meyers-levy and Tybout, 1989; Stayman, Alden, and Smith, 1992).
In our research, we provide another case of process-induced affect influencing the goods.
Especially, instead of discussing the chosen option being influenced, in this research focus is the effect on the nonchosen option. In sum, the purpose of this research is to uncover the phenomenon of why people effort to get satisfied choice, but less satisfied sometimes. And reversely, when they have cognitive load, that they decide more rely on their feeling, they reduce the chance of getting postchoice discomforts. It uncovers a case of how people generate attachment on choice option via their decision process instead of how the options being presented. This result could contribute to the issue of consumer behavior which is the concern of the marketers. With the discover of the phenomenon, managerial implications can also be derived from our study which can help marketing practitioners with better
understanding of consumers’ decision process and developing more appropriate tactics, such as the applied on the advertising and product promotion strategies.
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