The Lexicon and Grammar of Affect-as-Information in Consumer Decision Making : The GAIM

This chapter examines how the original tenets of the affect-as-information hypothesis can be extended to explain a wide range of judgment phenomena, especially with respect to consumer decision making. To this end, research within social psychology as well as research from other fields such as consumer behavior and behavioral decision making is reviewed. The chapter is organized into three main sections. The first section identifies distinct types of information that people seem to derive from their feelings. In a sense, these different types of information constitute the lexicon of feelings as information. The second section identifies the basic principles that guide the processes by which feelings provide these various types of information. These principles can be thought of as rules that govern and structure the ways in which feelings acquire and convey judgment-relevant meaning. In a sense, these principles collectively define the grammar of feelings as information. In the concluding section the state of our knowledge and the chapter's main theoretical propositions are summarized in a generalized model of affect-as-information in judgment and decision making, the GAIM (for Generalized Affect as Information Model of judgment)