Is the perceived value of things an absolute measurable quantity, as in economists’ notion of ‘‘cardinal utility,” or a relative assessment of the various objects being evaluated, as in economists’ notion of ‘‘ordinal utility”? We believe that the answer depends in part upon...

The experience of fun plays a major role in the consumer society. Drawing on a grounded theory approach, we advance a psychological theory of consumer fun. Through an integration of in-depth interviews, narrative analyses, controlled experiments, structural equation modeling, and a...

Uncertainty is an unavoidable part of human life. How do states of uncertainty influence the way people make decisions? We advance the proposition that states of uncertainty increase the reliance on affective inputs in judgments and decisions. In accord with this proposition, results from six...

We offer a constructive critique of Regulatory Engagement Theory (Higgins, 2006; Higgins & Scholer, 2009). After highlighting the major tenets of the theory and its main contributions, we identify some of its conceptual ambiguities. We then argue that the hedonic and intensity components of value...

Understanding the role of emotion in forming preferences is critical in helping firms choose effective marketing strategies and consumers make appropriate consumption decisions. In five experiments, participants made a set of binary product choices under conditions designed to induce different...

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...