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The Prevalence of Metacognitive Routes to Judgment
JOURNAL OF CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY, 14(4), 349-355 Copyright O 2004, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
The Prevalence of Metacognitive Routes to Judgment Angela Y. Lee Northwestern University
Metacognitive routes to judgment may be taken more often than suggested by Schwarz (2004). First,judgments that appear to be consistent with a systematicprocessing account may be based on higher order metacognitive theories. Specifically,individuals' inferentialjudgments based on naive theories about retrieval ease may be interpreted to be potentially biased, resulting in an adjustment in the opposite direction of the initial judgment to correct for the bias. Second, whereas favorable attitudes may reflect the positive experience of processing fluency, favorableattitudes may also reflect naive theories at work. When the target (e.g.,brandname,logo, etc.) canbe more easily processed, the hedonic experience of processing fluency gives rise to more favorable attitudes toward the target. However,wheninformation about the target (e.g.,anad highlightingbenefits of the brand) can be more easily processed, individualsmay interpret the experience of processing fluency based on naive theory and attribute the experienceto the information being more persuasive, resulting in more favorable attitudes toward the target. Understanding the role of metacognition is an integral part of understanding how people make judgments. Past research has demonstrated effectively that individuals base their judgments not only on what comes to mind, but also on how information comes to mind. Schwarz (2004) presents an excellent review on how ease of information retrieval and processing may be used as inputs to formulating judgments. He contrasts the experience of retrieval ease with the implications of accessible content as the basis of judgment and proposes that people often use naive theories of mental processes to interpret their experience of processing ease, which in turn affects judgment. In discussing the effects of fluent processing of new information on judgments, Schwarz argues that whereas certain judgments such as those about truth or fame are theory-based, judgments of preferences and liking reflect the positive valence of processing ease. In this comment, I wish to extend Schwarz's (2004) discussion along two fronts and propose that the metacognitive route to judgment may be taken even more often than Schwarz suggests. First, I propose that individuals' metacognitive experience may also account for judgments that are thought to be based on content of information rather than on naive theories (Rothman & Schwarz, 1998). More Requests for reprints should be sent to Angela Y. Lee, Department of Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2001 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208. E-mail: [email protected]
specifically, Schwarz suggests that individuals who are not motivated to process information often base their judgment on how they retrieve information, whereas the motivated are likely to base their judgment on what they retrieve. That is, the former rely on their metacognitive theory to interpret the experience of retrieval ease, and the latter rely on systematic processing of relevant information. I propose that metacognitive theory may be the basis of judgment even for the motivated. Specifically, these individuals may apply a higher-order metacognitive theory to interpret their initial response that relies on the naive theory of retrieval ease, and subsequently adjust their response to correct for the potential bias, eliciting a pattern of judgments consistent with the content of the information retrieved. Second, I refine Schwarz's discussion on the effects of processing fluency on judgments of liking and preference by making salient the distinction between how individuals process the target (e.g., brand X) and how they process information about the target (e.g., an ad highlighting the benefits of brand X). According to Schwarz, individuals' metacognitive experience may be the basis for judgments of truth, but it is their positive experience of processing fluency that drives judgments of preference. That is, the applicability of naive theories on judgment depends on the nature of the task. I propose that the role of the metacognitive experience of processing fluency within the domain of preference may also depend on the nature of the stimulus: Whereas enhanced evaluation of the target may be driven by individuals' hedonic experi-
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ence of processing the target itself, enhanced evaluation may also reflect individuals' naive theories about their subjective experience when they are processing information about the target. With respect to the processing of the target itself, the individual's attitude toward the target will become more favorable when the target can be more readily identified (i.e., it is perceptually fluent) or when it can be readily categorized and its meaning easily encoded (i.e., it is conceptually fluent; e.g., Lee & Labroo, 2004). These results are thought to reflect the experience of fluent processing that is hedonically pleasing rather than the process of attribution based on naive theories. However, with respect to the processing of persuasive message promoting the target, people will also develop more favorable attitudes toward the target when they experience fluent processing of such messages, in which case the effect of enhanced evaluation may be the result of metacognitive theories rather than due to the affective nature of processing fluency (e.g., Lee & Aaker, 2004).
THEORY-BASED CORRECTION According to Schwarz (2004), processing motivation moderates the individual's reliance on accessible content versus accessibility experience when making judgments. Whereas the unmotivated rely on naive theories relating to accessibility ease, the motivated engage in systematic processing and rely instead on the content of the information. I propose that the use of naive theories may not be the process of choice solely for the uninvolved and the unmotivated. Rather, the difference that motivation makes may be one concerning the complexity of the metacognitive experience. When motivation to process information is low, individuals rely on the naive theory that retrieval ease indicates frequency of instantiation. However, when individuals are motivated to process information, they may invoke the naive theory that their initial response has been biased by their metacognitive experience of accessibility ease-"I may have inappropriately interpreted the ease (difficulty) with which I retrieved support arguments as indicative of X (not) having more advantages than what X offers in reality." These individuals thus feel that they should adjust their evaluation of X downward (upward) to reflect their true attitude toward X. Specifically, when individuals become aware of a potential bias in their judgment due to either external (e.g., a situational context) or internal (e.g., their affective state) cues, they may adjust their initial evaluation to correct for the bias (Bargh, 1992). The view is that a higher-order metacognitive theory rather than systematic processing of the information retrieved is the mechanism underlyingjudgment when motivation to process information is high. To illustrate, Rothman and Schwarz (1998) asked participants to first list either three or eight risk-increasing or risk-decreasing behaviors and then indicate how vulnerable they were to heart disease. They found that participants with
no family history of heart disease relied on their ease (or difficulty) of retrieving risk-increasing or risk-decreasing behaviors to gauge their vulnerability. Participants recalling eight risk-increasing behaviors reported lower vulnerability than those recalling three such behaviors, whereas those recalling eight versus three risk-decreasing behaviors indicated higher vulnerability. One naive theory underlying these data may be the following: The more often one engages in certain behaviors, the better represented these behaviors are in memory, and hence the easier it is to recall them. Thus, "if it is difficult to recall risk-increasing behaviors, I probably do not engage in such activities very often and am, therefore, not very vulnerable." Similarly, those recalling eight versus three risk-deceasing behaviors probably thought that they did not engage in health-promoting activities too often and hence must be more vulnerable. In contrast, the reverse was observed for participants with a family history of heart disease. Their responses were not consistent with the ease of retrieval heuristics, nor were their judgments invariant across the different conditions. Rather, their judgments seemed to be affected by the type of behaviors as well as by the number of behaviors they recalled. Specifically, these participants reported higher vulnerability after recalling eight versus three risk-increasing behaviors and lower vulnerability after recalling eight versus three risk-decreasing behaviors. Although Schwarz (2004) cites systematic processing of the retrieved information to account for these findings, there are at least four different mechanisms that may potentially underlie these results. Rothman and Schwarz (1998) suggested that these participants engaged in systematic processing, rather than heuristic processing that relied on retrieval ease, to formulate their judgments. However, this explanation is problematic because participants did not systematically recruit objective measures of vulnerability from memory, which would have resulted in null effects of the experimental manipulations. Instead, their judgments were consistent with the number of behaviors they retrieved in response to the experimenter's instructions. An alternative explanation is that participants formulated their judgments by relying on a simple heuristic based on the number of behaviors they retrieved-"I engage in quite (just) a few healthy activities, I must therefore be at low (high) risk of heart disease." However, counting the number of activities listed should be cognitively less demanding than counting the number of activities listed and then interpreting the ease of retrieval experience using metacognitive theories. Presumably individuals who have a family history of heart disease are motivated to expend more rather than fewer cognitive resources in arriving at their judgments; it is thus not likely that these motivated participants would be relying on a simpler heuristic than retrieval ease. A third possible account is that participants with a family history of heart disease might have been more conscious of the risk factor and therefore found it relatively easy to list eight risk-related behaviors. Hence the following naive the-
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ory may apply: "If it was not too difficult to list eight risk-increasing (risk-decreasing) behaviors, I must engage in many such activities and hence must (not) be at risk of heart disease." However, these participants did indicate that generating eight behaviors was more difficult than generating three behaviors, thus casting some doubt on this interpretation. Finally, a fourth explanation for the data is the metacognition that one's judgment of vulnerability may be influenced by the ease or difficulty with which one recalls risk-related behaviors and hence an adjustment is necessary to correct for the overassessment or underassessment. That is, those recalling eight risk-increasing (risk-decreasing) behaviors adjusted their initial judgment of low (high) vulnerability because they recognized that their ease of retrieval might have been misattributed to the frequency with which they engaged in certain behaviors, and expended cognitive efforts to correct for the potential bias. Although there is no direct evidence in support of this account, this explanation that is based on higher-order metacognition seems most plausible. At the minimum, the results of this study highlight the possibility that the metacognitive theory based on accessibility ease is subsumed by a higher-order theory, leading to a pattern of results that reverses the misattributed effects of the accessibility experience as participants adjust their responses to correct for the bias. This alternative explanation for the results has important implications for consumer researchers seeking to understand the process by which people make decisions. It suggests that naive theories may play an important role even when individuals are motivated to process information, and that processes of correction may be better understood as processes reflecting an interpretation of higher-order metacognitive experiences. Evidence of misattributions and biases based on certain naive theories is well documented in the literature (e.g., Cantor, Bryant, & Zillmann, 1974; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Losch & Cacioppo, 1990; Zanna & Cooper, 1974). Jacoby, Woloshyn, and Kelley (1989), for example, demonstrated the false fame effect by first presenting participants with the names of some people who were "not famous." After some time, participants were asked to judge if some names represented someone famous. The results showed that nonfamous people whose names were presented earlier were judged to be famous, along with names of famous people. Presumably, participants could not remember the names on the nonfamous list, and attributed the feeling of familiarity to fame-"names of famous people are often mentioned in the media, so a name with a familiar ring is probably famous". However, many studies also showed that individuals corrected their misattributed responses when they became aware of the source of the bias (e.g., Lombardi, Higgins, & Bargh, 1987; Petty & Wegener, 1993; Reisenzein & Gattinger, 1982; Schwarz & Clore, 1983; Strack, Schwarz, Bless, Kuebler, & Waenke, 1993). Whittlesea, Jacoby, and Girard (1990), for instance, manipulated the clarity of the stimulus as presented on the computer screen and found that participants made rec-
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ognition judgments based on the visual clarity of the stimulus. However, this bias disappeared as participants corrected their judgment when the clarity manipulation was made known to them. Both biased judgments and corrections may reflect one or more naive theories at work. Processes of correction in particular invoke the metacognition that judgments may be unduly influenced by naive theories, rendering an adjustment necessary. The direction of the bias and the corresponding correction is thus dictated by theory; and the particular theory invoked depends on what is deemed most appropriate in each context. For example, to test if the misattribution of processing fluency may account for the mere exposure effect, both Bornstein and D'Agostino (1994) and Lee (1994) presented their participants with old and new stimuli for evaluation and informed half of their participants that the stimuli to be evaluated were new, and the other half that the stimuli were old. It appeared that participants in the two studies held very different naive theories when evaluating the stimuli, as evidenced by their correcting their judgments in the opposite direction. More specifically, Bornstein and D'Agostino (1994; Study 1) presented their participants with black-and-white photographs of women via a tachistoscope at the rate of 5 msec each. Participants were subsequently presented with a series of test stimuli that included both old and new stimuli, and were either informed that they had never seen the stimuli before, or that they had actually been presented with the stimuli subliminally via the tachistoscope earlier. Participants were then asked to evaluate the photographs on a rating scale. Results showed that although participants preferred photographs that they had seen before, they also rated old photographs they thought they had not seen before more positively, and new photographs that they thought they had seen earlier less positively. One plausible explanation is that participants in this study were not aware of the stimuli that were presented subliminally. When informed by the experimenter that the stimuli had not been presented earlier, they interpreted the novelty of the stimuli as something that the experimenter was particularly interested in-"Otherwise, why bother telling me the obvious?"-and rated the "new" stimuli more positively. And when the experimenter informed them that the stimuli had been presented earlier subliminally via the tachistoscope, they were concerned about being subjected to nonconscious influence-"They are alerting me in case my judgment may have been biased"-and hence adjusted their initial ratings downward for these "old" stimuli. In another study using different stimuli and a longer exposure duration, the same set of experimenter's instructions led to a different pattern of results (Lee, 1994). In this study, participants were first presented with abstract patterns using a slide projector at the rate of 8 sec each. They were subsequently asked to evaluate both new and old patterns. Similar to those in the Bornstein and D'Agostino study (1994), participants were either told that the stimuli they were about to
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rate were ones they had not seen before or ones that had been presented earlier. Similar to Bornstein and D'Agostino's (1994) findings, old stimuli were preferred to new stimuli. However, contrary to their findings, when the stimuli were old, whether participants thought the stimuli were new or old did not make a difference. And when the stimuli were new, participants rated those stimuli they thought they had seen earlier more positively. Interestingly, information that the stimuli had been presented earlier led to less favorable affective responses in the Bornstein and D'Agostino study, but to more favorable responses in the Lee (1994) study. Possibly, participants in the Lee (1994) study, who were aware of their exposure to the difficult-to-recognize stimuli, did not interpret the prior exposure information as an important part of the experiment. Instead, they relied more on their intuition (such as, "I prefer familiar things") when evaluating the stimuli. The data from the two sets of results suggest that individuals may adjust their evaluation if they believe that their judgment has been biased, even though it may not be biased, with the direction of their correction depending on the naive theories they hold. The view that individuals rely on higher-order metacognitive theories and engage in effortful correctional processes when they are motivated to process information differs from the systematic processing account offered by Rothman and Schwarz (1998). Whereas theory-based correction is about attending to and reversing the effects of heuristics, systematic processing is about elaborating on the content of the information as opposed to considering heuristics. It is also interesting to note that the use of metacognitive theories is not always spontaneous and automatic (Schwarz, 2004). Theory-based correction is effortful and is observed only when cognitive resources are expended (e.g., Martin, Seta, & Crelia, 1990; Meyers-Levy & Sternthal, 1993). Studies designed to tease out these two explanations more clearly should shed light on the role that metacognition plays in decision making. A future research agenda may include some of these questions: How do naive theories get developed? Are naive theories universal or individual specific? What are the antecedents for the use of higher- versus lower-order theories? Is conscious awareness of a naive theory necessary for it to be used (or reversed)?
FLUENCY-BASED AFFECT When discussing the effects of processing fluency on judgment, Schwarz (2004) makes the distinction between theory-based attribution of perceptual fluency (affecting judgments of fame, truth, prior exposures, etc.) and positive affect transfer (affecting judgments of liking and preferences). According to Schwarz, the experience of processing fluency may be attributed to characteristics of the stimulus based on respondents' naive theories relevant to the stimulus (e.g., "it has higher visual clarity") or the respondents' state of knowl-
edge (e.g., "this statement is true"). Indeed, perceptual fluency as the result of prior exposure has been shown to be misattributed to other characteristics of the previously presented stimuli such as clarity, density, or brightness (e.g., Jacoby et al., 1989; Lee, 2001; Mandler, Nakamura, & Van Zandt, 1987; Witherspoon & Allan, 1985). Note that in most of these studies, participants were asked to make judgments along some psychophysical dimensions that can be verified objectively.Thus, they might feel the need to recruit evidence on which to base their judgment. When relevant objective information is unavailable, participants may rely on other cues such as processing fluency as the basis of their judgment. And when they become aware of the bias, as when the source of the processing fluency is made known to them, participants may adjust their initial evaluation to correct for the bias. Schwarz (2004) argued that a different mechanism is at work when affective judgments are involved. Unlike cognitive judgments, performance accuracy of affective judgments is not meaningful, and it cannot be verified. Indeed, the mere exposure literature offers ample evidence for fluency-based preferences, and the resultant more favorable affective response is thought to reflect the positive experience of fluent processing rather than naive theories (Reber, Winkielman, & Schwarz, 1998; Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001). Thus, individuals would have no need to correct their responses even when they become aware of the source of the perceptual fluency. Consistent with this view, Lee (2002, Study 2) demonstrated that participants will correct their fluency-based theory-driven cognitive judgment but not their fluency-based affective judgment. In that study, participants were first presented with a series of abstract patterns, each of which was made up of 1,500 little triangles. They were then asked to indicate in two forced-choice tasks which of the two patterns presented they preferred, and which of the two patterns presented consisted of more triangles. At the time of test, the targets had been presented zero, one, three, or six times. For the cognitive judgment task involving the number of triangles, the effect of exposure on choice showed a quadratic trend. Participants were more likely to select old patterns that had been presented once as the one that had more triangles, but target identification declined as the number of exposures increased such that those patterns repeated six times were no more likely to be selected than those that had not been presented. Presumably, as exposure frequency increased, participants were more likely to recognize that the patterns had been previously presented and, thus, were more likely to become aware of the potential bias that prior exposure might have on their judgment. Hence they adjusted their responses downward. For the affective judgment task, however, the results showed a monotonic relation between repetition and preference, with no correction being observed as the number of exposures increased (see Figure 1). These results are at odds with the view that fluency-based affective judgment is driven by naive theories. Interestingly, Stang (1974) pre-
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FIGURE 1 Cognitive and affective responses as a function of exposure frequency. From A. Y.Lee, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, p. 1261, Copyright 2001 by Sage Publications. Adapted with permission of Sage Publications.
sented evidence suggesting that people may even have an implicit theory about the positive relation between frequency of exposure and affective favorability. Specifically, Stang (1974) asked participants to imagine that they had seen some Turkish words in varying frequencies, and found that their subsequent affective ratings for these words mirrored typical results of mere exposure studies. Although affective judgment toward targets that are perceptually or conceptually fluent is believed to reflect the hedonic nature of fluent processing, favorable attitudes toward targets described in persuasive messages that are easy to process seem to be driven by theory. Evidence for this conjecture comes from recent research in regulatory focus theory. According to regulatory focus theory, there are two distinct self-regulatory strategies (Higgins, 1987). One strategy emphasizes the pursuit of gains, aspirations toward ideals, and the avoidance of nongains, termed promotion focus; the other emphasizes the pursuit of nonlosses, fulfillment of obligations, and avoidance of losses, termed prevention focus. Although any specific goal may be pursued with either a promotion or a prevention focus, some goals are more compatible with a particular self-regulatory strategy, resulting in a higher level of "fit" (Higgins, 2000). Regulatory fit is experienced when individuals pursue an approach goal with a promotion focus, and an avoidance goal with a prevention focus; or when individuals with a promotion focus strive to pursue gains versus nonlosses, and those with a prevention focus strive to avoid losses versus nongains (Idson, Liberman, & Higgins, 2000). In a recent series of studies, Lee and Aaker (2004) showed that messages that are characterized as high versus low fit are easier to process, and that participants' experience of processing fluency mediated their attitudes toward the target.
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Specifically, the target (e.g., Welch's grape juice) was rated more favorably when the message contained a promotion benefit presented in a gain frame (e.g., "Get energized") versus a loss frame (e.g., "Don't miss out on getting energized"), and when the message contained a prevention benefit framed negatively (e.g., "Don't miss out on preventing clogged arteries") versus positively (e.g., "Prevent clogged arteries"). Participants indicated that high-fit messages were easier to process than low-fit messages. Furthermore, when target words were presented briefly (50 msec) on the computer screen, participants were able to identify more readily those words selected from high-fit versus low-fit messages. Importantly, although participants in the high-fit conditions generated more support arguments than those in the low-fit conditions, their attitudes toward the target were mediated by ease of processing the message rather than by the number of support arguments generated. The view is that participants interpreted their experience of processing ease in the high- versus low-fit conditions as indicative of the message being more persuasive, and their perceptions of the effectiveness of the message in turn mediated brand evaluation. Thus, it appears that two different mechanisms involving processing fluency are at work even in the domain of preferences. First, individuals' attitudes toward a target may become more favorable when the target can be more readily processed, with the more favorable attitudes reflecting the hedonically pleasing experience of processing fluency. For example, individuals will evaluate a bottle of ketchup more favorably when they have been exposed to an ad featuring the bottle of ketchup (i.e., perceptual fluency is enhanced) or when they have been exposed to an ad featuring a jar of mayonnaise (i.e., conceptual fluency is enhanced via activation through the associative network in memory; Lee & Labroo, 2004). Second, individuals' attitudes toward a target may also become more favorable as the result of inferential processes involving naive theories. This happens when individuals experience fluent processing of the persuasive message about the target and attribute the processing fluency to the message being more persuasive and compelling (e.g., Lee & Aaker, 2004). The distinction between the two mechanisms underlying preference judgments has important implications for consumer researchers because theory-driven fluency-based attitudes are subject to correction but not so for affect-driven fluency-based attitudes. Future research may seek to further examine the difference between the two mechanisms underlying fluency effects on preferences and liking, and investigate antecedents and boundary conditions for each of the two types of fluency effects.
CONCLUSION The evidence is clear that the way in which individuals process and retrieve information plays an important yet complex role in judgment and decision making. Sometimes judgment
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is based on information that is accessible in memory. When this happens, people may form a judgment by counting the number of support and counterarguments that they retrieve, or they may elaborate on the content of information retrieved and form a judgment by weighing the pros and cons of the arguments that are available. Similarly, brand choice may also reflect what is accessible in memory. For instance, exemplars that come to mind readily are more likely to be included in the consideration set and be selected in memory-based choice situations (Lee, 2002). However, judgments are not always made on the basis of the arguments available in memory, sometimes judgments are based instead on the ease with which the arguments are retrieved from memory. That is, individuals' naive theories about how easy or difficult it is to retrieve arguments and generate thoughts may form the basis of their judgment. For example, the easier it is to generate arguments, the more representative these arguments may be, hence the more weight they cany. And the opposite is true when individuals experience difficulty in generating the arguments (Schwarz, 2004). Further, these inferential judgments based on naive theories may be interpreted to be potentially biased based on higher-order metacognitive theories. When that happens, individuals may be observed to adjust their judgments to correct for the bias. Metacognition pertaining to how easy or difficult it is to process available information about the target may also account for individuals' attitude toward the target. Drawing on naive theories, individuals may judge those messages that are easy to process to be more persuasive. Indeed, the processing fluency effect has been shown to result in stronger beliefs regarding brand benefits (e.g., Hawkins & Hoch, 1992) and more favorable attitudes toward the brand (e.g., Lee & Aaker, 2004). Finally, judgments may also depend on how easy it is to process the target rather than information about the target at the time of evaluation. Targets that are more easily identifiable (i.e., perceptually fluent) are preferred, as are those that are more readily categorized (i.e., conceptually fluent; Lee & Labroo, 2004). Empirically, both perceptual and conceptual fluency tend to show similar effects on affective judgment and are thought to reflect the experience of processing fluency that is positively valenced (for a review, see Winkielman, Schwarz, Fazendeiro, & Reber, 2003). However, it is important to note that the two types of fluency represent distinct constructs with unique antecedents and consequences. For example, elaboration benefits conceptual fluency but not perceptual fluency (Hamann, 1990). In contrast, perceptual fluency is sensitive to modality shift but not so for conceptual fluency (Jacoby & Dallas, 1981). Furthermore, brands that are perceptually fluent are more likely to be selected in stimulus-based versus memory-based choice situations, and the reverse is true of brands that are conceptually fluent (Lee, 2002). Researchers interested in investigating further the role of processing fluency in decision making should note the dissociations between the two types of pro-
cessing fluency. For example, perceptual fluency may be experienced at a nonconscious level whereas conceptual fluency may be experienced at a more conscious level; hence potential biases arising from the attribution of conceptual fluency may be more readily recognized compared to potential biases arising from the attribution of perceptual fluency. As a result, the likelihood of a correction may be higher for conceptual fluency effects than for perceptual fluency effects. To summarize, processing fluency plays an important role in judgment and choice. Some of the effects are "direct," such as higher probability of brand choice as the result of increased accessibility of the brand, or more favorable attitudes as the result of positive affect transfer. Other effects are more "indirect" and are theory-based. A deeper understanding of the boundary conditions and finer delineation of the effects awaits future research. We thank Norbert Schwarz for providing us with the framework on which important future research can be based.
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Received: January 28,2004
The Prevalence of Metacognitive Routes to Judgment Angela Y. Lee Northwestern University
Metacognitive routes to judgment may be taken more often than suggested by Schwarz (2004). First,judgments that appear to be consistent with a systematicprocessing account may be based on higher order metacognitive theories. Specifically,individuals' inferentialjudgments based on naive theories about retrieval ease may be interpreted to be potentially biased, resulting in an adjustment in the opposite direction of the initial judgment to correct for the bias. Second, whereas favorable attitudes may reflect the positive experience of processing fluency, favorableattitudes may also reflect naive theories at work. When the target (e.g.,brandname,logo, etc.) canbe more easily processed, the hedonic experience of processing fluency gives rise to more favorable attitudes toward the target. However,wheninformation about the target (e.g.,anad highlightingbenefits of the brand) can be more easily processed, individualsmay interpret the experience of processing fluency based on naive theory and attribute the experienceto the information being more persuasive, resulting in more favorable attitudes toward the target. Understanding the role of metacognition is an integral part of understanding how people make judgments. Past research has demonstrated effectively that individuals base their judgments not only on what comes to mind, but also on how information comes to mind. Schwarz (2004) presents an excellent review on how ease of information retrieval and processing may be used as inputs to formulating judgments. He contrasts the experience of retrieval ease with the implications of accessible content as the basis of judgment and proposes that people often use naive theories of mental processes to interpret their experience of processing ease, which in turn affects judgment. In discussing the effects of fluent processing of new information on judgments, Schwarz argues that whereas certain judgments such as those about truth or fame are theory-based, judgments of preferences and liking reflect the positive valence of processing ease. In this comment, I wish to extend Schwarz's (2004) discussion along two fronts and propose that the metacognitive route to judgment may be taken even more often than Schwarz suggests. First, I propose that individuals' metacognitive experience may also account for judgments that are thought to be based on content of information rather than on naive theories (Rothman & Schwarz, 1998). More Requests for reprints should be sent to Angela Y. Lee, Department of Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2001 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208. E-mail: [email protected]
specifically, Schwarz suggests that individuals who are not motivated to process information often base their judgment on how they retrieve information, whereas the motivated are likely to base their judgment on what they retrieve. That is, the former rely on their metacognitive theory to interpret the experience of retrieval ease, and the latter rely on systematic processing of relevant information. I propose that metacognitive theory may be the basis of judgment even for the motivated. Specifically, these individuals may apply a higher-order metacognitive theory to interpret their initial response that relies on the naive theory of retrieval ease, and subsequently adjust their response to correct for the potential bias, eliciting a pattern of judgments consistent with the content of the information retrieved. Second, I refine Schwarz's discussion on the effects of processing fluency on judgments of liking and preference by making salient the distinction between how individuals process the target (e.g., brand X) and how they process information about the target (e.g., an ad highlighting the benefits of brand X). According to Schwarz, individuals' metacognitive experience may be the basis for judgments of truth, but it is their positive experience of processing fluency that drives judgments of preference. That is, the applicability of naive theories on judgment depends on the nature of the task. I propose that the role of the metacognitive experience of processing fluency within the domain of preference may also depend on the nature of the stimulus: Whereas enhanced evaluation of the target may be driven by individuals' hedonic experi-
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ence of processing the target itself, enhanced evaluation may also reflect individuals' naive theories about their subjective experience when they are processing information about the target. With respect to the processing of the target itself, the individual's attitude toward the target will become more favorable when the target can be more readily identified (i.e., it is perceptually fluent) or when it can be readily categorized and its meaning easily encoded (i.e., it is conceptually fluent; e.g., Lee & Labroo, 2004). These results are thought to reflect the experience of fluent processing that is hedonically pleasing rather than the process of attribution based on naive theories. However, with respect to the processing of persuasive message promoting the target, people will also develop more favorable attitudes toward the target when they experience fluent processing of such messages, in which case the effect of enhanced evaluation may be the result of metacognitive theories rather than due to the affective nature of processing fluency (e.g., Lee & Aaker, 2004).
THEORY-BASED CORRECTION According to Schwarz (2004), processing motivation moderates the individual's reliance on accessible content versus accessibility experience when making judgments. Whereas the unmotivated rely on naive theories relating to accessibility ease, the motivated engage in systematic processing and rely instead on the content of the information. I propose that the use of naive theories may not be the process of choice solely for the uninvolved and the unmotivated. Rather, the difference that motivation makes may be one concerning the complexity of the metacognitive experience. When motivation to process information is low, individuals rely on the naive theory that retrieval ease indicates frequency of instantiation. However, when individuals are motivated to process information, they may invoke the naive theory that their initial response has been biased by their metacognitive experience of accessibility ease-"I may have inappropriately interpreted the ease (difficulty) with which I retrieved support arguments as indicative of X (not) having more advantages than what X offers in reality." These individuals thus feel that they should adjust their evaluation of X downward (upward) to reflect their true attitude toward X. Specifically, when individuals become aware of a potential bias in their judgment due to either external (e.g., a situational context) or internal (e.g., their affective state) cues, they may adjust their initial evaluation to correct for the bias (Bargh, 1992). The view is that a higher-order metacognitive theory rather than systematic processing of the information retrieved is the mechanism underlyingjudgment when motivation to process information is high. To illustrate, Rothman and Schwarz (1998) asked participants to first list either three or eight risk-increasing or risk-decreasing behaviors and then indicate how vulnerable they were to heart disease. They found that participants with
no family history of heart disease relied on their ease (or difficulty) of retrieving risk-increasing or risk-decreasing behaviors to gauge their vulnerability. Participants recalling eight risk-increasing behaviors reported lower vulnerability than those recalling three such behaviors, whereas those recalling eight versus three risk-decreasing behaviors indicated higher vulnerability. One naive theory underlying these data may be the following: The more often one engages in certain behaviors, the better represented these behaviors are in memory, and hence the easier it is to recall them. Thus, "if it is difficult to recall risk-increasing behaviors, I probably do not engage in such activities very often and am, therefore, not very vulnerable." Similarly, those recalling eight versus three risk-deceasing behaviors probably thought that they did not engage in health-promoting activities too often and hence must be more vulnerable. In contrast, the reverse was observed for participants with a family history of heart disease. Their responses were not consistent with the ease of retrieval heuristics, nor were their judgments invariant across the different conditions. Rather, their judgments seemed to be affected by the type of behaviors as well as by the number of behaviors they recalled. Specifically, these participants reported higher vulnerability after recalling eight versus three risk-increasing behaviors and lower vulnerability after recalling eight versus three risk-decreasing behaviors. Although Schwarz (2004) cites systematic processing of the retrieved information to account for these findings, there are at least four different mechanisms that may potentially underlie these results. Rothman and Schwarz (1998) suggested that these participants engaged in systematic processing, rather than heuristic processing that relied on retrieval ease, to formulate their judgments. However, this explanation is problematic because participants did not systematically recruit objective measures of vulnerability from memory, which would have resulted in null effects of the experimental manipulations. Instead, their judgments were consistent with the number of behaviors they retrieved in response to the experimenter's instructions. An alternative explanation is that participants formulated their judgments by relying on a simple heuristic based on the number of behaviors they retrieved-"I engage in quite (just) a few healthy activities, I must therefore be at low (high) risk of heart disease." However, counting the number of activities listed should be cognitively less demanding than counting the number of activities listed and then interpreting the ease of retrieval experience using metacognitive theories. Presumably individuals who have a family history of heart disease are motivated to expend more rather than fewer cognitive resources in arriving at their judgments; it is thus not likely that these motivated participants would be relying on a simpler heuristic than retrieval ease. A third possible account is that participants with a family history of heart disease might have been more conscious of the risk factor and therefore found it relatively easy to list eight risk-related behaviors. Hence the following naive the-
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ory may apply: "If it was not too difficult to list eight risk-increasing (risk-decreasing) behaviors, I must engage in many such activities and hence must (not) be at risk of heart disease." However, these participants did indicate that generating eight behaviors was more difficult than generating three behaviors, thus casting some doubt on this interpretation. Finally, a fourth explanation for the data is the metacognition that one's judgment of vulnerability may be influenced by the ease or difficulty with which one recalls risk-related behaviors and hence an adjustment is necessary to correct for the overassessment or underassessment. That is, those recalling eight risk-increasing (risk-decreasing) behaviors adjusted their initial judgment of low (high) vulnerability because they recognized that their ease of retrieval might have been misattributed to the frequency with which they engaged in certain behaviors, and expended cognitive efforts to correct for the potential bias. Although there is no direct evidence in support of this account, this explanation that is based on higher-order metacognition seems most plausible. At the minimum, the results of this study highlight the possibility that the metacognitive theory based on accessibility ease is subsumed by a higher-order theory, leading to a pattern of results that reverses the misattributed effects of the accessibility experience as participants adjust their responses to correct for the bias. This alternative explanation for the results has important implications for consumer researchers seeking to understand the process by which people make decisions. It suggests that naive theories may play an important role even when individuals are motivated to process information, and that processes of correction may be better understood as processes reflecting an interpretation of higher-order metacognitive experiences. Evidence of misattributions and biases based on certain naive theories is well documented in the literature (e.g., Cantor, Bryant, & Zillmann, 1974; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Losch & Cacioppo, 1990; Zanna & Cooper, 1974). Jacoby, Woloshyn, and Kelley (1989), for example, demonstrated the false fame effect by first presenting participants with the names of some people who were "not famous." After some time, participants were asked to judge if some names represented someone famous. The results showed that nonfamous people whose names were presented earlier were judged to be famous, along with names of famous people. Presumably, participants could not remember the names on the nonfamous list, and attributed the feeling of familiarity to fame-"names of famous people are often mentioned in the media, so a name with a familiar ring is probably famous". However, many studies also showed that individuals corrected their misattributed responses when they became aware of the source of the bias (e.g., Lombardi, Higgins, & Bargh, 1987; Petty & Wegener, 1993; Reisenzein & Gattinger, 1982; Schwarz & Clore, 1983; Strack, Schwarz, Bless, Kuebler, & Waenke, 1993). Whittlesea, Jacoby, and Girard (1990), for instance, manipulated the clarity of the stimulus as presented on the computer screen and found that participants made rec-
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ognition judgments based on the visual clarity of the stimulus. However, this bias disappeared as participants corrected their judgment when the clarity manipulation was made known to them. Both biased judgments and corrections may reflect one or more naive theories at work. Processes of correction in particular invoke the metacognition that judgments may be unduly influenced by naive theories, rendering an adjustment necessary. The direction of the bias and the corresponding correction is thus dictated by theory; and the particular theory invoked depends on what is deemed most appropriate in each context. For example, to test if the misattribution of processing fluency may account for the mere exposure effect, both Bornstein and D'Agostino (1994) and Lee (1994) presented their participants with old and new stimuli for evaluation and informed half of their participants that the stimuli to be evaluated were new, and the other half that the stimuli were old. It appeared that participants in the two studies held very different naive theories when evaluating the stimuli, as evidenced by their correcting their judgments in the opposite direction. More specifically, Bornstein and D'Agostino (1994; Study 1) presented their participants with black-and-white photographs of women via a tachistoscope at the rate of 5 msec each. Participants were subsequently presented with a series of test stimuli that included both old and new stimuli, and were either informed that they had never seen the stimuli before, or that they had actually been presented with the stimuli subliminally via the tachistoscope earlier. Participants were then asked to evaluate the photographs on a rating scale. Results showed that although participants preferred photographs that they had seen before, they also rated old photographs they thought they had not seen before more positively, and new photographs that they thought they had seen earlier less positively. One plausible explanation is that participants in this study were not aware of the stimuli that were presented subliminally. When informed by the experimenter that the stimuli had not been presented earlier, they interpreted the novelty of the stimuli as something that the experimenter was particularly interested in-"Otherwise, why bother telling me the obvious?"-and rated the "new" stimuli more positively. And when the experimenter informed them that the stimuli had been presented earlier subliminally via the tachistoscope, they were concerned about being subjected to nonconscious influence-"They are alerting me in case my judgment may have been biased"-and hence adjusted their initial ratings downward for these "old" stimuli. In another study using different stimuli and a longer exposure duration, the same set of experimenter's instructions led to a different pattern of results (Lee, 1994). In this study, participants were first presented with abstract patterns using a slide projector at the rate of 8 sec each. They were subsequently asked to evaluate both new and old patterns. Similar to those in the Bornstein and D'Agostino study (1994), participants were either told that the stimuli they were about to
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rate were ones they had not seen before or ones that had been presented earlier. Similar to Bornstein and D'Agostino's (1994) findings, old stimuli were preferred to new stimuli. However, contrary to their findings, when the stimuli were old, whether participants thought the stimuli were new or old did not make a difference. And when the stimuli were new, participants rated those stimuli they thought they had seen earlier more positively. Interestingly, information that the stimuli had been presented earlier led to less favorable affective responses in the Bornstein and D'Agostino study, but to more favorable responses in the Lee (1994) study. Possibly, participants in the Lee (1994) study, who were aware of their exposure to the difficult-to-recognize stimuli, did not interpret the prior exposure information as an important part of the experiment. Instead, they relied more on their intuition (such as, "I prefer familiar things") when evaluating the stimuli. The data from the two sets of results suggest that individuals may adjust their evaluation if they believe that their judgment has been biased, even though it may not be biased, with the direction of their correction depending on the naive theories they hold. The view that individuals rely on higher-order metacognitive theories and engage in effortful correctional processes when they are motivated to process information differs from the systematic processing account offered by Rothman and Schwarz (1998). Whereas theory-based correction is about attending to and reversing the effects of heuristics, systematic processing is about elaborating on the content of the information as opposed to considering heuristics. It is also interesting to note that the use of metacognitive theories is not always spontaneous and automatic (Schwarz, 2004). Theory-based correction is effortful and is observed only when cognitive resources are expended (e.g., Martin, Seta, & Crelia, 1990; Meyers-Levy & Sternthal, 1993). Studies designed to tease out these two explanations more clearly should shed light on the role that metacognition plays in decision making. A future research agenda may include some of these questions: How do naive theories get developed? Are naive theories universal or individual specific? What are the antecedents for the use of higher- versus lower-order theories? Is conscious awareness of a naive theory necessary for it to be used (or reversed)?
FLUENCY-BASED AFFECT When discussing the effects of processing fluency on judgment, Schwarz (2004) makes the distinction between theory-based attribution of perceptual fluency (affecting judgments of fame, truth, prior exposures, etc.) and positive affect transfer (affecting judgments of liking and preferences). According to Schwarz, the experience of processing fluency may be attributed to characteristics of the stimulus based on respondents' naive theories relevant to the stimulus (e.g., "it has higher visual clarity") or the respondents' state of knowl-
edge (e.g., "this statement is true"). Indeed, perceptual fluency as the result of prior exposure has been shown to be misattributed to other characteristics of the previously presented stimuli such as clarity, density, or brightness (e.g., Jacoby et al., 1989; Lee, 2001; Mandler, Nakamura, & Van Zandt, 1987; Witherspoon & Allan, 1985). Note that in most of these studies, participants were asked to make judgments along some psychophysical dimensions that can be verified objectively.Thus, they might feel the need to recruit evidence on which to base their judgment. When relevant objective information is unavailable, participants may rely on other cues such as processing fluency as the basis of their judgment. And when they become aware of the bias, as when the source of the processing fluency is made known to them, participants may adjust their initial evaluation to correct for the bias. Schwarz (2004) argued that a different mechanism is at work when affective judgments are involved. Unlike cognitive judgments, performance accuracy of affective judgments is not meaningful, and it cannot be verified. Indeed, the mere exposure literature offers ample evidence for fluency-based preferences, and the resultant more favorable affective response is thought to reflect the positive experience of fluent processing rather than naive theories (Reber, Winkielman, & Schwarz, 1998; Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001). Thus, individuals would have no need to correct their responses even when they become aware of the source of the perceptual fluency. Consistent with this view, Lee (2002, Study 2) demonstrated that participants will correct their fluency-based theory-driven cognitive judgment but not their fluency-based affective judgment. In that study, participants were first presented with a series of abstract patterns, each of which was made up of 1,500 little triangles. They were then asked to indicate in two forced-choice tasks which of the two patterns presented they preferred, and which of the two patterns presented consisted of more triangles. At the time of test, the targets had been presented zero, one, three, or six times. For the cognitive judgment task involving the number of triangles, the effect of exposure on choice showed a quadratic trend. Participants were more likely to select old patterns that had been presented once as the one that had more triangles, but target identification declined as the number of exposures increased such that those patterns repeated six times were no more likely to be selected than those that had not been presented. Presumably, as exposure frequency increased, participants were more likely to recognize that the patterns had been previously presented and, thus, were more likely to become aware of the potential bias that prior exposure might have on their judgment. Hence they adjusted their responses downward. For the affective judgment task, however, the results showed a monotonic relation between repetition and preference, with no correction being observed as the number of exposures increased (see Figure 1). These results are at odds with the view that fluency-based affective judgment is driven by naive theories. Interestingly, Stang (1974) pre-
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FIGURE 1 Cognitive and affective responses as a function of exposure frequency. From A. Y.Lee, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, p. 1261, Copyright 2001 by Sage Publications. Adapted with permission of Sage Publications.
sented evidence suggesting that people may even have an implicit theory about the positive relation between frequency of exposure and affective favorability. Specifically, Stang (1974) asked participants to imagine that they had seen some Turkish words in varying frequencies, and found that their subsequent affective ratings for these words mirrored typical results of mere exposure studies. Although affective judgment toward targets that are perceptually or conceptually fluent is believed to reflect the hedonic nature of fluent processing, favorable attitudes toward targets described in persuasive messages that are easy to process seem to be driven by theory. Evidence for this conjecture comes from recent research in regulatory focus theory. According to regulatory focus theory, there are two distinct self-regulatory strategies (Higgins, 1987). One strategy emphasizes the pursuit of gains, aspirations toward ideals, and the avoidance of nongains, termed promotion focus; the other emphasizes the pursuit of nonlosses, fulfillment of obligations, and avoidance of losses, termed prevention focus. Although any specific goal may be pursued with either a promotion or a prevention focus, some goals are more compatible with a particular self-regulatory strategy, resulting in a higher level of "fit" (Higgins, 2000). Regulatory fit is experienced when individuals pursue an approach goal with a promotion focus, and an avoidance goal with a prevention focus; or when individuals with a promotion focus strive to pursue gains versus nonlosses, and those with a prevention focus strive to avoid losses versus nongains (Idson, Liberman, & Higgins, 2000). In a recent series of studies, Lee and Aaker (2004) showed that messages that are characterized as high versus low fit are easier to process, and that participants' experience of processing fluency mediated their attitudes toward the target.
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Specifically, the target (e.g., Welch's grape juice) was rated more favorably when the message contained a promotion benefit presented in a gain frame (e.g., "Get energized") versus a loss frame (e.g., "Don't miss out on getting energized"), and when the message contained a prevention benefit framed negatively (e.g., "Don't miss out on preventing clogged arteries") versus positively (e.g., "Prevent clogged arteries"). Participants indicated that high-fit messages were easier to process than low-fit messages. Furthermore, when target words were presented briefly (50 msec) on the computer screen, participants were able to identify more readily those words selected from high-fit versus low-fit messages. Importantly, although participants in the high-fit conditions generated more support arguments than those in the low-fit conditions, their attitudes toward the target were mediated by ease of processing the message rather than by the number of support arguments generated. The view is that participants interpreted their experience of processing ease in the high- versus low-fit conditions as indicative of the message being more persuasive, and their perceptions of the effectiveness of the message in turn mediated brand evaluation. Thus, it appears that two different mechanisms involving processing fluency are at work even in the domain of preferences. First, individuals' attitudes toward a target may become more favorable when the target can be more readily processed, with the more favorable attitudes reflecting the hedonically pleasing experience of processing fluency. For example, individuals will evaluate a bottle of ketchup more favorably when they have been exposed to an ad featuring the bottle of ketchup (i.e., perceptual fluency is enhanced) or when they have been exposed to an ad featuring a jar of mayonnaise (i.e., conceptual fluency is enhanced via activation through the associative network in memory; Lee & Labroo, 2004). Second, individuals' attitudes toward a target may also become more favorable as the result of inferential processes involving naive theories. This happens when individuals experience fluent processing of the persuasive message about the target and attribute the processing fluency to the message being more persuasive and compelling (e.g., Lee & Aaker, 2004). The distinction between the two mechanisms underlying preference judgments has important implications for consumer researchers because theory-driven fluency-based attitudes are subject to correction but not so for affect-driven fluency-based attitudes. Future research may seek to further examine the difference between the two mechanisms underlying fluency effects on preferences and liking, and investigate antecedents and boundary conditions for each of the two types of fluency effects.
CONCLUSION The evidence is clear that the way in which individuals process and retrieve information plays an important yet complex role in judgment and decision making. Sometimes judgment
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is based on information that is accessible in memory. When this happens, people may form a judgment by counting the number of support and counterarguments that they retrieve, or they may elaborate on the content of information retrieved and form a judgment by weighing the pros and cons of the arguments that are available. Similarly, brand choice may also reflect what is accessible in memory. For instance, exemplars that come to mind readily are more likely to be included in the consideration set and be selected in memory-based choice situations (Lee, 2002). However, judgments are not always made on the basis of the arguments available in memory, sometimes judgments are based instead on the ease with which the arguments are retrieved from memory. That is, individuals' naive theories about how easy or difficult it is to retrieve arguments and generate thoughts may form the basis of their judgment. For example, the easier it is to generate arguments, the more representative these arguments may be, hence the more weight they cany. And the opposite is true when individuals experience difficulty in generating the arguments (Schwarz, 2004). Further, these inferential judgments based on naive theories may be interpreted to be potentially biased based on higher-order metacognitive theories. When that happens, individuals may be observed to adjust their judgments to correct for the bias. Metacognition pertaining to how easy or difficult it is to process available information about the target may also account for individuals' attitude toward the target. Drawing on naive theories, individuals may judge those messages that are easy to process to be more persuasive. Indeed, the processing fluency effect has been shown to result in stronger beliefs regarding brand benefits (e.g., Hawkins & Hoch, 1992) and more favorable attitudes toward the brand (e.g., Lee & Aaker, 2004). Finally, judgments may also depend on how easy it is to process the target rather than information about the target at the time of evaluation. Targets that are more easily identifiable (i.e., perceptually fluent) are preferred, as are those that are more readily categorized (i.e., conceptually fluent; Lee & Labroo, 2004). Empirically, both perceptual and conceptual fluency tend to show similar effects on affective judgment and are thought to reflect the experience of processing fluency that is positively valenced (for a review, see Winkielman, Schwarz, Fazendeiro, & Reber, 2003). However, it is important to note that the two types of fluency represent distinct constructs with unique antecedents and consequences. For example, elaboration benefits conceptual fluency but not perceptual fluency (Hamann, 1990). In contrast, perceptual fluency is sensitive to modality shift but not so for conceptual fluency (Jacoby & Dallas, 1981). Furthermore, brands that are perceptually fluent are more likely to be selected in stimulus-based versus memory-based choice situations, and the reverse is true of brands that are conceptually fluent (Lee, 2002). Researchers interested in investigating further the role of processing fluency in decision making should note the dissociations between the two types of pro-
cessing fluency. For example, perceptual fluency may be experienced at a nonconscious level whereas conceptual fluency may be experienced at a more conscious level; hence potential biases arising from the attribution of conceptual fluency may be more readily recognized compared to potential biases arising from the attribution of perceptual fluency. As a result, the likelihood of a correction may be higher for conceptual fluency effects than for perceptual fluency effects. To summarize, processing fluency plays an important role in judgment and choice. Some of the effects are "direct," such as higher probability of brand choice as the result of increased accessibility of the brand, or more favorable attitudes as the result of positive affect transfer. Other effects are more "indirect" and are theory-based. A deeper understanding of the boundary conditions and finer delineation of the effects awaits future research. We thank Norbert Schwarz for providing us with the framework on which important future research can be based.
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Received: January 28,2004