Transforming Consumers Through Emotional Calibration

This research develops a theoretical framework to understand consumer emotional calibration and its impact on decision quality. Emotional calibration was achieved by either increasing emotional ability (study 1) or confidence (study 2). As a result, heightened emotional calibration engendered a more analytic processing strategy thereby decreasing the impact of implicit food associations on decision making. Miscalibrated individuals deferred to a more heuristic-based decision strategy thereby increasing the impact of the tasty = unhealthy implicit food association. A third study was designed to further understand the emotionally calibrated consumer by demonstrating that motivation is the theoretical mechanism underlying the ability to engage greater resources to support analytic processing and higher quality decisions.

Citation:

Kidwell Blair, Hardesty David, Childers Terry, and Hasford Jonathan (2011) ,"Transforming Consumers Through Emotional Calibration", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 9, eds. Alan Bradshaw, Chris Hackley, and Pauline Maclaran, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 518-519.