The Impact of Inconsistent Word of Mouth on Brand Attitude

ABSTRACT - This paper attempts to uncover how inconsistent word of mouth including both positive and negative information is processed and how it influences consumers’ attitude, attitude certainty and association between attitude and purchase intention. The findings of this study revealed that the individuals who are exposed to inconsistent word of mouth about an unfamiliar brand have a neutral attitude when compared with the individuals who are exposed to consistent word of mouth and that they are, however, more certain about the formed attitude and show stronger association between attitude and purchase intention. The relationships between inconsistent word of mouth and attitude certainty and between inconsistent word of mouth and attitude-purchase intention consistency appear to be moderated by ambivalence and tolerance-of-ambiguity.

Citation:

JunSang Lim and Sharon E. Beatty (2005) ,"The Impact of Inconsistent Word of Mouth on Brand Attitude", in AP - Asia Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 6, eds. Yong-Uon Ha and Youjae Yi, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 262-270.

Asia Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 6, 2005      Pages 262-270

THE IMPACT OF INCONSISTENT WORD OF MOUTH ON BRAND ATTITUDE

JunSang Lim, University of Alabama, U.S.A.

Sharon E. Beatty, University of Alabama, U.S.A.

ABSTRACT -

This paper attempts to uncover how inconsistent word of mouth including both positive and negative information is processed and how it influences consumers’ attitude, attitude certainty and association between attitude and purchase intention. The findings of this study revealed that the individuals who are exposed to inconsistent word of mouth about an unfamiliar brand have a neutral attitude when compared with the individuals who are exposed to consistent word of mouth and that they are, however, more certain about the formed attitude and show stronger association between attitude and purchase intention. The relationships between inconsistent word of mouth and attitude certainty and between inconsistent word of mouth and attitude-purchase intention consistency appear to be moderated by ambivalence and tolerance-of-ambiguity.

INTRODUCTION

Word of mouth refers to "informal communication directed at other consumers about the ownership, usage, or characteristics of particular goods and services and/or their sellers" (Gremler, Gwinner, and Brown 2001. p.44). Consumers frequently rely on word of mouth to collect information related to consumption or develop attitudes toward brands or make purchase decisions (Sundaram and Webster 1999). The importance of word of mouth in the marketplace is well recognized because of the role it plays in shaping consumers’ attitudes and purchase behaviors (Bickart and Schindler 2002; Herr, Kardes, and Kim 1991).

Previous research has examined the unique characteristics of word of mouth which differentiate it from formal communication methods (Silverman 1997), the reasons why word of mouth is more accessible than other types of information (Herr, Kardes and Kim 1991), and the extent to which the effectiveness of the word of mouth is affected by several factors, such as characteristics of word of mouth receivers and providers, and various situational factors (Lau and Ng 2001). Word of mouth has been studied both as an input into consumer decision making and as an outcome of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The study area of word of mouth has been extended from physical goods to service products (Bansal and Voyer 2000) and to the internet context (Bickart and Schindler 2002).

Such studies have undoubtedly expanded our understanding of word-of-mouth communications. There are, however, other aspects of word-of-mouth communications that remain unexplored. One unexplored issue is how consumers respond to inconsistent word of mouth, which includes both positive and negative information. Most word of mouth research considers positive and negative word of mouth separately. This research assumes that consumers will not be exposed to positive and negative word of mouth simultaneously. But in the real marketplace consumers are frequently exposed to word of mouth containing both positive and negative information about brands.

Thus, to fully understand word of mouth, it is necessary to research how inconsistent word of mouth influences consumers’ brand attitude. Although inconsistent word of mouth is not well explored, the effect of how incongruity between product information and the retrieved product category schema on consumers’ information processing has been studied (Meyers-Levy and Tybout 1989 ; Sujan 1985 ; Sujan, Bettman, and Sujan 1986). Schema based information processing theory focuses on the inconsistency between the established product schema in memory and new information, and suggests that new information is evaluated on the basis of individual items if there is no relevant category in memory or if new information is inconsistent with the available category. Inconsistency in the content of new information is not well considered in this theory. Therefore, schema based information processing theory does not give clear answers to the following questions: when consumers are exposed to inconsistent word of mouth about an unfamiliar product category for which they did not have a well developed schema, how is inconsistent word of mouth processed and how does it influence brand attitude?

To look at the impact of inconsistent word of mouth on consumers’ brand attitude in this situation, this paper reviews the literature to understand 1) how inconsistent word of mouth may be processed, 2) how inconsistent word of mouth may affect brand attitude, and 3) whether or not individual difference factors may affect the relationship between inconsistent word of mouth and brand attitude.

INCONSISTENT WORD OF MOUTH AND BRAND ATTITUDE

Two-sided messages

Two-sided messages is a heavily researched topic in the persuasion literature. Two-sided messages can be regarded as inconsistent information in that a two-sided appeal contains non-favorable claims as well as favorable claims; thus, the findings of two-sided message research might provide insights into how inconsistent information is processed, and how it is related to consumers’ brand attitude.

Two previously developed theories, attribution theory and inoculation theory, explain how two-sided messages are processed and why they are more effective than one-sided messages. According to inoculation theory, when consumers are exposed to two-sided appeals, they attend more and are more motivated to process the appeals, and mild attacking arguments tend to strengthen cognitions. In turn, the increased cognitive responses positively affect attitude toward the ads and brands (Lang, Lee, and Zwick 1999; Crowley and Hoyer 1994). Attribution theory assumes that when consumers are exposed to advertisements they try to attribute claims in advertising either to the advertiser’s desire to sell a product or to the actual characteristics of a product. The inclusion of less favorable information in advertising leads the receiver of the messages to often conclude that the advertiser is telling the truth. This enhanced perception of advertiser credibility, in turn, strengthens beliefs regarding the advertised positive attributes (Hastak, and Park 1990).

Based on these theories, several studies suggest that two-sided messages tend to induce greater motivation to attend to and process the information (Pechmann 1992; Lang, Lee, and Zwick 1999). Thus, it has been hypothesized and tested that the increased attention, motivation, and cognitive processes positively influence the strength of attitude and purchase intention (Crowley and Hoyer 1994). However, the empirical results about the relationships between two-sided messages and attitude or purchase intention have been mixed. Kamins and Marks (1987) report that attitudes formed on the basis of two-sided messages are more persistent than attitudes based on comparable one-sided messages. But the findings of Pechmann (1992) do not support this relationship. Empirical studies have also produced mixed results regarding the impact of two-sided messages on purchase intentions. The two-sided messages are positively connected to purchase intention in Etgar and Goodwin (1982), Kamins (1989), Kamins, Brand, Heoke, and Moe (1989), but the results of Kamins and Marks (1987) are not significant.

Researchers have hypothesized that two-sided messages (inconsistent information) lead to more favorable attitudes and stronger purchase intentions. However, empirical findings are not consistent with these hypotheses. From the findings of two-sided messages, we can say that inconsistent information will be processed more intensively than consistent information. But it is not clear that inconsistent information processes result in more favorable attitudes and stronger purchase intentions. In contradiction to previous perspectives, Hastak and Park (1990) noted that the predicted advantages of two-sided messages on attitude may be relatively weak; thus, they suggested that two-sided messages do not necessarily result in more favorable attitudes. Nowlis, Kahn, and Dhar (2002) argue that the responses of people who are exposed to inconsistent information go to the middle point in the bipolar attitude measurement scale because favorable evaluations caused by positive information are neutralized by negative information. Thus, we are in favor of these latter perspectives in drawing up the hypothesis below:

H1: Individuals who are exposed to inconsistent word of mouth about an unfamiliar brand will have a neutral attitude when compared with individuals who are faced with consistent (positive or negative) word of mouth about an unfamiliar brand.

Attitude structure

It has been traditionally assumed that attitude structure is unidimensional. Positive and negative components of an attitudinal evaluation are linked together so that an increase in one will lead to a decrease in the other. This implies that an attitude target is not evaluated simultaneously as both positive and negative (Lavine, Thomsen, Zanna, and Borgida 1998). People, however, have two separate evaluation dimensions for positive and negative information, and these separate evaluation spaces are not linked to each other. Thus, positive and negative evaluative responses toward a single object can occupy separate dimensions. It is possible that one can have both positive and negative evaluations toward the same object (Cacioppo and Berntson 1994; Priester and Petty 1996). A coexistence of a positive and a negative evaluation in the underlying attitude structure refers to attitudinal ambivalence (Kaplan 1972; Bargh, Chaiken, Govender, and Pratto 1992). It is reasonable to think that when people are exposed to a mixture of positive and negative information toward an object, they will have higher attitudinal ambivalence toward the object than when they are exposed to either only positive or only negative information. Thus, word of mouth, including both positive and negative information, will induce inconsistency in the attitude structure.

H2: Individuals who are exposed to inconsistent word of mouth about an unfamiliar brand will experience higher attitudinal ambivalence when compared with individuals who are faced with consistent (positive or negative) word of mouth.

How is the inconsistent word of mouth, which induces ambivalence, processed and how is it related to brand attitude? Based on several perspectives, we believe that inconsistent word-of-mouth messages positively affect attitude-intention consistency and attitude certainty, which refers to the degree to which an individual is confident that his or her attitude toward an object is correct (Pomerantz, Chaiken and Tordesillas 1995, p.1132). One reason behind these positive relationships is that inconsistent word of mouth is more likely to be processed systematically rather than heuristically (Jonas, Diehl, and Bromer 1997). According to the heuristic-systematic model, human beings usually try to save cognitive energy while processing information; however, they do not merely tend to save cognitive resources by such heuristic processing but they also desire a certain level of confidence in their own judgment or attitude (Chaiken 1980 ; Maheswaran and Chaiken 1991). If an individual seeks more confidence, he or she must process information through systematic processing. When customers are faced with inconsistent word of mouth, heuristic processing alone is not sufficient to reach a certain level of judgmental confidence in the matter of the overall evaluation of the object (Jonas, Diehl, and Bromer 1997). Thus, inconsistent word of mouth tends to evoke systematic processing and inconsistent messages are carefully evaluated. Thus this tends to increase the attitude certainty and the consistency between the attitude and behavioral intentions.

The attitude accessibility model also provides support to the idea that inconsistent word of mouth leads to greater attitude certainty and a stronger link between behavioral intention and the attitude. According to the attitude accessibility model, attitude activation is the first step for attitude to guide behavior (Bargh, Chaiken, Govender, and Pratto 1992). Once activated, the attitude influences behavior toward the attitude object. The likelihood that a person’s attitude will be activated is primarily determined by the strength of the association in memory between an attitude object and an evaluation (Lavine, Borgida, and Sullivan 2000). The brand mentioned in inconsistent word of mouth and one’s attitude will b closely associated in memory because inconsistent word of mouth is carefully and intensively processed; thus, the brand attitude is more accessible and is more strongly linked with behavior intention.

H3: Individuals who are exposed to inconsistent word of mouth about an unfamiliar brand will show higher attitude certainty and stronger association between attitude and purchase intention when compared with individuals who are faced with consistent (positive or negative) word of mouth.

Individual difference (moderating variables)

Two-sided message research assumes that humans automatically assign more attention and motivation to two-sided messages. Attitude structure work also assumes that people are spontaneously motivated to make sense of inconsistencies in order to arrive at an overall judgment (Srull and Wyer 1989). But not all individuals exposed to inconsistent information have the same need to make sense of these inconsistencies. Nowlis, Kahn, and Dhar (2002) note that individuals faced with inconsistent information choose the middle point in the bipolar attitude measure and that there are two possible reasons for this selection. One reason is that the individual truly has a neutral attitude without intensive processing. The other reason is that the individual has a combination of positive and negative view point toward the object and chooses the neutral point as a result of carefully processing the information. Thus, the degree of ambivalence may differ among individuals even though the individuals are exposed to the same inconsistent word of mouth. Thus, the effects of inconsistent word of mouth on attitude certainty and on association between attitude and purchase intention may be moderated by ambivalence.

H4: Individuals who are exposed to inconsistent word of mouth about an unfamiliar brand and have high ambivalence will have higher attitude certainty and a stronger association between attitude and purchase intention than individuals who have low ambivalence.

Tolerance-of-ambiguity may also moderate these relationships. Tolerance-of-ambiguity refers to the way an individual perceives and processes unfamiliar and ambiguous information and incongruent cues (Furnham 1994; Norton 1975). Ambivalence and tolerance-of-ambiguity are similar but different concepts. Ambivalence is caused by external stimuli and is context specific while tolerance-of-ambiguity is person’s general and internal trait like personality and is context free. So even though the probability is high that individuals with low tolerance-of-ambiguity feel high ambivalence when exposed to inconsistent word-of-mouth, it is also possible that they feel less conflict and thus, show low ambivalence.

How a person copes with ambiguous information affects information processing (Schaninger and Sciglimpaglia 1981). Tolerance-of-ambiguity is also related to several cognitive and behavioral dispositions, such as seeking certainty and avoiding ambiguity, inability to allow for the coexistence of positive and negative features in the same object, and resistance to rehearsal of ambiguous stimuli (Furnham and Ribhester 1995). When individuals with low tolerance-of-ambiguity are exposed to inconsistent word-of-mouth, they will tend to experience stress and try to avoid ambiguity and to reach more certain judgment toward the mentioned object. Thus, individuals with low tolerance-of-ambiguity may be more likely to be motivated to carefully evaluate the inconsistent and ambiguous information than individuals with high tolerance-of-ambiguity (Nowlis, Kahn and Dhar 2002).

H5: Individuals with low tolerancefor-ambiguity, who are exposed to inconsistent word of mouth about an unfamiliar brand, will have higher attitude certainty and a stronger association between attitude and purchase intention than will individuals who have high tolerance-of-ambiguity.

RESEARCH METHOD

Individuals (n=167, male=91, female=76) recruited from undergraduate classes at the University of Alabama were randomly assigned to one of three manipulated word-of-mouth conditions. To minimize the effect of individuals’ prior attitude and purchasing experience and to control for levels of involvement, Sundaram and Webster (1999) suggest two standards: the product selected for the study 1) should not be previously purchased by respondents and 2) is likely to be purchased in the future. Through a pretest and sets of interviews, a big flat-panel plasma TV and four attributes (the quality of picture, the quality of sound, the easiness of set up, and the ease of use) were selected for the study. A fictional brand name, 'Z-Canvas’, was used to meet the suggested standards. Individuals were told to think as if they are in the process of buying a new big flat-panel TV and collecting information on several brands by visiting retail stores and web sites and by scanning advertisements. A brief introduction of a 41" flat-panel TV fictional brand was provided to individuals.

Four attributes were mentioned positively (positive word of mouth) or negatively (negative word of mouth) in the provided scenario to manipulate word of mouth. For inconsistent word-of-mouth condition, two of the four attributes had positive levels and two had negative levels. Two important attributes, the quality of picture and sound, were not mentioned positively or negatively at the same time; so four combinations of attributes were randomly used for inconsistent word-of-mouth condition (see table 1 for manipulations for word-of-mouth).

The individuals who were assigned to one of the three word-of-mouth conditions read a scenario describing the word-of-mouth situation and then completed a questionnaire, which consists of overall attitude toward the brand, purchase intention, attitude certainty, ambivalence, tolerance-of-ambiguity, and items for manipulation checks. The overall attitude toward the brand (4 items) and purchase intention (1 item) were measured based on Gresham, Bush, and Davis’s (1984) scales. Kaplan’s (1972) measure of ambivalence was employed. Pomerantz, Chaiken and Tordesillas’s (1995) two self-report items were used to measure attitude certainty. The 20 items developed by MacDonald (1970) were used for the tolerance-of-ambiguity measure.

Manipulation checks

To determine the effectiveness of the word-of-mouth messages manipulation, individuals were asked to rate the word-of-mouth messages on a 7 point scale where 1=extremely negative and 7=extremely positive. Individuals in the positive word-of-mouth condition positively rated the messages (x=6.08), and individuals in the negative condition negatively rated the messages (x=2.26). Individuals in the inconsistent word-of-mouth condition rated the messages neither positively nor negatively (x=4.25). Thus, the mean values suggest that the three types of word-of-mouth were effectively manipulated. To evaluate the perceived realism of the scenarios, individuals were asked to answer the question 'I believe the situations described in the scenario can actually happen in real life’ using a 7 point scale where 1=strongly disagree and 7=strongly agree. A resulting mean score of 5.98 suggested that the individuals considered the scenarios to be very realistic. Individuals were then asked to respond to the item 'Are you familiar with the Z-Canvas flat-panel TV brand’ using a 7 point scale, and the mean value indicated that individuals were unfamiliar with the brand (x=1.23).

The validity and reliability of multiple item measures, such as involvement, attitude, and attitude certainty were checked by exploratory factor analysis and Cronbach’s alpha (see Table 2), and the mean values of these variables were used for manipulation checks and further analysis. To check whether individuals have a similar level of involvement, Ratchford’s (1987)’s three item involvement measure was used. Most individuals had high involvement (x=5.75).

Next, ANOVA was used to see whether the three word-of-mouth groups (positive, negative, and inconsistent word-of-mouth) were different in 'the perceived realism of the scenarios’, 'involvement’, and 'familiarity’. The results of analyses showed that there was no difference among the three groups (see Table 3).

HYPOTHESIS TESTING

The mean values of attitude in the three conditions were compared to assess Hypothesis 1. The three mean values were different (F (2,164)=55.853, p<0.001), and as expected, examination of the means indicated that individuals in the inconsistent word-of-mouth condition had a neutral attitude (x=4.521) when compared with individuals in the positive condition (x=5.495) and with those in the negative condition (x=3.156). Thus, Hypothesis 1 was supported (see Table 4 for details).

Individuals in the three conditions had significantly different levels of ambivalence (F (2,164)=30.578, p<0.001). Further, examination of the means revealed that the individuals in the inconsistent condition had a higher level of ambivalence than those in the positive or negative conditions, who had a similar level of ambivalence, which supports Hypothesis 2 (see Table 4 for details).

TABLE 1

MANIPULATIONS FOR WORD OF MOUTH

TABLE 2

RESULTS OF EXPLORATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS AND RELIABILITY TEST

Individuals in the three conditions were also different in terms of attitude certainty (F (2,164)=32.411, p<0.001). The mean difference analysis indicated that individuals in the consistent conditions had lower levels of attitude certainty than those individuals in the inconsistent condition. Those in the inconsistent condition also showed stronger association between attitude and purchase intention (r=0.304, p=0.017) than those in the positive condition (r=0.182, p=0.193) or those in the negative condition (r=0.135, p=0.334). Fisher’s z’ transformation was used to investigate whether these correlations were different. The results revealed that the three correlations were not different (inconsistentBpositive (z’=0.674, p=0.25), inconsistent-positive (z’=0.92, p=0.18), and positive-negative (z’=0.24, p=0.405)). Thus, Hypothesis 3 was only partially supported.

Hypothesis 4 addressed whether ambivalence moderates the effect of inconsistent word of mouth on attitude certainty and the association between attitude and behavior intention. The mean value of ambivalence (x=2.024) was used to divide individuals in the inconsistent word-of-mouth condition into two groups. The attitude certainty scores were different between the high and low ambivalence groups (t=6.044, p<0.001), and individuals with high ambivalence (x=4.763) were more certain about their attitude than individuals with low ambivalence (x=3.61), and also showed stronger association between attitude and purchase intention. Two correlations (r=0.531 for high ambivalent individuals, r=0.126 for low ambivalent individuals) were different (z’=1.445, p=0.074). Thus, the data support Hypothesis 4 (see table 5 for details).

TABLE 3

SUMMARY OF MANIPULATION CHECKS

TABLE 4

SUMMARY OF ANOVA RESULTS

TABLE 5

SUMMARY OF T-TEST RESULTS

Hypothesis 5 addressed whether tolerance-of-ambiguity moderates the effect of inconsistent word of mouth on attitude certainty and the association between attitude and intention. Individuals exposed to inconsistent word of mouth were divided into high and low tolerance-of-ambiguity groups at the mean (mean value of tolerance of ambiguity (x=7.16) was used). And then attitude certainty scores in the two groups were compared. Attitude certainty was different between the high and low tolerance-of-ambiguity groups (t=3.967, p<0.001). Individuals with low tolerance-of-ambiguity were more certain about their attitude than high tolerance-of-ambiguity individuals. Further attitudes are strongly associated with behavioral intentions for low tolerance individuals (r=0.526), while the correlation of individuals with high tolerance-of-ambiguity (r=0.241) was considerably lower. However, the two correlations were not different (z’=1.029, p=0.157). So Hypothesis 5 was only partially supported (see table 5 for details).

DISCUSSION

It has been noted that word-of-mouth is closely related to brand attitude, and the findings of this study reaffirm this argument because attitudes of the individuals in the positive word-of-mouth condition were more favorable than attitudes of those in the negative word-of-mouth condition. It has also been suggested that inconsistent information will stimulate additional cognitive processing, and this assumption was used to support a belief that inconsistent information would lead to more favorable attitudes. But past findings did not support this statement. Thus, we hypothesized here that individuals who are exposed to inconsistent word of mouth would have a more neutral attitude than individuals exposed to positive or negative word of mouth because the positive evaluations would be counterbalanced by negative evaluations. This is exactly what we found.

Even though the additional cognitive processing caused by inconsistency in word of mouth did not lead to more favorable attitudes, the results of this study shows that it does affect other aspects of attitude. Positive and negative messages in inconsistent word of mouth occupy separate evaluation dimensions and do cause individuals to have ambivalent feelings. It is not easy for individuals to combine incongruent messages and to judge the brand mentioned using word-of-mouth messages. So each message is more likely to be systematically processed, and as a result of this intensive process a neutral attitude is chosen. Thus, individuals exposed to inconsistent word of mouth are more likely to be confident about their attitude, and the formed attitude tends to be closely related to their purchase intentions. If only the traditional bipolar attitude scale is used to look at the effect of inconsistent word of mouth on brand attitude, important characteristics of attitude will be disregarded. Measurements for strength of attitude as well as a traditional attitude measurement should be used to catch important additional information about consumers’ attitude.

It might be said that individuals will automatically assign more cognitive energy to process inconsistent word of mouth. However, the findings of this study demonstrated that even if individuals are exposed to the identical inconsistent word of mouth, they can have different levels of ambivalence. Individuals with high ambivalent feelings tend to pay more attention to and be more motivated to process inconsistent word of mouth while individuals with low ambivalence will not do so. As a result, individuals with high ambivalence have higher levels of attitude certainty and consistency of attitude and purchase intention.

Individuals’ cognitive personality traits (tolerance-of-ambiguity) also influence how inconsistent word of mouth is processed. Individuals are different in terms of how they cope with inconsistent information because they have different levels of allowance for the coexistence of positive and negative information in an object; thus, the amount of cognitive energy that an individual puts into processing inconsistent word of mouth will be different. It was expected that the effect of inconsistent word of mouth on attitude certainty and the consistency between attitude and intention would be moderated by tolerance-f-ambiguity. As predicted, individuals with low tolerance-of-ambiguity were more certain about their attitude formed by inconsistent word of mouth. But the difference between the correlations of high and low tolerance-of-ambiguity groups was not significant. This might be attributable to the characteristics of tolerance-of-ambiguity. Tolerance-of-ambiguity is a personality variable and may not reflect exactly how much the individuals felt ambiguity in this specific situation.

Limitations and future research: Several variables related to the processing of inconsistent word-of-mouth were controlled for in this study. For example, brand familiarity was controlled for by selecting a fictitious brand name. But brand familiarity may influence the relationships between inconsistent word of mouth and brand attitude. Sundaram and Webster (1999) noted that the relationship between word of mouth and brand evaluation is moderated by brand familiarity and that brand familiarity enhanced the brand attitude and purchase intention. Thus future research might examine how word of mouth (positive, negative, and inconsistent) and brand familiarity (high and low) influence consumers’ brand evaluations and the strength of attitude. Individuals’ involvement was also manipulated to be high. But individuals’ involvement influences the way that congruent or incongruent information is processed (Maheswarn and Chaiken 1991). Future research might examine whether the relationship between types of word of mouth and the attitude strength is moderated by involvement. This study considers only equal amounts of positive and negative information for inconsistent word of mouth. There are, however, lots of possible combinations of good and bad information. Thus, it is meaningful to study how the valence of positive and negative in word of mouth is related to attitude toward brands. In this study, the scenario provided information for only one brand to individuals, and the degree to which individuals elaborate and process the messages was not actually measured. In reality a consumer is likely to be exposed to multiple brands during a typical information search and may receive positive word-of-mouth about one brand and negative word-of-mouth communication for another brand. This can impact how consumers evaluate brands in their choice set. Therefore, it is more realistic for future research to consider word-of-mouth for more than one brand and employ measures of the cognitive elaborating process to confirm whether it is the inconsistent information that is truly causing the effects obtained.

APPENDIX

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