IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jconrs/v28y2001i2p224-38.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Nonconscious and Contaminative Effects of Hypothetical Questions on Subsequent Decision Making

Author

Listed:
  • Fitzsimons, Gavan J
  • Shiv, Baba

Abstract

In this article we examine the impact of asking hypothetical questions on respondents' subsequent decision making. Across several experiments we find that even though such questions are purely hypothetical, respondents are unable to prevent a substantial biasing effect on their behavior. Further, we find that an increase in cognitive elaboration increases the contaminative effects of hypothetical questions and that this increase occurs primarily when the hypothetical information is relevant. In-depth poststudy interviews with a subset of the participants suggest that the effects of hypothetical questions on choice occur beyond awareness and, as a result, are quite difficult to counteract. Copyright 2001 by the University of Chicago.

Suggested Citation

  • Fitzsimons, Gavan J & Shiv, Baba, 2001. "Nonconscious and Contaminative Effects of Hypothetical Questions on Subsequent Decision Making," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 28(2), pages 224-238, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jconrs:v:28:y:2001:i:2:p:224-38
    DOI: 10.1086/322899
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/322899
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/322899?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thomas F. Crossley & Jochem Bresser & Liam Delaney & Joachim Winter, 2017. "Can Survey Participation Alter Household Saving Behaviour?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(606), pages 2332-2357, November.
    2. Chen, Ming-Yi, 2016. "Consumer response to health product communication: The role of perceived product efficacy," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(9), pages 3251-3260.
    3. Marianne Bertrand & Dean S. Karlan & Sendhil Mullainathan & Eldar Shafir & Jonathan Zinman, 2005. "What's Psychology Worth? A Field Experiment in the Consumer Credit Market," Working Papers 918, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    4. T. Poehlman & Ravi Dhar & John Bargh, 2016. "Sophisticated by Design: the Nonconscious Influence of Primed Concepts and Atmospheric Variables on Consumer Preferences," Customer Needs and Solutions, Springer;Institute for Sustainable Innovation and Growth (iSIG), vol. 3(1), pages 48-61, March.
    5. Goodrich, Kendall & Mangleburg, Tamara F., 2010. "Adolescent perceptions of parent and peer influences on teen purchase: An application of social power theory," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 63(12), pages 1328-1335, December.
    6. Darren W Dahl & Eileen Fischer & Gita V Johar & Vicki G Morwitz, 2017. "Making Sense from (Apparent) Senselessness: The JCR Lens," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 44(4), pages 719-723.
    7. Coby Morvinski & Silvia Saccardo & On Amir, 2023. "Mis-Nudging Morality," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(1), pages 464-474, January.
    8. Katarzyna Wojtaszczyk & Marzena Syper-Jędrzejak, 2022. "Erotic capital and its role in the assessment of candidates and employees: scale development and validation," DECISION: Official Journal of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Springer;Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, vol. 49(4), pages 395-413, December.
    9. Dolan, Paul & Galizzi, Matteo M., 2015. "Like ripples on a pond: Behavioral spillovers and their implications for research and policy," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 1-16.
    10. Marianne Bertrand & Dean Karlan & Sendhil Mullainathan & Eldar Shafir & Jonathan Zinman, 2010. "What's Advertising Content Worth? Evidence from a Consumer Credit Marketing Field Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(1), pages 263-306.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jconrs:v:28:y:2001:i:2:p:224-38. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jcr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.