The Benefits of Thinking Less: How Deliberation Can Harm Consumer Judgment

Do consumers make better judgments when deliberating or when relying on intuition? Contrary to conventional wisdom, deliberating is not always beneficial but thinking less can lead to better judgments (Dijkstra, Pligt, & Kleef, 2013; Dijkstra, van der Pligt, van Kleef, & Kerstholt, 2012; Nordgren & Dijksterhuis, 2009). We propose a conceptual framework for the phenomenon, test mechanisms that can explain it, and discuss its implications for consumer behavior theory and marketing research. We focus on numerical self-reports that consumers marketing researchers often rely on. Firms frequently require consumers to self-report numerical estimates such as how often they have engaged in a certain behavior, how many units of a product they bought, or how much they would be willing to pay for a product. Such numerical self-reports help determining consumer demand, levels of unemployment, prevalence of crimes, and other statistics informing policy making (Bradburn, Rips, & Shevell, 1987).We conceptually build on recent studies that find detrimental effects of deliberative processing on judgment accuracy (Dijksterhuis & Aarts, 2010; Dijksterhuis, Bos, Nordgren, & Van Baaren, 2006; Dijksterhuis, Bos, Van der Leij, & Van Baaren, 2009; Dijksterhuis & Nordgren, 2006; Dijkstra, Pligt, & Kleef, 2012; Dijkstra, van der Pligt, van Kleef, & Kerstholt, 2012). A limitation of these studies is that they do not speak to environemnts with numerical stimuli, where the magnitude of attribute-levels matters (Payne, Samper, Bettman, & Luce, 2008). Contrary to this, we find that intuition can lead to greater accuracy of numerical estimation. When thinking longer, individuals assign higher weights to attributes that are easier to verbalize, easier to access, and that are salient and plausible reasons for liking or disliking a stimulus, but may not have been important factors of their initial evaluations (Wilson et al., 1993; Wilson & Schooler, 1991). We argue that in this manner, uninformative cues are weighted too heavily when respondents deliberate. We further propose that deliberation induces ‘second-guessing’ which may raise doubt on initial judgments. We will investigate in which situations ‘second-guessing’ leads to greater accuracy and when it does not.We plan to achieve these goals in three steps. First, we intend to build a grounded theoretical framework of the impact of mode of thought on accuracy of numerical estimation. Second, we will apply the developed framework to consumer preference measurement, an area where self-reports are often unreliable and in which little is known of the processes that drive accuracy (Miller, Hofstetter, Krohmer, and Zhang 2011). We will empirically test the attribute weighting hypothesis in this context. Third, we will examine second-guessing as a mechanism explaining detrimental effects of deliberation. For this purpose, we will code episodes the television game show “Who wants to be a millionaire?” and analyze whether the first or second guesses is right more often. This analysis will be followed by laboratory experiments that explain the underlying mechanisms. We believe this research project will yield enough original insights to warrant at least three publications and one full PhD thesis.