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THE INFLUENCE OF CEILING HEIGHT
DSN reports from Warsaw this week, where the SPUDM (Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision Making) conference is wrapping up. Much knowledge was exchanged on the last day in a symposium on experience-based decisions.
In other news, always watching the journals for articles that are about to make a splash in the popular press, Decision Science News has identified this one from the latest Journal of Consumer Research.
The Influence of Ceiling Height: The Effect of Priming on the Type of Processing That People Use
Authors: Joan Meyers-Levy & Rui (Juliet) Zhu
Abstract: This article demonstrates that variations in ceiling height can prime concepts that, in turn, affect how consumers process information. We theorized that when reasonably salient, a high versus low ceiling can prime the concepts of freedom versus confinement, respectively. These concepts, in turn, can prompt consumers’ use of predominately relational versus item-specific processing. Three studies found support for this theorizing. On a variety of measures, ceiling height–induced relational or item-specific processing was indicated by people’s reliance on integrated and abstract versus discrete and concrete ideation. Hence, this research sheds light on when and how ceiling height can affect consumers’ responses.
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