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Concept profiling – navigating beyond liking
Abstract
Most new products and almost all new brands fail in-market and are withdrawn as commercial failures, with all that this implies in terms of lost opportunity and wasted resources. This chapter takes a detailed look at the role played by concepts in motivating human behavior in general and purchasing and consumption behavior in particular. In doing so, it explores the complex relationships that exist between concepts, emotions and affect. One of the key learnings to be drawn from this is the distinction that should (and must) be drawn between concepts that are strongly associated with the valence dimension of affect and those concepts that are associated with the orthogonal, non-valence dimensions of affect. A study is described that clearly differentiates and identifies these two concept types. Based on these learnings, two case studies involving major international brands are presented, that demonstrate the greatly enhanced efficacy of concept profiling when implemented using orthogonal, non-valence concept terms. In doing so concept profiling has finally lifted the veil on what lies beyond liking.
... The sensory drivers of non-sensory product experiences have also not been widely studied. The reason to study these directly flows from the now widely accepted mindset that sensory and consumer science needs to "go beyond liking" [40,41]. Product experience is about much more than the sensory product characteristics, and it is important to address these, for example, by adopting a multi-response empirical strategy to measure emotional product associations [42], product conceptualisations [30], situational use characteristics [43], attitudes and behavioural intentions [44]. ...
... A conceptual CATA question with 14 terms (listed in full in the results section) was the fourth ballot section. The terms were identified with input from the literature relating to conceptual profiling and PB alternative products [41]. ...
Reliance on animal foods must be reduced to improve planetary and human well-being. This research studied plant-based cheese alternatives (PBCA) relative to dairy cheese in a consumer taste test with 157 consumers in New Zealand. A case study approach used cream cheese (commercially available) as the focal product category (2 PBCA, 2 dairy) and implemented a multi-response paradigm (hedonic, sensory, emotional, conceptual, situational). “Beyond liking” insights were established, including drivers of liking (sensory, non-sensory) and sensory drivers of non-sensory product associations. Two consumer segments were identified, of which the largest (n = 111) liked PBCA and dairy samples equally (6.5–6.7 of 9). In this PBCA Likers cluster, the key sensory drivers of liking were ‘creamy/smooth mouthfeel’, ‘dissolves quickly in mouth’, and ‘sweet’, while a significant penalty was associated with ‘mild/bland flavour’. The non-sensory data contributed additional consumer insights, including the four samples being perceived as differently appropriate for 9 of 12 use situations, with PBCA being regarded as less appropriate. In the limited confines of this case on cream cheese, the findings show that PBCA need not be inferior to their dairy counterparts despite a general narrative to the contrary. Of note, the results were obtained among participants who were open to eating a more PB diet but were not vegetarian or vegan.
... This level of control has helped to optimise product development by focusing on isolating and extenuating minute differences among products and prototypes, but has also lost focus of the naturalistic consumer experience. Additionally, the traditional approach of measuring self-reported product liking has failed to predict product performance in the market (Chandon et al., 2005;Graves, 2010;Thomson & Coates, 2021;Thomson & Crocker, 2015;Thomson, 2006). This product-focused approach falls flat in capturing the holistic consumer experience that negatively impacts researchers' ability to make predictions in the market. ...
This chapter covers some of the most popular emerging technologies used for measuring human behaviour in applied sensory and consumer science. Here, we focus on eye-tracking (ET) technology, electrodermal activity (EDA) or skin conductance, facial expression analysis (FEA) and electroencephalography (EEG), all of which can be employed to explore the underlying and at times unconscious processes of consumer behaviour. We walk through the methods traditionally used in sensory and consumer science and explain why, in isolation, they are incomplete. We provide insights into the basic principles of the different biometric technologies in focus, including objective quantification of attentional, emotional and neural correlates of consumer behaviour and food choice. We introduce state-of-the-art consumer research examples that utilise these biometric tools. Finally, we highlight some of the future potential applications in sensory and consumer science that these emerging technologies enable.
... The tremendous popularity of product-related emotions research can be linked to the theory that an emotional connection to a product is a strong driver of consumer loyalty or behavior in relation to that product which provides an alternative to the widely used hedonic measure (degree of liking/disliking). This is especially important since acceptability does not predict product success very well (Thomson, 2016: Thomson & Coates, 2021. Also, while liking is widely regarded as unidimensional, there are multiple dimensions of emotions (pleasure, arousal, dominance) and literally hundreds of emotion terms with which to examine sensory-consumer stimuli. ...
With input from oral keynote and plenary presentations at the 14th Pangborn Sensory Science Symposium in 2021, a historical timeline and selective summary of sensory and consumer science is presented. The development of the field is traced to the present time across three time periods: Period 1) an early period spanning from the 1940s to the 1970s focused on sensory evaluation; Period 2) the 1980s and 1990s, which saw the further development of sensory science, the growth of a connection with consumer research, and a rapid expansion of the topics that interested the field; and Period 3) from the 2000s onwards, with the emergence of new technologies and the movement beyond a dependence on liking in the study of products. Across periods, 18 topic areas were selected: 1) hedonics and food acceptance, 2) discrimination testing, 3) chemical senses, psychophysics and scaling, 4) descriptive profiling by trained assessors, 5) temporal methods, 6) sensory drivers of liking, 7) rapid methods, 8) contextual factors, 9) health, 10) the young and the elderly, 11) cross-cultural research, 12) psychographics, 13) expectations, 14) extrinsic product factors, 15) emotions, 16) “beyond liking” and sub-conscious measures, 17) wellbeing, and 18) social media and big data. Loosely, the topic areas are presented in “period chronological order” with topics starting earlier in the timeline of Sensory-Consumer Science being presented first. Throughout its existence, the field of Sensory-Consumer Science has been characterized by a combination of more basic academic research and more applied commercial research, with much of the method development pushed by the need to describe, differentiate and develop products, and then to research the effects of those products on consumers. The field has also been characterized by an emphasis on quantitative approaches. The paper concludes with a presentation of several continuing and emerging issues within Sensory-Consumer Science.
... Product conceptualisations also seek to describe products. Questionnaires are again the dominant approach and can include emotional words but always extend beyond these (e.g., classy, genuine, conservative, free-spirited, youthful) (e.g., Thomson, 2016;Thomson and Coates, 2021). Thus, there can be some overlap with emotion research, especially when emotions are conceptualised as product-elicited associations. ...
Sensory and consumer science is concerned with measuring perceptual and affective responses to consumer products. Historically, hedonic responses (degree of liking or preference for a set of test products) have been the primary measure of product performance in food-related consumer research, but recent years has seen an increase in the uptake of perceptual measures that go “beyond liking”, with interest primarily focusing on product-elicited emotions, conceptualisations and situational appropriateness. Although the ultimate purpose of collecting such responses is that they are predictive of what consumers will like, choose and consume in their everyday life, such data are very rarely validated against actual consumer behaviour.
Against this backdrop, the present research aimed to evaluate the ability of emotional, conceptual, and situational appropriateness responses to predict a behaviourally relevant measure of product performance – frequency of past consumption. Two (online) consumer studies were conducted with US adults, using salads (Study 1, n=606) and non-alcoholic beverages (Study 2, n=603) as product categories. In each study, the predictive ability of each set of measures was benchmarked against that of expected liking to identify the optimal (most predictive of consumption) combination of product-related measures.
Both studies provided evidence that all included measures (liking, emotional, conceptual, and situational responses) were significantly correlated with frequency of past consumption, and importantly, that inclusion of “beyond liking” measures improved behavioural prediction over and above models based on hedonic responses only. These findings confirmed that liking in and of itself is insufficient as a predictor of consumption and supported calls for the purposeful combination of different response types using “global” or multi-response approaches. Differences between the two studies pertaining to the relative importance of liking and the best combination of predictors were uncovered, suggesting that the optimal combination of “beyond liking” measures in practical applications is likely to be study-specific.
The decision to consume novel foods such as plant‐based meat alternatives is often determined by emotional response. Generic food emotion lexicons are available for measuring emotional response, however, such lexicons may not capture the nuanced emotions associated with novel products. Here, an emotion lexicon specific to meat and plant‐based burger patties was developed. Discussion groups, where participants were digitally immersed in two typical burger eating environments, were used to generate relevant emotion terms toward different patties. A range of consumers contributed to the lexicon including users and nonusers of meat alternatives, two age groups, and three dietary groups. Subsequently, an on‐line sorting task followed by hierarchical clustering was used to reduce the size of the lexicon. The final lexicon contained 24 emotion categories. The lexicon shared terms with generic lexicons but notably contained other emotions associated with food neophobia, uncertainty, and deception. The results of this study provide an emotion lexicon specific to burger patties of meat and plant‐based origins. Currently no emotion lexicon has been developed for plant‐based patties, or plant‐based meat alternatives in general. It provides an important tool for further research concerning links between sensory and emotional drivers of plant‐based patty consumption across different types of patty consumers and has potential to be adopted for a wider product set.
Recent work on natural categories suggests a framework for conceptualizing people's knowledge about emotions. Categories of natural objects or events, including emotions, are formed as a result of repeated experiences and become organized around prototypes (Rosch, 1978); the interrelated set of emotion categories becomes organized within an abstract-to-concrete hierarchy. At the basic level of the emotion hierarchy one finds the handful of concepts (love, joy, anger, sadness, fear, and perhaps, surprise) most useful for making everyday distinctions among emotions, and these overlap substantially with the examples mentioned most readily when people are asked to name emotions (Fehr & Russell, 1984), with the emotions children learn to name first (Bretherton & Beeghly, 1982), and with what theorists have called basic or primary emotions. This article reports two studies, one exploring the hierarchical organization of emotion concepts and one specifying the prototypes, or scripts, of five basic emotions, and it shows how the prototype approach might be used in the future to investigate the processing of information about emotional events, cross-cultural differences in emotion concepts, and the development of emotion knowledge.
At the heart of emotion, mood, and any other emotionally charged event are states experienced as simply feeling good or bad, energized or enervated. These states - called core affect - influence reflexes, perception, cognition, and behavior and are influenced by many causes internal and external, but people have no direct access to these causal connections. Core affect can therefore be experienced as free-floating (mood) or can be attributed to some cause (and thereby begin an emotional episode). These basic processes spawn a broad framework that includes perception of the core-affect-altering properties of stimuli, motives, empathy, emotional meta-experience, and affect versus emotion regulation; it accounts for prototypical emotional episodes, such as fear and anger, as core affect attributed to something plus various nonemotional processes.
The classical view of emotion hypothesizes that certain emotion categories have a specific autonomic nervous system (ANS) “fingerprint” that is distinct from other categories. Substantial ANS variation within a category is presumed to be epiphenomenal. The theory of constructed emotion hypothesizes that an emotion category is a population of context-specific, highly variable instances that need not share an ANS fingerprint. Instead, ANS variation within a category is a meaningful part of the nature of emotion. We present a meta-analysis of 202 studies measuring ANS reactivity during lab-based inductions of emotion in nonclinical samples of adults, using a random effects, multilevel meta-analysis and multivariate pattern classification analysis to test our hypotheses. We found increases in mean effect size for 59.4% of ANS variables across emotion categories, but the pattern of effect sizes did not clearly distinguish 1 emotion category from another. We also observed significant variation within emotion categories; heterogeneity accounted for a moderate to substantial percentage (i.e., I2 ≥ 30%) of variability in 54% of these effect sizes. Experimental moderators epiphenomenal to emotion, such as induction type (e.g., films vs. imagery), did not explain a large portion of the variability. Correction for publication bias reduced estimated effect sizes even further, increasing heterogeneity of effect sizes for certain emotion categories. These findings, when considered in the broader empirical literature, are more consistent with population thinking and other principles from evolutionary biology found within the theory of constructed emotion, and offer insights for developing new hypotheses to understand the nature of emotion.
The science of emotion has been using folk psychology categories derived from philosophy to search for the brain basis of emotion. The last two decades of neuroscience research have brought us to the brink of a paradigm shift in understanding the workings of the brain, however, setting the stage to revolutionize our understanding of what emotions are and how they work. In this paper, we begin with the structure and function of the brain, and from there deduce what the biological basis of emotions might be. The answer is a brain-based, computational account called the theory of constructed emotion.
Dual-process and dual-system theories in both cognitive and social psychology have been subjected to a number of recently published criticisms. However, they have been attacked as a category, incorrectly assuming there is a generic version that applies to all. We identify and respond to 5 main lines of argument made by such critics. We agree that some of these arguments have force against some of the theories in the literature but believe them to be overstated. We argue that the dual-processing distinction is supported by much recent evidence in cognitive science. Our preferred theoretical approach is one in which rapid autonomous processes (Type 1) are assumed to yield default responses unless intervened on by distinctive higher order reasoning processes (Type 2). What defines the difference is that Type 2 processing supports hypothetical thinking and load heavily on working memory.
© The Author(s) 2013.
Factor-analytic evidence has led most psychologists to describe affect as a set of dimensions, such as displeasure, distress, depression, excitement, and so on, with each dimension varying independently of the others. However, there is other evidence that rather than being independent, these affective dimensions are interrelated in a highly systematic fashion. The evidence suggests that these interrelationships can be represented by a spatial model in which affective concepts fall in a circle in the following order: pleasure (0), excitement (45), arousal (90), distress (135), displeasure (180), depression (225), sleepiness (270), and relaxation (315). This model was offered both as a way psychologists can represent the structure of affective experience, as assessed through self-report, and as a representation of the cognitive structure that laymen utilize in conceptualizing affect. Supportive evidence was obtained by scaling 28 emotion-denoting adjectives in 4 different ways: R. T. Ross's (1938) technique for a circular ordering of variables, a multidimensional scaling procedure based on perceived similarity among the terms, a unidimensional scaling on hypothesized pleasure–displeasure and degree-of-arousal dimensions, and a principal-components analysis of 343 Ss' self-reports of their current affective states. (70 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The existence of two nearly-orthogonal dimensions of positive and negative affect was established for a ten-item short form of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule using confirmatory factor analytic techniques in a large probability sample (n=2651) spanning ages 18 to 79. The factor structure and factor correlations were found to be unchanged with age. A multiple indicators, multiple causes model was used to investigate differences in item responses according to age, sex, education, marital status and financial hardship that could not be accounted for by differences in affect levels between groups. Only one item, excited from the Positive Affect scale, was found to elicit differential responses. While improvements to the Positive Affect scale might be desirable, the Short PANAS can be recommended for use when measures of positive and negative affect are required.
Over the past decade or so, a choice design in which a person is asked to select both the best and the worst option in an available set of options has been gaining favor over more traditional designs, such as where the person is asked, for instance, to: select the best option; select the worst option; rank the options; or rate the options. In this paper, we develop theoretical results for three overlapping classes of probabilistic models for best, worst, and best–worst choices, with the models in each class proposing specific ways in which such choices might be related. The models in these three classes are called random ranking and random utility, joint and sequential, and ratio scale. We include some models that belong to more than one class, with the best known being the maximum-difference (maxdiff) model, summarize estimation issues related to the models, and formulate a number of open theoretical problems.
Reviews the evidence that suggests that information about frequency of occurrence is stored in memory by an implicit or automatic encoding process. This evidence shows that frequency information is stored for a wide variety of naturally occurring events. Laboratory research shows that usually powerful task variables (e.g., instructions, practice) and S variables (e.g., age, ability) do not influence the encoding process. Evidence is also reviewed that either directly or indirectly implicates the use of frequency information across issues in psychology ranging from the acquisition and representation of knowledge domains to decision making to sex-role development. (120 ref)
The circumplex model of affect proposes that all affective states arise from cognitive interpretations of core neural sensations that are the product of two independent neurophysiological systems. This model stands in contrast to theories of basic emotions, which posit that a discrete and independent neural system subserves every emotion. We propose that basic emotion theories no longer explain adequately the vast number of empirical observations from studies in affective neuroscience, and we suggest that a conceptual shift is needed in the empirical approaches taken to the study of emotion and affective psychopathologies. The circumplex model of affect is more consistent with many recent findings from behavioral, cognitive neuroscience, neuroimaging, and developmental studies of affect. Moreover, the model offers new theoretical and empirical approaches to studying the development of affective disorders as well as the genetic and cognitive underpinnings of affective processing within the central nervous system.
In this article, I introduce an emotion paradox: People believe that they know an emotion when they see it, and as a consequence assume that emotions are discrete events that can be recognized with some degree of accuracy, but scientists have yet to produce a set of clear and consistent criteria for indicating when an emotion is present and when it is not. I propose one solution to this paradox: People experience an emotion when they conceptualize an instance of affective feeling. In this view, the experience of emotion is an act of categorization, guided by embodied knowledge about emotion. The result is a model of emotion experience that has much in common with the social psychological literature on person perception and with literature on embodied conceptual knowledge as it has recently been applied to social psychology.
This chapter describes the nature of conceptual associations and considers how these often-hidden aspects of product, package, and brand might influence longer-term product adoption. It is written against a backdrop that acknowledges that most new products fail in-market, despite favorable research findings prelaunch. Consequently, product developers and research practitioners need to find new ways of exploring what really influences longer-term product adoption and how these might be captured and quantified in evaluative product research. This is where conceptual profiling can make a significant contribution. The chapter begins by explaining the etiology of product failure followed by a description of the fundamental nature of conceptual associations, how these relate to emotion, how emotion delivers reward, and finally how reward influences longer-term product choices. This is followed by a detailed description of conceptual profiling along with several practical applications. The final part of the chapter elaborates upon some new ideas on how conceptual associations can be used to predict the otherwise inaccessible emotional outcomes that finally determine longer-term product adoption.
Because of functional resemblances between the nervous system and man-made communication systems — in particular, the analogy between a nerve fiber and a cable over which information is transmitted — a number of authors have approached the nervous system from the viewpoint of the communications engineer, primarily by applying information theory [6, 7, 8, 10]. The latter, together with control-systems theory (Chapter 15), constitutes the branch of science called cybernetics [1, 2, 3, 5, 9]. This chapter first presents an introduction to the fundamentals of information theory and the measurement of information content. This method is then applied to examples drawn from neurophysiology and psychophysics, to describe quantitatively the performance and limits of biological information transfer.
In an attempt to bring some order to this dizzying cornucopia of emotion theories, scientists have created a particular narrative framework to group theories a few broad categories. The standard narrative framework constitutes one of the largest barriers to scientific progress in the science of emotion. It conceals meaningful variation within a single category of emotion theories (eg, appraisal theories of emotion), and it obfuscates similarities across categories (eg, appraisal theories and basic emotion theories). This leaves both newcomers and scientists ill-equipped to make informed decisions about how to measure emotions. In this chapter, I offer a different narrative framework—one that provides a firmer theoretical footing with which to make more informed measurement decisions.
This chapter describes the importance of conceptual content in defining the very nature of brands, packaging and products, and how the conceptual profiles of these three product touch points should be aligned in order to achieve brand-product consonance, something of fundamental importance in new product success. The psychological basis of conceptualisation is described briefly, along with the role played by conceptual content in delivering reward, which is the primary motivator of product choice. Procedures for conceptual profiling are described in detail. Three case studies are presented to demonstrate the added insight delivered by conceptual profiling in the brand, pack and product development processes.
All objects, including brands and products, have perceptual (sensory) characteristics and conceptual associations. Together they determine how an object seems to us and how it impacts on our feelings. Capturing and quantifying the conceptual associations that trigger the feelings that induce reward and subsequently motivate behaviour (conceptual profiling), provides a rich source of insight for guiding brand and product development.
This paper presents a brief theoretical description of conceptualisation, followed by three practical case studies.
Study 1 demonstrates the application of segmentation to explore singularity of brand message in car brands. Across a sample of UK car buyers, Citroen exhibited a weak conceptual profile. However segmentation analysis revealed four underlying segments that conceptualise Citroen differently from each other, indicating that the brand does have clarity of meaning but it differs substantially across car buyers.
Study 2 compares brand versus unbranded product conceptual profiles for two dark chocolates. Scatterplots revealed a high correlation (r=0.78, brand–product consonance) for one brand but dissonance (r=0.05) for the other. The former succeeded in-market whereas the latter failed. The correlation coefficient may be used as an index of fit-to-brand. Because it is obtained independently from liking, this measure avoids the halo effect that often confounds direct measures of fit-to-brand.
Study 3 compares the conceptual profiles of five Scottish tartans to the conceptual profile of an unbranded Scotch whisky, with a view to selecting and featuring one of the tartans in branding. The tartans differed in colour, colour contrast and degree of formality of design. Conceptual profiling revealed that the formal tartans were highly consonant with the whisky irrespective of colour and contrast, presumably because of their strong mutual association with Scotland, but attempts to contemporise the tartan by adding informal design elements created dissonance.
Best–worst scaling can be used to elicit the conceptual associations that consumers make with objects such as brands, products and packs. Respondents are presented with the object to be profiled and asked to choose the words most and least associated with the object from successive sets of four or five words. The resulting conceptual profile takes the form of a series of words placed on a difference scale, according to their degree of association with the object. The relativism of best–worst scaling prevents direct comparison of scale values between different objects’ conceptual profiles, limiting the flexibility of the method. The issue is analogous to the problem of comparing scale values across individuals or groups participating in a best–worst exercise, for which other solutions have been proposed.
All objects including brands, products and packaging have conceptual (implicit) associations and consequently a conceptual profile. Along with its sensory profile this defines and characterises the object. Together these influence our attitudes, our affective reactions (feelings and pleasure) and our behaviour towards it. The conceptual content of a brand is usually clear and readily accessible via established brand personality measures. However, until recently, the conceptual content of product per se has received scant attention.
We define ‘feeling’ as the subjective, affective experience of an emotion or a mood. People seek out feelings that are positive because it is rewarding for them to do so. It follows that manufacturers of branded goods should be concerned about the feelings that predispose consumers to buy their products and also about the feelings that their products help consumers to attain, perpetuate, enhance, diminish or dissipate, in pursuit of reward. Towards this end, practical procedures are required that will allow researchers to capture the prevailing feelings that individuals are experiencing at a particular moment in time and to track the transitions induced by products, brands, advertising etc. In order to develop and apply such research tools, researchers need an appropriate and well-focused lexicon through which they can access and explore feelings.
With the rapid proliferation of new products into the marketplace, understanding emotional responses may offer a differential advantage beyond traditional hedonic measures. The objectives of this study were: to determine if emotional data provide discrimination beyond that obtained from hedonic response; to compare the effectiveness of a published predefined lexicon with that generated by the consumer; and, to evaluate the effectiveness of CATA approach compared to intensity scaling as used in EsSense Profile. To this end, the hedonic and emotional response to commercial blackcurrant squash was investigated comparing two different approaches: EsSense Profile™, in which subjects rated a predefined emotion lexicon, and check-all-that-apply (CATA) of a consumer defined (CD) lexicon. Both approaches yielded emotional data that clearly discriminated across the products more effectively than the hedonic scores. Both EsSense and CD-CATA data produced similar emotional spaces and product configurations. In each method, a two dimensional structure (pleasantness vs. engagement/activation) was observed within the product space which corresponded to published circumplex models of emotional response. However, the latter observation was more evident in the CD-CATA approach. The consumer defined lexicon provided a rich and more balanced list of positive and negative emotions specific to the product category although it did lack some terms found to be differentiating on the EsSense lexicon. Also the qualitative nature of the data obtained from CD CATA, limited the extent of the statistical analysis, making it difficult to make the clear inferential conclusions obtained with EsSense Profile. For future emotional studies a hybrid approach, whereby the emotion lexicon is developed combining consumer input and published emotion lists, and is then used to evaluate products using a rate-all-that-apply (RATA) procedure, is proposed.
This chapter examines Indian views of the mind and consciousness, with particular focus on the Indian Buddhist tradition. To contextualize Buddhist views of the mind, we first provide a brief presentation of some of the most important Hindu views, particu- larly those of the Sam . khya school. Whereas this school assumes the existence of a real transcendent self, the Buddhist view is that mental activity and consciousness function on their own without such a self. We focus on the phenomenological and epistemological aspects of this no-self view of the mind. We first discuss the Buddhist Abhidharma and its analysis of the mind in terms of awareness and mental factors. The Abidharma is mainly phenomenological; it does not present an epistemological analysis of the structure of mental states and the way they relate to their objects. To cover this topic we turn to Dhar- mak¯irti, one of the main Buddhist epistemol- ogists, who offers a comprehensive view of the types of cognition and their relation to their objects.
Early studies of intuitive judgment and decision making conducted with the late Amos Tversky are reviewed in the context of two related concepts: an analysis of accessibil-ity, the ease with which thoughts come to mind; a distinc-tion between effortless intuition and deliberate reasoning. Intuitive thoughts, like percepts, are highly accessible. De-terminants and consequences of accessibility help explain the central results of prospect theory, framing effects, the heuristic process of attribute substitution, and the charac-teristic biases that result from the substitution of nonexten-sional for extensional attributes. Variations in the accessi-bility of rules explain the occasional corrections of intuitive judgments. The study of biases is compatible with a view of intuitive thinking and decision making as generally skilled and successful.
Re-entrant or feedback pathways between cortical areas carry rich and varied information about behavioural context, including attention, expectation, perceptual tasks, working memory and motor commands. Neurons receiving such inputs effectively function as adaptive processors that are able to assume different functional states according to the task being executed. Recent data suggest that the selection of particular inputs, representing different components of an association field, enable neurons to take on different functional roles. In this Review, we discuss the various top-down influences exerted on the visual cortical pathways and highlight the dynamic nature of the receptive field, which allows neurons to carry information that is relevant to the current perceptual demands.
discuss several promises as well as potential problems with the circumplex model of emotion / while this model promises to organize much of what we know about emotion, it is nevertheless open to misinterpretation / before detailing these particular strengths and weaknesses, we begin by describing how a circumplex model is applied in the emotion domain / by advocating the circumplex model, a claim is made that the majority of emotional experience can be captured by two affect dimensions [positive affect and negative affect]
despite the promise a circumplex model holds for aiding our understanding of emotion, a number of problems need to be understood / one set of problems relates to specific interpretational issues concerning the emotion circumplex: are there basic dimensions in the circumplex and how should the dimensions be named / the second set of problems is broader: what does the circumplex fail to do in describing and explaining the relationships between emotions, and what are the shortcomings of the extant data / we will consider first the interpretational issues and, after that, the broader issues (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The conceptual profile of an unbranded product arises via three sources of influence: (i) category effect – how consumers conceptualise the product category: (ii) sensory effect – how the sensory characteristics of a particular product differentiate it from other products in the category: (iii) liking effect – the disposition of consumers to the category and how much they like a particular product. Assuming that category effects (conceptualisation and disposition) are constant across the set of products, it is anticipated that the conceptual differences apparent across the set of unbranded products would be driven, at least in part, by sensory differences. This study describes the application of best–worst scaling to conceptual profiling of unbranded dark chocolates and outlines novel data modelling procedures used to explore sensory/conceptual relationships.
IntroductionThe Characteristics That Distinguish Basic EmotionsDoes Any One Characteristic Distinguish the Basic Emotions?The Value of the Basic Emotions PositionAcknowledgementsReferences
Emotion attributes have been generally associated with product brands but little work has been published to understand consumer emotions associated with the product itself. The purpose of this series of studies was to develop an emotion-specific questionnaire to test foods with consumers in person or on the internet. A list of emotion terms was screened and validated with consumers. The emotion terms selected for foods were generally positive, as compared with emotion testing originating within a clinical framework. The list of emotions was useful in differentiating between and within categories of foods. Higher overall acceptability scores correlated with higher emotions, but differences in emotion profiles did not always correlate to differences in acceptability. A description of the approach used to develop the questionnaire, questionnaire format, effect of test context, and specific applications of the method to foods are presented. This test represents a major methodological advance in consumer testing of food products in a commercial environment.
In coming to understand the world-in learning concepts, acquiring language, and grasping causal relations-our minds make inferences that appear to go far beyond the data available. How do we do it? This review describes recent approaches to reverse-engineering human learning and cognitive development and, in parallel, engineering more humanlike machine learning systems. Computational models that perform probabilistic inference over hierarchies of flexibly structured representations can address some of the deepest questions about the nature and origins of human thought: How does abstract knowledge guide learning and reasoning from sparse data? What forms does our knowledge take, across different domains and tasks? And how is that abstract knowledge itself acquired?
I had intended this review not specifically as a criticism of Skinner's speculations regarding language, but rather as a more general critique of behaviorist (I would now prefer to say "empiricist") speculation as to the nature of higher mental processes. My reason for discussing Skinner's book in such detail was that it was the most careful and thoroughgoing presentation of such speculations, an evaluation that I feel is still accurate. Therefore, if the conclusions I attempted to substantiate in the review are correct, as I believe they are, then Skinner's work can be regarded as, in effect, a reductio ad absurdum of behaviorist assumptions. My personal view is that it is a definite merit, not a defect, of Skinner's work that it can be used for this purpose, and it was for this reason that I tried to deal with it fairly exhaustively. I do not see how his proposals can be improved upon, aside from occasional details and oversights, within the framework of the general assumptions that he accepts. I do not, in other words, see any way in which his proposals can be substantially improved within the general framework of behaviorist or neobehaviorist, or, more generally, empiricist ideas that has dominated much of modern linguistics, psychology, and philosophy. The conclusion that I hoped to establish in the review, by discussing these speculations in their most explicit and detailed form, was that the general point of view was largely mythology, and that its widespread acceptance is not the result of empirical support, persuasive reasoning, or the absence of a plausible alternative.
MOST verbal communication occurs in contexts where the listener can see
the speaker as well as hear him. However, speech perception is normally
regarded as a purely auditory process. The study reported here
demonstrates a previously unrecognised influence of vision upon speech
perception. It stems from an observation that, on being shown a film of
a young woman's talking head, in which repeated utterances of the
syllable [ba] had been dubbed on to lip movements for [ga], normal
adults reported hearing [da]. With the reverse dubbing process, a
majority reported hearing [bagba] or [gaba]. When these subjects
listened to the soundtrack from the film, without visual input, or when
they watched untreated film, they reported the syllables accurately as
repetitions of [ba] or [ga]. Subsequent replications confirm the
reliability of these findings; they have important implications for the
understanding of speech perception.
To investigate the specificity of satiety in man, subjects (n=32) rated the pleasantness of the taste of eight foods, were then given one of the foods to eat for lunch, and re-rated the pleasantness of the taste of the eight foods 2 and 20 min after the end of the meal. The pleasantness of the food eaten decreased more than that of the foods not eaten (p<0.001). In a second experiment it was shown that this relative specificity of satiety influenced subsequent food intake. Before a first course, subjects (n=24) rated their liking for the taste of eight foods, were then given one of the foods to eat for lunch, and 2 min after finishing eating re-rated their liking for the taste of the eight foods. Again liking decreased more for the food eaten than for foods not eaten. These changes in liking for the foods eaten and not eaten were highly correlated (p<0.001) with the amounts of those foods eaten in an unexpected second course. Thus in man satiety can be partly specific to foods eaten and this specificity may be an important determinant of the foods selected for consumption.
Learners rely on a combination of experience-independent and experience-dependent mechanisms to extract information from the
environment. Language acquisition involves both types of mechanisms, but most theorists emphasize the relative importance
of experience-independent mechanisms. The present study shows that a fundamental task of language acquisition, segmentation
of words from fluent speech, can be accomplished by 8-month-old infants based solely on the statistical relationships between
neighboring speech sounds. Moreover, this word segmentation was based on statistical learning from only 2 minutes of exposure,
suggesting that infants have access to a powerful mechanism for the computation of statistical properties of the language
input.
The interaction between the vision of colors and odor determination is investigated through lexical analysis of experts' wine tasting comments. The analysis shows that the odors of a wine are, for the most part, represented by objects that have the color of the wine. The assumption of the existence of a perceptual illusion between odor and color is confirmed by a psychophysical experiment. A white wine artificially colored red with an odorless dye was olfactory described as a red wine by a panel of 54 tasters. Hence, because of the visual information, the tasters discounted the olfactory information. Together with recent psychophysical and neuroimaging data, our results suggest that the above perceptual illusion occurs during the verbalization phase of odor determination.
The lateral geniculate nucleus is the best understood thalamic relay and serves as a model for all thalamic relays. Only 5-10% of the input to geniculate relay cells derives from the retina, which is the driving input. The rest is modulatory and derives from local inhibitory inputs, descending inputs from layer 6 of the visual cortex, and ascending inputs from the brainstem. These modulatory inputs control many features of retinogeniculate transmission. One such feature is the response mode, burst or tonic, of relay cells, which relates to the attentional demands at the moment. This response mode depends on membrane potential, which is controlled effectively by the modulator inputs. The lateral geniculate nucleus is a first-order relay, because it relays subcortical (i.e. retinal) information to the cortex for the first time. By contrast, the other main thalamic relay of visual information, the pulvinar region, is largely a higher-order relay, since much of it relays information from layer 5 of one cortical area to another. All thalamic relays receive a layer-6 modulatory input from cortex, but higher-order relays in addition receive a layer-5 driver input. Corticocortical processing may involve these corticothalamocortical 're-entry' routes to a far greater extent than previously appreciated. If so, the thalamus sits at an indispensable position for the modulation of messages involved in corticocortical processing.
Statements like "quality of care is more highly valued than waiting time" can neither be supported nor refuted by comparisons of utility parameters from a traditional discrete choice experiment (DCE). Best--worst scaling can overcome this problem because it asks respondents to perform a different choice task. However, whilst the nature of the best--worst task is generally understood, there are a number of issues relating to the design and analysis of a best--worst choice experiment that require further exposition. This paper illustrates how to aggregate and analyse such data and using a quality of life pilot study demonstrates how richer insights can be drawn by the use of best--worst tasks.
Traditional self-report ratings have some measurement problems that a relatively new method, best–worst scaling (BWS; Finn & Louviere, 199216.
Finn , A. and
Louviere , J. J. 1992. Determining the appropriate response to evidence of public concern: The case of food safety. Journal of Public Policy and Marketing., 11: 19–25. View all references), may overcome. This alternative method, based on Louviere's BWS, can be used to measure the relative importance or perceived trade-offs among choice alternatives. The method is illustrated as an alternative to the Schwartz Value Survey (SVS; Schwartz, 199244.
Schwartz , S. H. 1992. Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology., 25: 1–65. [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®]View all references). In a series of samples, it was found that Schwartz values best–worst survey (SVBWS) reproduced Schwartz's (199244.
Schwartz , S. H. 1992. Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology., 25: 1–65. [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®]View all references) theoretical value structure and supported hypothesized relationships between values and value-expressive behaviors, ethnocentrism, and environmental-related tourism activities. In addition, the SVBWS approach took significantly less respondent time than the traditional SVS approach.
Emotions and conceptualisations
- Thomson
Predicting purchase and consumption of new products
- Thomson