Context and Cognition in Consumer Psychology

How Perception and Emotion Guide Action

Gordon Foxall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317677383
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Consumer Behaviour
• Index: Business

Context and Cognition in Consumer Psychology is concerned with the psychological explanation of consumer choice. It pays particular attention to the roles of perception and emotion in accounting for consumers' actions and their interaction with the desires and beliefs in terms of which consumer choice is frequently analyzed.

In this engaging book, Gordon Foxall extends and elaborates his theory of consumer action, based on the philosophical strategy of Intentional Behaviorism. In doing so, he introduces the concept of contingency-representation to explore the ways in which consumers mentally represent the consequences of past decisions and the likely outcomes of present consumption. The emphasis is on action rather than behavior and the manner in which the intentional consumer-situation, as the immediate precursor of consumer choice, can be reconstructed in order to explain consumer actions in the absence of the environmental stimuli required by behaviorist psychology. The result is a novel reaffirmation of the role of cognition in the determination of consumer choice. Besides the concept of contingency-representation which the author introduces, the analysis draws upon psychoanalytic concepts, theories of cognitive structure and processing, and the philosophy of perception to generate a stimulating synthesis for consumer research.

The book will be of interest to students and researchers in consumer behavior and economic psychology and to all who seek a deeper interdisciplinary understanding of the contextual and cognitive interactions that guide choice in the market place.

1

A progressive research program

Abstract

The Intentional Behaviorist research program has progressed from the foundation of an empirical base for the explanation of consumer choice to the development of cognitive models of consumer choice that rest on solid conclusions about what it is that makes consumer action action rather than behavior. Recognition that the focus of the research program is henceforth principally on consumer action rather than consumer behavior, appreciation of the role of contingency-representations in the explanation of consumption, and understanding of consumer choice in terms of the temporal considerations that underlie decision processes all indicate the progressive nature of the Intentional Behaviorist research program. The Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM) of purchase and consumption, which provides a motif for the Intentional Behaviorist research strategy, proposes that consumer choice is a function of the patterns of reinforcement and punishment which have followed consumer activity. A functional analysis of consumer choice reveals an eightfold classification of the patterns of reinforcement and consumer behavior setting scope that shape and maintain consumer behavior (the contingency categories) and that the consumer-situations that are the immediate precursors of consumer behavior can be defined in these terms. The model accommodates behaviorist, intentional, and cognitive perspectives to portray consumer choice, first, as the outcome of the rewards and sanctions that are the consequences of behavior and, subsequently, as a mode of human action that must be understood in terms of the desires, beliefs, emotions, and perceptions of the consumer and her intellectual functioning. Hence, the BPM provides a vehicle for the exploration of the relationships between the context in which consumer choice occurs (the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment) and the cognitive processes that underlie this choice (decision making) via the construction of an intentional consumer-situation that explains their interaction.

From consumer behavior to consumer action

The Intentional Behaviorism research program has reached an advanced phase: that of constructing and critically evaluating an intentional account of consumer choice, having identified, through the exhaustive testing of a behaviorist model of consumer behavior, the boundaries of extensional explanation (Foxall, 2004, 2016a, 2016b).

The first phase of the Intentional Behaviorist research strategy, exemplified by consumer behavior analysis, has accomplished the necessary model building, testing, and evaluation for deciding where intentional explanation, including cognitive explanation, is essential, the form it needs to take, and the functions it needs to perform (Foxall, 2017). This stage, based on a research strategy of theoretical minimalism, continues apace for what it reveals of the relation of consumer behavior to its environmental determinants. But, at the same time, we are moving on.

The conduct of empirical research that has tested the central assumptions and explanatory modes of the behaviorist model of consumer choice has also revealed three points at which an extensional explanation of consumer choice breaks down because the stimulus field necessary to sustain it cannot be identified. These are the continuity/discontinuity of behavior across situations, the comprehension of consumer behavior at the personal level of exposition, and the delimitation of behavioral interpretations. All three of these bounds of behaviorism invite an intentional account (Foxall, 2004, 2007b, 2008, 2009, 2016b). The extensional consumer-situation, conceptualized simply as the interaction of the consumer’s learning history and the stimulus field provided by the current consumer behavior setting, must give way to an intentional consumer-situation if the explanation of consumer choice is to proceed. An essential methodological aim of the present volume is to clarify the content and role of this intentional consumer-situation as part of the explanatory medium that links context and cognition.

The second phase is composed of two stages, the construction of an intentional interpretation and the critical appraisal thereof, which determines whether current cognitive interpretations adequately underpin this intentional explanation. And it introduces three novel concerns.

First, the exploration of this advanced phase, psychological explanation, necessitates a shift in the conceptualization of consumer activity from behavior to action. While behavior is explicable by reference to the antecedent and consequential stimuli through which it can be predicted and influenced, action lacks such a stimulus field and is accounted for in terms of the actor’s desires, beliefs, emotions, and perceptions. But this does not imply that consumer action is context-free. Rather, our concern is with how the context within which consumer choice occurs, broadly speaking what behavioral psychology calls the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment, rewards and sanctions, relates to the mental processes that guide or at least provide the explanation for consumers’ actions. The stepping-off point is the delineation of consumer choice as activity that entails temporal conflict between alternative courses of action which differ in their objective and psychological evaluation. This understanding of consumer choice is an important element in what makes action action.

Second, the intentional interpretation that forms the second stage of Intentional Behaviorism is the construction of the consumer-situation, the immediate precursor of consumer choice, in intentional terms. It, therefore, embodies the language of intentionality rather than that of extensionally described consumer behavior settings (that consist in stimulus fields) and learning histories (that somehow summate previous exposure to such stimulus fields). The construction of the intentional consumer-situation requires concepts that indicate how the individual represents the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment that have provided the context for previous patterns of consumer choice and those that currently signal the probable outcomes of continued consumer actions. These contingency-representations consist in beliefs and desires with respect to the functional outcomes of action and the perceptual experience the consumer has had of previously encountered consumer-situations plus her current perceptual experience with regard to the outcomes that the present consumer behavior setting suggests will eventuate from further consumer action. The quest, therefore, involves the nature of perceptual contingency-representation and links it to the emotional experiences consumers report based on their experience of consumer-situations that portray various patterns of contingency. All-in-all, contingency-representation is a second important element in understanding what makes action action.

Third, viewing consumer activity as consumer choice, defined in terms of a temporal conflict between alternative courses of action, introduces the consideration of akrasia into our subject matter and thereby a broader perspective on consumer rationality. In seeking the appropriate desires and beliefs of which the intentional consumer-situation is partially constructed, this book adopts an approach which is amenable not only to the incorporation of rational propositional attitudes of this kind but also of a-rational and even irrational intentionality. Whereas earlier expositions of the Intentional Behaviorist research strategy have concentrated on the role of economic rationality in the explanation of consumer choice, the focus of this volume is on psychological rationality and, given an emphasis on the consumer-as-akrates, it does not rest on the automatic assumption, common among philosophers of mind, that human action is a rational outcome of mentation. Rather, following Brakel (2009), it seeks a more rounded understanding of mental processes and their contents. The nature of the rationality (/irrationality/a-rationality) that is relevant to the intentional explanation of consumer choice is something to be further explored by reference to the structure and functioning of the cognitive procedures that underlay intentional interpretation. Moreover, psychological rationality is the third central component of what makes action action.

The key to the progress of this research program, the generation of its empirical foundation, and its capacity to enhance interdisciplinary understanding of human behavior is the Behavioral Perspective Model.

A model of consumer-situation

The methodology of Intentional Behaviorism exploits the tension between the behaviorist and cognitive perspectives, viewing each as indispensable to the other. At the heart of this Intentional Behaviorist research strategy is the Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM), which can assume behaviorist, intentional, and cognitive perspectives with the aim of rendering consumer activity increasingly intelligible as its empirical base is first explored directly and then through the ascribed phenomenology of the consumer. In its contribution to the initial stage of the research program, the BPM employs a radical behaviorist depiction of consumer activity for two reasons: first, to establish the extent to which a non-cognitive model can uniquely elucidate this aspect of human activity and, second, to identify the points at which such an extensional account breaks down and requires the development of an intentional theory of choice. This delineation of the BPM is based on behavior analysis, a school of psychology that relates the rate at which behavior occurs to the nature of the consequences that similar behavior has generated in the past. Behavior analysis embraces a philosophy of psychology, radical behaviorism, in which the explanation of behavior involves the demonstration that it can be predicted and controlled on the basis of the environmental stimuli that precede and follow it. Nothing else.¹

This parsimonious version of the model relies on the operant “three-term contingency” of radical behaviorism, which explains behavior by allusion to its predictability and modification by reference to environmental stimuli. A discriminative stimulus is a pre-behavioral event in the presence of which the individual discriminates her behavior, preforming a response that has previously been rewarded rather than one that has not. Better than “rewarded” is “reinforced” in the sense that behavior that is followed by such an event is likely to increase in frequency on future occurrences of the appropriate discriminative stimulus. Discrimination in this sense is simply an observation of an individual’s behavior rather than the attribution to her of a mental operation. “Reinforcement” refers, then, to the strengthening of the behavior. Consequences of behavior that eventuate in its being performed less frequently are known as punishers; it is important to bear in mind that it is the behavior that is punished, not the individual. Reinforcers and punishers are post-behavioral stimuli but it is their occurrence in the past, in the consumer’s learning history, that accounts for their present potency in shaping and maintaining consumer activity (see Table 1.1).

Table 1.1Effects of consequential stimuli on rate of responding

Behavior	Consequential stimulus
	Positive	Aversive
Approach (generate, produce, or accept the consequential stimulus)	Positive reinforcement	Punishment
Avoidance or escape (prevent or eliminate the consequential stimulus)	Absent	Negative reinforcement

Positive reinforcement is an increase in the rate of responding due to the receipt of a positive reinforcer; punishment is a reduction in the rate of responding due to the receipt of an aversive consequence. The exposition retains Skinner’s (1953, 1974) terminology because it allows more subtle distinctions to be made about the environmental events that control behavior. Both positive and negative reinforcement involve an increase in the rate of responding: positive reinforcement means working harder, paying more, or performing more responses to obtain the reinforcer; negative reinforcement means increasing the performance of an evasive behavior, one that allows an aversive consequence to be escaped. Punishment and omission involve a decrease in the rate of responding. Punishment is the reception of/approach toward an aversive outcome when this reduces the frequency of the behavior in question. I may still buy fresh fruit when its price increases substantially but I buy less of it. Skinner is meticulous in using the term reinforcement for these instances rather than reward. Behavior is reinforced by an outcome that increases its probability. A person can be rewarded by the adventitious receipt of a gift, say, but her frequency of behaving is not contingent upon this. The same is true of punishment: it is the behavior that is punished when its rate is reduced in the face of its being followed by certain consequences, not the person. In the analysis of consumer behavior which follows, I will use the term reinforcer to refer to a consequence of behavior that increases its rate. I shall speak of emotional reward in referring to the positive emotional outcomes of behaving and receiving reinforcement. This is a subset of the reward as Skinner speaks of it. Correspondingly, emotional punishment will refer to the negative emotional outcomes of behavior.

Another type of pre-behavioral stimulus, the motivating operation, serves to enhance the relationship between a prospective response and the reinforcer which is forecast to follow its performance, making this consequence more attractive, and more valuable insofar as the individual will work harder (or pay more) to obtain the reinforcer. We have seen that the three-term contingency of radical behaviorist explanation comprises a discriminative stimulus (S^D) that increases the probability of a response (R) which has reinforcing/punishing outcomes (S^r/p) that influence its future rate of occurrence in the presence of the S^D. This may be augment...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 A progressive research program
• 2 Consumer action
• 3 Perceptual contingency- representation
• 4 Refining perceptual contingency-representation
• 5 The intentional consumer-situation
• 6 Cognitive foundations of the intentional consumer-situation
• 7 Behavior, Action, Agency
• Glossary of key terms
• Bibliography
• Index