Differential Reliance on Feelings in the Present vs. the Future (or Past): Affect as a Decision Making System of the Present

• Main Authors: CHANG, Hanwen Hannah, PHAM, Michel Tuan
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2009
• Subjects: Advertising and Promotion Management; Marketing; Sales and Merchandising
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/2918; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/lkcsb_research/article/3917/viewcontent/ChangMPham37ConRes.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

We posit that compared to the cognitive system, the affective system of judgment and decision making is relatively more engaged in the present. Specifically, we hypothesize that even if their accessibility is held constant, affective feelings are weighted more heavily in consumer judgments and decisions set in the present than in equivalent judgments and decisions set in the future or in the past. Consistent with this proposition, results from six experiments show that (a) compared to a more distant future, a nearer future increases consumers’ relative preferences for options that are superior in terms of integral affect over options that are cognitively superior; (b) compared to a more distant future, a nearer future also increases the influence of incidental moods on consumers’ evaluation; (c) consumers find the reliance on feelings more “natural” in decisions set in a nearer future than in decisions set in a more distant future; and (d) compared to a more distant past, a more recent past also increases the influence of incidental moods on consumers’ evaluations.