A multi-source account for affective responses to processing fluency

Abstract

Processing fluency has been shown to be flexible metacognitive cue for a range of judgements including truth, familiarity, and trust. Amongst these, affect judgements are of particular interest as 1) affect can be genuinely evoked by fluency, and 2) affect can be used as a cue for other judgements. However, there is disagreement towards the pattern of affective responses arising from fluency. The hedonic marking hypothesis (Winkielman, Schwarz, Fazendeiro, & Reber, 2003) suggests that fluency is fundamentally positive, whilst the fluency amplification account (Albrecht & Carbon, 2014) suggests that the affective response can be positive or negative, depending on (and congruent with) the valence of stimuli being exposed to. Whilst these accounts have been used as competing explanations, this thesis argues that they both contribute to overall affective responses in a novel multi-source account. This thesis developed a novel set of business scenarios to manipulate fluency (using coherence) and valence (using risk). Evidence from three approaches is presented: 1) Meta-Analysis examining affective responses to fluency, with a sample of 108 publications (k = 591 effect sizes), 2) Five behavioural experiments, and 3) Facial electromyography (fEMG). Across these approaches, neither hedonic marking nor fluency amplification in isolation could account for the full pattern of results. Instead, results were explained by the combined contribution of the two models, as predicted by the multi-source account. The unique findings were uncovered by manipulating stimuli valence, as well as separately measuring positive and negative affect, an approach not previously investigated in the literature, thereby adding methodological, as well as theoretical, contributions to the literature on fluency effects. Implications for future research are to adopt a separate measurement approach to investigate wider judgement domains, whilst practical implications for business assessment and agenda setting are also discussed.