Liking Goes with Liking: An Intuitive Congruence between Preference and Prominence

Abstract

In a series of five experiments, we find that people intuitively relate preferred choices to prominently labeled cues (such as Heads as opposed to Tails in a coin toss) and vice versa. Importantly, the observed congruence is asymmetric – it does not manifest for non-prominent cues and non-preferred choices. The first four experiments demonstrate the non-intuitive nature of the effect, while the last experiment suggests that preference-prominence congruence may be rooted in a deeper link between prominence and fluency. Higher fluency seems to elicit positive affective reaction, and the observed congruence is proposed to be the result of evaluative matching between two positive affective cues. We discuss the theoretical contributions to the study of preferences and decision making, as well as the practical implications to researchers and practitioners.