Lay Intuitions about Overall Evaluations of Experiences

1. Lay Intuitions about Overall Evaluations of Experiences Irina Cojuharenco GPEFM Barcelona Universitat Pompeu Fabra

2. Overall Evaluations of Experiences “I would evaluate my experience in this concert as 7 out of 10!” “On a scale from 0 to 100 this vacation would deserve 60 points!” “In terms of painfulness, I would rate this medical procedure as 90 out of 100…”

3. The Importance of Overall Evaluations • Decision input (motivation, future choices (Wirtz et al., 2003, Oishi & Sullivan, in press), advice) • Decision target (customer satisfaction or organizational performance, e.g. hotel stays, employee appraisals) What do we know about how overall evaluations come about?

4. Previous Research Overall Evaluation= Remembered Utility“Peak-End Rule” (Kahneman, 2000) Puzzle: duration neglect (Kahneman, Wakker & Sarin, 1997) Experienced Utility Paradigm

5. Contribution

6. Lay Intuitions Experienced Utility Paradigm

7. Motivation • The subjective nature of overall evaluations (Alexandrova, 2005), • Discussions of duration neglect (Ariely & Loewenstein, 2000), and no research on what communication partners expect of overall evaluations of experiences.

8. Method Informants evaluating experiences in real-time and overall (0-100 scale, “nothing pleasant” to “a great deal of pleasure”) Guessers having to infer overall evaluations by means of Active Information Search (Huber, Wider & Huber, 1997) with only the type of experience and metrics of evaluations known initially Closed format questionnaires for the comparison of open-ended and closed-format elicitation of intuitions Interpretations of given overall evaluations of experiences (closed format)

9. Method Informants evaluating experiences in real-time and overall (0-100 scale, “nothing pleasant” to “a great deal of pleasure”) Guessers having to infer overall evaluations by means of Active Information Search (Huber, Wider & Huber, 1997) with only the type of experience and metrics of evaluations known initially Closed format questionnaires for the comparison of open-ended and closed-format elicitation of intuitions Interpretations of given overall evaluations of experiences (closed format)

10. Procedure Guessers Informants ? 4 experiments: music, chocolate, pleasant images, aversive images 2 task conditions: 3 questions / 1 question closed format questionnaires feedback and pay

11. Music Pilot: Questions and Theories • Experienced Utility Paradigm (Kahneman, Wakker & Sarin, 1997) • Accessibility model of emotional self-report (Robinson & Clore, 2000) / Construal level theory (Trope & Liberman, 2003)/ Valence judgments (Brendl & Higgins, 1995) • Personality (Updegraff, Gable & Taylor, in press) • Value as goal supportiveness (Brendl & Higgins, 1995) • Value by “functional” aspects (Zacks & Tversky, 2000)

12. Category 1. Consistent with “experienced utility” (real-time ratings, duration-free statistics of these and duration) Category 2. Non-chronological decomposition of utility (functional aspects, liking of aspects, category of experience, liking of category, emotion specification) Category 3. Personality Category 4. Decision rule Category 5. Impications of the overall utility rating (future use pattern, goal supportiveness, WTP, approach-avoidance motivations) Questions Classification Category 1. “How did you rate the musical performances of this sequence?” · “How did you rate the performance you liked the best?” · “How many performances did you hear?” Category 2. “What was, or, How much did you like the rhythm of the music you listened to?” · “Was the music you heard classical?” · “Was your experience similar to your experience in a philosophy lecture?” Category 3. “Are you a person who likes variety?” · “Are you a generally depressed individual?” Category 4. “Was your overall rating equal to the average of performance ratings?” Category 5. “How often would you listen to this music if you had it at home?” · “Would you use it as a background for a romantic dinner?”

13. Questions Structure 1 Question Asked to Infer Informant´s Evaluation

14. Questions Structure 3 Questions Asked to Infer Informant´s Evaluation TQ – in Total Questions Asked; AP – of All Participants

15. Non-chronological decomposition of utility

16. Summary • Common principles for interpreting overall evaluations. Context-dependent saliency. • Duration not believed to matter for overall evaluations. • A role for future decision-making.

17. Closed Format Questionnaires Guessers faced questions that “could have been asked in the guessing task” • chose 3 that would have been most helpful • underlined 1 they would have chosen if constrained Questionnaire A: 9 items inspired by question categories found in pilot experiment (music) Questionnaire B: 12 items inspired by “experienced utility” paradigm

18. Questionnaire A Across Paradigms: Percentage of Participants Choosing an Item. *** significantly different from random choice (5% significance level) * significantly different from random choice (10% significance level) __ underlined are percentages corresponding to items chosen when participants could choose one item only (percentages are not reported, all significantly different from random choice at 5% level)

19. Questionnaire B Experienced Utility Paradigm: Percentage of Participants Choosing an Item.

20. Conclusions • Multiple paradigms. Interactions unexplored. • Duration not believed to matter for overall evaluations. • Eagerness to assume “overall=average” (as dictionaries?). • Did lay intuitions reveal potential interpretations of overall evaluations?

21. Opinions Poll 71 undergraduates rated 0-10 plausibility of various interpretations they would give to hearing a participant of a lab image-viewing experiment evaluate his/her experience overall after he/she had evaluated each image viewed.

22. Future research • More on the use and social context of overall evaluations. • “Type of experience – principles for evaluation” interaction. • Standard of measurement: Utility Rating versus Willingness-to-Pay. • “Framing” overall evaluations.

23. Thank You! www.econ.upf.edu/~irinac For any questions regarding this work, please, contact Irina Cojuharenco at irina.cojuharenco@upf.edu