The gut chooses faster than the mind: A latency advantage of affective over cognitive decisions

Abstract

Dual-process theories often cite that affective processing occurs more rapidly than cognitive processing. A wide range of evidence seems to support this notion; however, little research exists in the context of decision making. We tested the hypothesis that affective decisions would be performed faster than cognitive decisions. Forty-nine students completed a series of forced-choice tasks involving well-known consumer brands, focusing on either emotionally or cognitively relevant aspects of the products. The results revealed a significant latency advantage for affective processing compared to cognitive processing.

Keywords:

• Decision making
• Affect
• Cognition
• Consumer preferences
• Dual-process theory

Acknowledgments

This article is based on an undergraduate final year research project carried out by the first author under the supervision of the second author.

Notes

¹ Market share and number of outlet data may not necessarily correspond to consumer (participant) awareness of the brands because, amongst other reasons, certain categories may only penetrate particular market segments, the number of consumers responsible for differing proportions of market share may be different for different markets, and the size of the customer base was different for each of the selected markets. Nevertheless, we felt that using market share data provided a reasonable estimate of brand awareness and was also a readily available source of information.

² Care was taken over all instructions in the brands task to ensure that the aims of the experiment were not subtly conveyed to participants. For example, although the phrase “affective reaction” and “cognitive evaluation” often appear in the literature, only the phrases “affective reaction” and “cognitive reaction” appeared in the instructions, thus not connoting different temporal meanings.

³ The term market is used here synonymously with the terms brand category and block that appear in the main body of this report.