There is a growing consensus that the brain computes value and saliency-like signals at the time of decision-making. Value signals are essential for making choices. Saliency signals are related to motivation, attention, and arousal. Unfortunately, an unequivocal characterization of the areas involved in these 2 distinct sets of processes is made difficult by the fact that, in most experiments, both types of signals are highly correlated. We dissociated value and saliency signals using a novel human functional magnetic resonance imaging decision-making task. Activity in the medial orbitofrontal, rostral anterior cingulate, and posterior cingulate cortices was modulated by value but not saliency. The opposite was true for dorsal anterior cingulate, supplementary motor area, insula, and the precentral and fusiform gyri. Only the ventral striatum and the cuneus were modulated by both value and saliency.

We introduce a novel physiologically-based methodology to consumer research-using the glycoprotein miraculin to manipulate the ability to sense and perceive specific taste elements in gustatory experiences. We apply this approach to exploring how information extrinsic (e.g., product reviews) to a product's inherent sensory facets influences reported consumption experiences and experienced utility. Results from two experiments suggest that extrinsic information distorts the basic sensory and perceptual character of consumption experiences, rather than simply biasing selfreports of the experiences or serving as an independent input to overall taste and utility evaluations. Such evaluations are distorted in the direction of extrinsic product information only when the ability to actually perceive the experience as being consistent with the extrinsic signal is not disrupted by miraculin. Conversely, disruption by miraculin of the ability to perceive an experience as being consistent with an extrinsic signal ablates or reverses such effects. Implications, applications to brands and branding, and other possible research directions for the miraculin tastemanipulation methodology are also discussed.

Under pressure, people often prefer what is familiar, which can seem safer than the unfamiliar. We show that such favoring of familiarity can lead to choices precisely contrary to the source of felt pressure, thus exacerbating, rather than mitigating, its negative consequences. In Experiment 1, time pressure increased participants' frequency of choosing to complete a longer but incidentally familiar task option (as opposed to a shorter but unfamiliar alternative), resulting in increased felt stress during task completion. In Experiment 2, pressure to reach a performance benchmark in a chosen puzzle increased participants' frequency of choosing an incidentally familiar puzzle that both augured and delivered objectively worse performance (i.e., fewer points obtained). Participants favored this familiar puzzle even though familiarity was established through unpleasant prior experience. This "devil you know" preference under pressure contrasted with disfavoring of the negatively familiar option in a pressure-free situation. These results demonstrate that pressure-induced flights to familiarity can sometimes aggravate rather than ameliorate pressure, and can occur even when available evidence points to the suboptimality of familiar options.

We show that the way decision makers construct risk perceptions is systematically influenced by their level of self-control: low self-control results in greater weighting of probability and reduced weighting of consequences of negative outcomes in formulating overall threat perceptions. Seven studies demonstrate such distorted risk construction in wide-ranging risk domains. The effects hold for both chronic and manipulated levels of perceived self-control and are observed only for risks involving high personalagency (e.g., overeating, smoking, drinking). As an important implication of our results, we also demonstrate that those lower (higher) in self-control show relatively less (more) interest in products and lifestyle changes reducing consequences (e.g., a pill that heals liver damage from drinking) than those reducing likelihood of risks (e.g., a pill that prevents liver damage from drinking). We also explore several possible underlying processes for the observed effect and discuss the theoretical and managerial relevance of our findings.

Increased liking of one's choice following difficult decisions (e.g., choosing between similarly attractive options) is well documented. Given the common mechanism proposed for this effect-a highly involving dissonance reduction process-it would be reasonable to expect such choice enhancement to be quite durable and resistant to later change. Instead, we show the contrary: that difficulty-driven choice enhancement is exceptionally fragile, collapsing easily against even minor attack. In three experiments, consumers make easy or difficult product choices, report attitudes toward their choice, and subsequently encounter a negative customer review. Compared to easy decisions, difficult decisions lead to more extreme initial positivity toward chosen products but also to more vulnerability to subsequent attack. Moreover, this fragile enhancement effect is exacerbated, not ameliorated, by choice involvement. Thus, making difficult decisions between similarly attractive options may motivate a bubble-like inflation of positivity that has some semblance of strength yet remains highly prone to collapse. (c) 2010 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..