If you have a choice, you have trouble: Stimulus valence modulates presentation‐order effects in preference judgment

Abstract

It is well known that the presentation order of choice options often affects decision outcomes to a significant degree. However, despite the significance and wide occurrence of the effects, they are ignored in most preference models. Furthermore, psychophysical findings of stimulusmagnitude dependent presentation-order effects have not been acknowledged previously in the cognitive literature on preference judgments. Thus, the potential moderating effect of the level of stimulus magnitude (here, valence) on the direction and size of order effects in preference judgment has not been investigated previously. In two experiments, participants (117 and 204, respectively) rated their preference for pairs of everyday-type objects and phenomena (e.g., apple-pear, headache-stomachache). Stimuli were spaced horizontally, and each participant received them in one of two opposite within-pair presentation orders. Participants also rated the stimuli's valence on a scale from very bad to very good. The results showed a positive correlation between the rated valence and the tendency to prefer the first-mentioned (left) stimulus; that is, the effect was greatest, and opposite, for choices between the most attractive and the most unattractive options, respectively. In terms of Hellström's (1979) sensation-weighting model, the positive correlation is caused by a higher weight (i.e., impact on the preference judgment) for the left stimulus than for the right, which is possibly due to the left stimulus being compared to the right. The results suggest that researchers may have failed previously to find important moderators of presentation-order effects in preference judgment due to the failure to use sufficiently attractive or unattractive stimuli.

Beware how you compare: comparison direction dictates stimulus-valence-modulated presentation-order effects in preference judgment

“…2, with the weight relation s 1 > s 2 , the left (first) stimulus is overestimated when comparing two stimuli above the ReL, and the right (last) is overestimated when comparing two stimuli below the ReL. This weight relation could then account for the valence-level-dependent order effects obtained by Englund and Hellström (2012a). That is, the left stimulus had a greater impact than did the right on the outcome of the preference comparison, which led to the tendency to prefer the leftmost of two attractive stimuli and the rightmost of two unattractive stimuli.…”

“…Obviously, pitting these two hypotheses against each other is of great theoretical, but also of practical, importance (e.g., in domains of product marketing and evaluation). Therefore, in the present article we present two experiments that were designed to test the two alternative explanations for the valence-level-dependent WOE reported by Englund and Hellström (2012a). First, however, we present the framework for description of the phenomenon and then the two alternative explanations.…”

“…Inspired by these psychophysical results, Englund and Hellström (2012a) investigated preference choices between everyday objects and phenomena denoted by printed labels (e.g., apple-pear, headache-stomach ache) and found analogous magnitude-level dependent order effects. Specifically, the stimuli in each pair were presented at the left and right margins, respectively, of a page, and preference statements were printed in-between them (e.g., "I like [much more, more, somewhat more, somewhat less, less, much less] than .…”

“…The results showed a tendency to prefer the left/first-read of two attractive stimuli (e.g., apple-pear) and the right/last-read of two unattractive stimuli (e.g., headache-stomach ache); the size of the effect varied linearly with the rated valence level of the stimuli. Englund and Hellström (2012a) dubbed this effect the wordorder effect (WOE); in analogy to the SOE and TOE, a positive WOE indicates a tendency to prefer the left/first-read stimulus. One possible explanation for this valence-leveldependent WOE is that it is due to the left-right positioning of the words-that is, that it simply amounts to a SOE.…”

“…The sensation-weighting model Englund and Hellström (2012a) found that the valence-leveldependent WOE that they observed could be described well by the sensation-weighting (SW) model, which has proved a powerful tool for describing the effects of temporal and spatial presentation order (i.e., TOEs and SOEs) in comparisons of psychophysical stimuli (e.g., Hellström, 1979Hellström, , 1985Hellström, , 2003Patching, Englund, & Hellström, 2012), and also of aesthetic stimuli (Englund & Hellström, 2012b). This model rests, essentially, on the simple notion, common across many disciplines, that the impacts of two independent variables X 1 and X 2 (here, the valences of the compared stimuli) on a dependent variable Y (here, the preference judgment) can often be efficiently analyzed by calculating the weights in a linear regression of Y on X 1 and X 2 .…”