Center for Behavioral Decision Research

CBDR : Seminar Series : Seminar by Adam Alter

Easy on the Mind; Hard on the Mind: The Effects of Fluency on Valuation, Elaboration, and Construal

	presented by Adam Alter (Princeton University)


	Thursday, November 20	link to paper
	12pm
	Porter 223D	link to Speaker's Site

	Abstract:

	This research examines the effects of fluency--the subjective experience of ease or difficulty associated with processing information--on a diverse range of judgments and cognitions. I show that fluent or familiar currency instruments seem more valuable than disfluent or unfamiliar currency instruments (Studies 1-3); and fluently named stocks and those with pronounceable ticker codes outperform those with disfluent names and unpronounceable ticker codes (Studies 4-6). In addition to its direct effects on judgment, fluency also affects judgment indirectly by changing how people process information. Specifically, disfluency signals a lack of confidence in judgment, leading people to process information more deeply than they tend to when they experience processing ease (Studies 7-9). Moreover, people tend to perceive disfluent stimuli as more distant from their present position, which in turn leads them to represent those stimuli more abstractly than they represent nearer stimuli (Studies 10-14). These studies illuminate the role of fluency in financial and consumer-oriented judgments, and suggest that marketers and policymakers should attend to the sometimes unintuitive consequences of varying the fluency of a persuasive message.

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