Our possessions are a major contributor to and reflection of our identities A variety of evidence is presented supporting this simple and compelling premise Related streams of research are identified and drawn upon in developing this concept and implications are derived for consumer behavior Because the construct of extended self involves consumer behavior rather than buyer behavior, it appears to be a much richer construct than previous formulations positing a relationship between self-concept and consumer brand choice

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2489522.pdf

Possessions and the extended self.

A review is presented of the book “Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment,” edited by Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman.

Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment

Much research in the last two decades has demon- strated that human responses deviate from the performance deemed normative according to various models of decision mak- ing and rational judgment (e.g., the basic axioms of utility theory). This gap between the normative and the descriptive can be inter- preted as indicating systematic irrationalities in human cognition. However, four alternative interpretations preserve the assumption that human behavior and cognition is largely rational. These posit that the gap is due to (1) performance errors, (2) computational limitations, (3) the wrong norm being applied by the experi- menter, and (4) a different construal of the task by the subject. In the debates about the viability of these alternative explanations, attention has been focused too narrowly on the modal response. In a series of experiments involving most of the classic tasks in the heuristics and biases literature, we have examined the implica- tions of individual differences in performance for each of the four explanations of the normative/descriptive gap. Performance er- rors are a minor factor in the gap; computational limitations un- derlie non-normative responding on several tasks, particularly those that involve some type of cognitive decontextualization. Un- expected patterns of covariance can suggest when the wrong norm is being applied to a task or when an alternative construal of the task should be considered appropriate.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0140525X00003435

Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate?

We hypothesize that there is a general bias, based on both innate predispositions and experience, in animals and humans, to give greater weight to negative entities (e.g., events, objects, personal traits). This is manifested in 4 ways: (a) negative potency (negative entities are stronger than the equivalent positive entities), (b) steeper nega tive gradients (the negativity of negative events grows more rapidly with approach to them in space or time than does the positivity of positive events, (c) negativity domi nance (combinations of negative and positive entities yield evaluations that are more negative than the algebraic sum of individual subjective valences would predict), and (d) negative differentiation (negative entities are more varied, yield more complex conceptual representations, and engage a wider response repertoire). We review evi dence for this taxonomy, with emphasis on negativity dominance, including literary, historical, religious, and cultural sources, as well as the psychological literatures on learning, attention, impression formation, contagion, moral judgment, development, and memory. We then consider a variety of theoretical accounts for negativity bias. We suggest that 1 feature of negative events that make them dominant is that negative entities are more contagious than positive entities.

/pdf/negativity-bias-negativity-dominance-and-contagion-2njh4nr8pi.pdf

Negativity Bias, Negativity Dominance, and Contagion

A theory of norms and normality is presented and applied to some phenomena of emotional responses, social judgment, and conversations about causes. Norms are assumed to be constructed ad hoc by recruiting specific representations. Category norms are derived by recruiting exemplars. Specific objects or events generate their own norms by retrieval of similar experiences stored in memory or by construction of counterfactual alternatives. The normality of a stimulus is evaluated by comparing it to the norms that it evokes after the fact, rather than to precomputed expectations. Norm theory is applied in analyses of the enhanced emotional response to events that have abnormal causes, of the generation of predictions and inferences from observations of behavior, and of the role of norms in causal questions and answers. This article is concerned with category norms that represent knowledge of concepts and with stimulus norms that govern comparative judgments and designate experiences as surprising. In the tradition of adaptation level theory (Appley, 1971; Helson, 1964), the concept of norm is applied to events that range in complexity from single visual displays to social interactions. We first propose a model of an activation process that produces norms, then explore the role of norms in social cognition. The central idea of the present treatment is that norms are computed after the event rather than in advance. We sketch a supplement to the generally accepted idea that events in the stream of experience are interpreted and evaluated by consulting precomputed schemas and frames of reference. The view developed here is that each stimulus selectively recruits its own alternatives (Garner, 1962, 1970) and is interpreted in a rich context of remembered and constructed representations of what it could have been, might have been, or should have been. Thus, each event brings its own frame of reference into being. We also explore the idea that knowledge of categories (e.g., "encounters with Jim") can be derived on-line by selectively evoking stored representations of discrete episodes and exemplars. The present model assumes that a number of representations can be recruited in parallel, by either a stimulus event or an

https://www3.canyons.edu/faculty/rafterm/0%200LLI%20LOVEandLOSS/Day%206%20Files/1986%20-%20Norm%20Theory%20-%20Comparing%20Reality%20to%20Its%20Alternatives.pdf

Norm theory: Comparing reality to its alternatives

Two laws of sympathetic magic were described by Frazer and Mauss at the beginning of this century to account for magical belief systems in traditional cultures. In this study, we show that these laws fit well with a variety of behaviors in American culture, in responses to disgusting, dangerous, or valued objects. The first law, contagion, holds that "once in contact, always in contact." That is, there can be a permanent transfer of properties from one object (usually animate) to another by brief contact. For example, in this study we show that drinks that have briefly contacted a sterilized, dead cockroach become undesirable, or that laundered shirts previously worn by a disliked person are less desirable than those previously worn by a liked or neutral person. The second law, similarity, holds that "the image equals the object," and that action taken on an object affects similar objects. In this study, we demonstrate this law by showing, for example, that people reject acceptable foods (e.g., fudge) shaped into a form that represents a disgusting object (dog feces), or that people are less accurate at throwing darts at pictures of the faces of people they like. With these and other measures, we found a great deal of evidence for the operation of the laws of sympathetic magic in all 50 of the subjects we studied. The laws of sympathetic magic correspond to the two basic laws of association (contiguity and similarity}. We discuss the parallel and report a disgust conditioning study to develop this parallel.

Linda Millman

Papers

Operation of the laws of sympathetic magic in disgust and other domains.

Family environment, not heredity, accounts for family resemblances in food preferences and attitudes: a twin study