Mirror, Mirror on the Retail Wall: Self-Focused Attention Promotes Reliance on Feelings in Consumer Decisions

The authors propose that consumers’ increased self-focused attention promotes their relative reliance on affective feelings when they make decisions. The authors test this hypothesis in a variety of consumption domains and decision tasks, including real-life, consequential charitable donations. Consistent support from five experiments with more than 1,770 participants shows that (1) valuations of the decision outcome increase when consumers with...