fluency affects... the psychologist

8/9/2019 Fluency Affects... the Psychologist

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Alter, A.L. & Oppenheimer, D.M. (2006).Predicting short-term stockfluctuations by using processingfluency. Proceedings of the National

Academy of Science, 103, 93699372.McGlone, M.S. & Tofighbakhsh, J. (2000).

Birds of a feather flock conjointly.

Psychological Science, 11, 424428.Novemsky, N., Dhar, R., Schwarz, N. &

Simonson, I. (2007). Preferencefluency in choice.Journal of

Marketing Research, 44, 347356.Reber, R., Brun, M. & Mittendorfer, K.

(2009). The use of heuristics inintuitive mathematical judgment.Psychonomic Bulletin and Review,

15(6), 11741178.Reber, R. & Schwarz, N. (1999). Effects of

perceptual fluency on judgments oftruth. Consciousness and Cognition, 8,338342.

Reber, R., Schwarz, N. & Winkielman, P.

(2004). Processing fluency andaesthetic pleasure: Is beauty in theperceiver's processing experience?Personality and Social Psychology

Review, 8, 364382.Schwarz, N. (2006). On judgments of

truth and beauty. Daedalus, 135,

136138.Schwarz, N. & Clore, G.L. (1983). Mood,

misattribution, and judgments ofwell-being.Journal of Personality and

Social Psychology, 45, 513523.Schwarz, N. & Clore, G.L. (2007).

Feelings and phenomenalexperiences. In A. Kruglanski & E.T.Higgins (Eds.) Social psychology:Handbook of basic principles (2nd edn)(pp.385407). New York: Guilford.

Schwarz, N., Sanna, L., Skurnik, I. &Yoon, C. (2007). Metacognitiveexperiences and the intricacies ofsetting people straight.Advances in

Thinking can feel easy or difficult.

But what effect does the ease or

difficulty of reading a text have on

information processing? Can

something as seemingly irrelevant

as the print font in which

information is presented influencehow information is evaluated, or

even whether it is accepted as true

or false? What are the practical

implications for everyday life?

Suppose you ponder whether a newexercise routine is suitable for youor whether a statement like Orsono

is a city in Chile is true or false. Whatwould your decision be based on? Mostpsychological theories suggest that youwould consider the nature of the exerciseor draw on your knowledge aboutgeography to arrive at an informeddecision. Surely, you wouldnt base yourjudgement on the print font in which thematerial is presented or would you?

Surprisingly, recent experimentalresearch shows that the print font canexert a profound influence on suchdecisions. This is the case because printfonts and related variables influence howfluently new information can be processed.The resulting feeling of ease or difficulty, inturn, informs a wide variety of judgements,

from judgements of effort to judgementsof familiarity, truth, risk and beauty (fora review see Schwarz et al., 2009). Weillustrate some of these effects, discusstheir applied implications, and noteparallels between peoples reliance onthe metacognitive feelings of ease anddifficulty and their reliance on moodsand emotions as sources of information(Schwarz & Clore, 2007).

Effort and choiceWhen we consider adopting newbehaviours, we often try to assess how

much effort they will require. Will thisnew exercise routine be a pain? Will thisrecipe be easy to prepare? Notsurprisingly, complex exercise routinesand recipes will seem more effortful than

less complex ones, but minor irrelevantfeatures can easily lead us astray in oureffort estimates.

For example, consider the identicalexercise instructions shown (in part) inFigure 1. When they were presented inan easy-to-read print font (Arial), readersassumed that the exercise would take 8.2minutes to complete; but when they werepresented in a difficult-to-read print font,readers assumed it would take nearly twiceas long, a full 15.1 minutes (Song &Schwarz, 2008b). They also thought thatthe exercise would flow quite naturallywhen the font was easy to read, but fearedthat it would drag on when it was difficultto read. Given these impressions, theywere more willing to incorporate theexercise into their daily routine whenit was presented in an easy-to-read font.Quite clearly, people misread the difficultyof reading the exercise instructions asindicative of the difficulty involved indoing the exercise. If we want peopleto adopt a new behaviour, it is thereforeimportant that instructions are not onlysemantically clear and easy to follow, butalso visually easy to read or else thebehaviour may seem unduly demanding.

Similar results were obtained whenpeople read a recipe for a Japanese lunchroll (Song & Schwarz, 2008b). When the

identical recipe was presented in theelegant but difficult-to-read Mistral font,they assumed that it would require moretime and more skill than when it waspresented in the easy-to-read Arial font.Hence, it may be advantageous forrestaurants to describe their dishes in adifficult-to-read font, which conveys thattheir preparation requires considerableskill and effort but the same font maydiscourage the hobby cook from tryingthe recipe at home.

Other research showed that the printfont can influence whether people makeany decision at all or defer the decision to

a later time. Not surprisingly, people aremore likely to postpone a decision theharder it is to make (for a review seeNovemsky et al., 2007). In most cases, thedifficulty arises from characteristics of the

references

resources

questions

Schwarz, N. (2004). Metacognitiveexperiences in judgments anddecision making.Journal of ConsumerPsychology, 14, 332348.

Schwarz, N., Song, H., & Xu, J. (2009).When thinking is difficult:Metacognitive experiences asinformation. In M. Wnke (Ed.) Thesocial psychology of consumer behavior.New York: Psychology Press.

www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=876

www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1881325,00.htmlwww.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?

id=a-recipe-for-motivation

What is the likely role of metacognitivefeelings of ease and difficulty in yourown field of psychology?

What are the implications for teaching,counselling, advertising, healtheducation, and political communication?

What do these influences imply for therationality of human judgement?

A

RTICLE

If its easy to read, its easyto do, pretty, good, and trueHyunjin Song and Norbert Schwarz describe some fascinating findings on howfluency affects judgement, choice and processing style


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choice situation, like difficult trade-offsbetween price and quality or the sheernumber of similar choice alternatives.However, the same inclination to deferchoice can be observed whenthe experienced difficulty

arises merely from the printfont in which the choicealternatives are described.Novemsky and colleagues(2007) presented the sameinformation about twocordless phones in easy- ordifficult-to-read fonts. Theyobserved that 17 per cent oftheir participants postponedchoice when the font was easyto read, whereas 41 per centdid so when the font wasdifficult to read. Apparently,participants misread the

difficulty arising from the printfont as reflecting the difficultyof making a choice.Supporting this interpretation,the effect was eliminated when

the experimenter statedthe obvious: This may bedifficult to read because of

the print font. In this case,deferral dropped from 41per cent to 16 per cent,wiping out the differencebetween the two fonts.

In combination, thesefindings highlight thatpeople are sensitive to theirfeelings of ease or difficulty,but insensitive to wherethese feelings come from.As a result, theymisattribute theexperienced ease ordifficulty to whatever is inthe focus of their attention.Hence, they decide to defer

choice, or to avoid anexercise routine, simplybecause the print font makesthe information difficult toprocess. Once their attentionis drawn to the print font,

facilitating a correct attribution, theseeffects are no longer observed. This findingparallels the observation that people drawon their moods as a source of information

unless their attention is drawn to theincidental nature of their current feelings(e.g. Schwarz & Clore, 1983).

Familiarity and riskIn addition to providing informationabout effort, the fluency with which astimulus can be processed also providesinformation about the familiarity of thestimulus. Familiar stimuli are indeedeasier to process, recognise and rememberthan unfamiliar stimuli. But noteverything that is easy to process is alsofamiliar in some cases, it is only easy toprocess because it is presented in an easy-to-read print font or with goodfigureground contrast. As already seen,however, people are more sensitive totheir feelings of ease or difficulty thanto where those feelings come from andhence infer familiarity whenever astimulus is easy to process. Thisfluencyfamiliarity link is at the heartof many fluency effects, including theinfluence of fluency on judgements ofrisk.

It is not surprising that familiar optionsfeel safer than unfamiliar ones. In groceryaisles, we often prefer the same familiar

vegetables over lessfamiliar exotic ones

because we do not want torun the risk of picking onewith a strange taste orunknown allergens.Similarly, people perceivetechnologies, investmentsand leisure activities as lessrisky the more familiarthey are with them. Butdoes this observation reallyreflect the influence ofmere familiarity or doesextended exposure to apotential threat desensitisepeople to the risks

involved? To address thisissue, we took advantage ofthe well-established fluency-familiarity link. Given thatfluently processed stimuli

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk 109

processing fluency

Experimental Social Psychology, 39,127-161.

Schwarz, N., Song, H. & Xu, J. (2009).When thinking is difficult:Metacognitive experiences asinformation. In M. Wnke (Ed.) Thesocial psychology of consumer

behavior. New York: PsychologyPress.

Song, H. & Schwarz, N. (2008a). Fluencyand the detection of misleading

questions. Social cognition, 26,791799.

Song, H. & Schwarz, N. (2008b). If itshard to read, its hard to do:Processing fluency affects effortprediction and motivation.Psychological Science, 19, 986988.

Song, H. & Schwarz, N. (2009). If itsdifficult to pronounce, it must berisky: Fluency, familiarity, and riskperception. Psychological Science,

20(2), 135138.Weaver, K., Garcia, S.M., Schwarz, N. &

Miller, D.T. (2007). Inferring thepopularity of an opinion from itsfamiliarity.Journal of Personality andSocial Psychology, 92, 821833.

Winkielman, P. & Cacioppo, J.T. (2001).

Mind at ease puts a smile on theface: Psychophysiological evidencethat processing facilitation leadsto positive affect.Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology, 81,9891000.

Winkielman, P., Halberstadt, J.,

Fazendeiro, T. & Catty, S. (2006).Prototypes are attractive becausethey are easy on mind. PsychologicalScience, 17(9), 799806.

Zajonc, R.B. (1968). Attitudinal effects ofmere exposure.Journal of Personalityand Social Psychology, Monograph

Supplement, 9, 127.

Tuck your chin into your chest, andthen lift your chin upward as faras possible. 610 repetitions

Lower your left ear toward your leftshoulder and then your right eartoward your right shoulder. 610repetitions

Tuck your chin into your chest, and then lift yourchin upward as far as possible. 610repetitions

Lower your left ear toward your left shoulder andthen your right ear toward your right shoulder.

610 repetitions

Figure 1. People mistakenly interpret the difficulty of

reading exercise instructions as indicative of the difficulty

involved in doing the exercise

People perceive technologies, investments, leisure activities, even

vegetables, as less risky the more familiar they are with them


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processing fluency

seem more familiar, they should also beperceived as less threatening and less risky.

Empirically this is the case (Song &

Schwarz, 2009). In one study, participantsperceived ostensible food additives withhard-to-pronounce names (e.g.Hnegripitrom) as more harmful than foodadditives with easy-to-pronounce names(e.g. Magnalroxate). In addition, the foodadditives with difficult names wereperceived as more novel than the oneswith easy names, and perceived noveltymediated the influence of ease ofpronunciation on perceived risk.

Given that none of our participantscould know anything about theseostensible food additives (after all, wemade up the names), this finding providedfirst evidence that perceived familiarity, byitself, influences perceptions of risk.Moreover, this influence is not limited tothe perception of negative risks, as in thecase of food additives, but can also beobserved in the perception of risks thatpeople consider desirable. For instance,people may want to take risky amusementpark rides to enjoy the feeling ofexcitement and adventure. Would theirchoice be influenced by the ease ordifficulty with which the names of theamusement park rides can be pronounced?The answer is a clear yes (Song &

Schwarz, 2009). Participants perceivedrides with difficult-to-pronounce names(e.g. Tsiischili) as more exciting andadventurous than rides with easy-to-pronounce names (e.g. Chunta). Otherparticipants, however, were asked howlikely the rides would make them feel sick and once again, the rides with difficult-to-pronounce names won. Throughout,the ease with which the names of stimulicould be pronounced influenced theirperceived familiarity. This perceivedfamiliarity, in turn, influenced how riskythe stimuli seemed, no matter if the riskwas desirable or undesirable.

Similar observations have been madein a real-world domain with high stakes:peoples investments in the stock market.Analysing the performance of initialpublic offerings on the New York StockExchange, Alter and Oppenheimer (2006)found that companies with easy-to-pronounce ticker symbols (e.g. KAR)performed better than companies withdifficult-to-pronounce ticker symbols(RDO). Investing $1000 in a basket ofstocks with fluent ticker symbols wouldhave yielded an excess profit of $85.35over a basket with disfluent tickersymbols on the first day of trading. This

advantage dropped to a still impressive$20.25 by the end of the first year oftrading, as more diagnostic informationabout the companies became available.

Presumably, investment opportunities

with easy-to-pronounce ticker symbolsseemed less risky, giving them anadvantage in initial public offerings.

The observed link between fluency,familiarity and risk perception has manyimportant practical implications. Incertain product domains, like insuranceand food, safety is highly valued. Hence,marketers may want to give theseproducts easy-to-pronounce names andmay want to present the productinformation in ways that facilitate easyprocessing. In other domains, however,risk is valued. For instance, sports likebungee jumping, parachuting or hang

gliding derive their excitement from therisks involved. In such cases, difficult-to-pronounce names and hard-to-processdescriptions may highlight the promiseof adventure and excitement. Similarly,policy makers may want to pay attentionto fluency variables to alert consumers topotential hazards and to prevent theerroneous impression that a hazardousproduct is safe simply because its nameis easy to pronounce.

Social consensus and truthThe observed fluencyfamiliarity link

also has important implications forjudgements of truth. As socialpsychologists have long been aware,people often rely on social consensus

information to determine whether

something is true or not: If many peoplebelieve it, theres probably something toit. Unfortunately, however, we are poor attracking how often we heard somethingand rely instead on whether it soundsfamiliar if it does, we probably heard itbefore. Hence, variables that increase theperceived familiarity of a statement alsoincrease its perceived social consensusand the impression that the statement islikely to be true (for a review see Schwarzet al., 2007).

For example, Weaver et al. (2007)presented participants with multiplerepetitions of the same opinion statement.

For some participants, each repetitioncame from a different communicator,whereas for others, all repetitions camefrom the same communicator. Whenlater asked to estimate how widely theconveyed opinion is shared, participantsestimated higher social consensus themore often they had read the identicalstatement even when each repetitioncame from the same single source.Apparently, participants drew on thefamiliarity of the opinion to estimateits popularity and were once againinsensitive to where this feeling offamiliarity came from. As a result, a single

repetitive voice sounded like a chorus. Andonce people infer that an opinion is widelyshared, it is also likely to be accepted astrue after all, if many people believe it,

Participants perceived rides with difficult-to-pronounce names as more exciting and

adventurous than rides with easy-to-pronounce names


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theres probably something to it. Hence,the mere repetition of a statementfacilitates its acceptance as true, as

naturalistic studies of war-time rumoursand many laboratory experimentsdemonstrated (for a review see Schwarzet al., 2009).

As already seen, however, repetitionis not the only variable that makes thingsseem familiar any other variable thatincreases processing fluency can do thetrick. For example, Reber and Schwarz(1999) presented participants withstatements like Orsono is a city in Chileand asked them to judge whether thestatement is true or false. To manipulatethe statements perceived familiarity, theypresented the statements in colours thatwere easy or difficult to read against acoloured background. As expected, thesame statement was more often acceptedas true when the colour contrast madereading easy rather than difficult. Similarly,McGlone and Tofighbakhsh (2000)reported that substantively equivalentaphorisms were more likely to be acceptedas true when they were presented in arhyming (e.g. Woes unite foes) ratherthan non-rhyming form (e.g. Woes uniteenemies). Throughout, variables thatfacilitate fluent processing also facilitatethe impression that a statement is familiar

and hence likely to be true.This fluencyfamiliaritytruth linkpresents a particular problem when weattempt to counter rumours or to discreditmisleading information. In most cases, thecorrection includes a repetition of the falsestatement, along with reasons why it isfalse. Unfortunately, this repetitionincreases the experience of familiaritywhen the false statement is encounteredagain at a later time long after the correctfacts have been forgotten. As a result,corrections that repeat false informationironically facilitate its later acceptance astrue (see Schwarz et al., 2007). It is

therefore important never to repeatanything that is false. Instead,communicators should attempt to makethe truth as fluent and familiar as possible,taking advantage of variables likerepetition, rhyme and easy readability.

Affect and beautyOne of the best known fluency effectsis the mere exposure effect originallyidentified by Zajonc (1968): The moreoften we see an object, like a Chineseideograph, the more we like it. From afluency perspective, repeated exposure is

just one of many variables that facilitatefluent processing. If so, any other variablethat makes processing easy should alsoincrease liking. Empirically this is the

case, as a growing number of studiesshows. For example, we like a stimulusmore when a preceding visual or semantic

prime facilitates its processing we evenfind a picture of a lock more beautifulwhen it was preceded by the word key(see Reber et al., 2004). This positiveresponse to fluently processed stimuli canalso be captured with electromyography,a procedure that measures subtle muscleresponses in the face (Winkielman &Cacioppo, 2001), indicating that fluentprocessing feels good.

Our preference for fluently processedstimuli underlies many of the variablesknown to influence aesthetic experience,from symmetry and figureground contrastto the gestalt laws all of these variablesfacilitate fluent processing (Reber et al.,2004). The same principle is also central tothe observation that we prefer prototypicalfaces over more unusual ones prototypical faces are easier to process andelicit a more positive affective response(Winkielman et al., 2006). Moreover, thisresearch also sheds light on why scientistsand poets alike believe that beauty andtruth go hand in hand, despite all thebeautiful and elegant theories that landedon the trash heap of science intuitivejudgements of beauty and truth are basedon the same input, namely the experience

of fluent processing (Reber et al., 2009;Schwarz, 2006).

Fluency and processing style

Do I need to think twice?Our positive affective response to fluentlyprocessed material and the role of fluencyin judgements of popularity and truthconverge to predict an additional effect:Fluently processed material shouldreceive less scrutiny. On the one hand,statements that sound like we heard thembefore are less likely to invite scrutinythan statements that seem unfamiliar. On

the other hand, positive affect generallyincreases heuristic processing withlimited attention to detail, whereasnegative affect facilitates systematicprocessing with higher detail orientation(see Schwarz & Clore, 2007). Hence,material that is presented in a difficult-to-read print font should receive morescrutiny, making it more likely thatreaders detect substantive errors.

As an example, consider the questionHow many animals of each kind didMoses take on the Ark? Most peopleanswer two despite knowing that thebiblical actor was Noah, not Moses. Even

when warned that some of the statementsmay be distorted, most people fail tonotice the error because both actors aresimilar in the context of biblical stories.

However, a change in print fonts issufficient to attenuate this Moses illusion.When the question was presented in an

easy-to-read font, only 7 per cent of thereaders noticed the error, whereas 40 percent did so when it was presented in adifficult-to-read font, similar to the oneshown in Figure 1 (Song & Schwarz,2008a). Whether this helps or hurts taskperformance depends on whether the firstthing that comes to mind is correct or not.

This phenomenon has potentiallyimportant practical implications. Forexample, product manufacturers oftenhide deceptive information in the fineprint to make it less noticeable. Ifconsumers ever read the fine print,however, the disfluency associated withprocessing it may make it more likelythat they notice the deception. Similarly,presenting multiple-choice questions ina difficult-to-read font may attenuate theallure of familiar but erroneous responsealternatives.

ConclusionAs the reviewed examples illustrate,people attend to the dynamics of theirown information processing and arehighly sensitive to the resulting feelingsof ease or difficulty. Unfortunately, they

are much less sensitive to where thesefeelings come from. As has been observedfor moods and emotions (for a review seeSchwarz & Clore, 2007), they assumethat their feelings bear on whatever theyare thinking about, unless their attentionis drawn to an incidental source. Hence,any variable that facilitates or impairsfluent information processing canprofoundly affect peoples judgements anddecisions. Communicators and educatorsare therefore well advised to presentinformation in a form that facilitates easyprocessing: if its easy to read, it seemseasy to do, pretty, good, and true.

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk 111

processing fluency

I Norbert Schwarzis at the University ofMichigan

[email protected]

I Hyunjin Songis at Yale [email protected]

fluency affects... the psychologist

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