Evoked Set Formation From the Perspective of Decision Making as an Instance of Categorization
Troye, Sigurd Villads
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/70449
Description
Title
Evoked Set Formation From the Perspective of Decision Making as an Instance of Categorization
Author(s)
Troye, Sigurd Villads
Issue Date
1983
Department of Study
Business Administration
Discipline
Business Administration
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Business Administration, General
Abstract
The thesis reports an experimental investigation of the impact of (1) similarity of choice alternatives, (2) number of available alternatives, and (3) purpose of information processing on Evoked Set size and content. Subjects were 204 students, mostly undergraduates, taking courses from the Business Administration department at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Illinois State University at Normal. The subjects were instructed to assume they were in the market for an apartment to rent and were assigned to one of the following similarity groups: (1) LOW similarity (2) HIGH similarity (3) SEGmented alternatives; i.e. apartments divided into three clusters of high within-cluster similarity and low between-cluster similarity. The latter group (SEG) was divided into two groups, one group exposed to 12, the other to 18 apartments. The purpose of information processing treatment consisted in assigning the subjects to two groups, one group instructed to designate which alternatives they would consider, the other group asked to list acceptable apartments. The apartments were described in terms of dichotomous attributes and information was given in matrix format.
The major findings can be summarized as follows: (1) Size of Evoked Set was found to be related to the instruction treatment (i.e. smaller in the ACCEPTABLE group compared to the CONSIDER group). Furthermore, size of Evoked Set was also related to the similarity of the choice alternatives (i.e. smaller in the HIGH group compared to the other similarity group) and was positively related to the size of the stimulus set. However, the treatment effects on Evoked Set size were in general not very strong. (2) The alternatives included in the Evoked Set were found to be pair-wise more similar than randomly selected options and were also more similar to each subject's "ideal" apartment. However, the tendency to evoke similar options varied across subjects and the findings indicate that persons with more general buying experience tended to evoke more similar options compared to less experienced persons. (3) The tendency to commit decision error, i.e. exclude "good" alternatives from the Evoked Set was not significantly affected by the similarity treatment, but was positively related to the size of the stimulus set.
In conclusion, the findings suggest that Evoked Set formation can be fruitfully investigated as a categorization process.
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