Chakravarti, Amitav 
ORCID: 0009-0001-1805-183X, Fang, Christina and Zur, Shapira
(2011)
Detecting and reacting to change: the effect of exposure to narrow categorizations.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37 (6).
pp. 1563-1570.
ISSN 0278-7393
Abstract
he ability to detect a change, to accurately assess the magnitude of the change, and to react to that change in a commensurate fashion are of critical importance in many decision domains. Thus, it is important to understand the factors that systematically affect people's reactions to change. In this article we document a novel effect: Decision makers' reactions to a change (e.g., a visual change, a technology change) were systematically affected by the type of categorizations they encountered in an unrelated prior task (e.g., the response categories associated with a survey question). We found that prior exposure to narrow, as opposed to broad, categorizations improved decision makers' ability to detect change and led to stronger reactions to a given change. These differential reactions occurred because the prior categorizations, even though unrelated, altered the extent to which the subsequently presented change was perceived as either a relatively large change or a relatively small one.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/xlm/index.aspx |
| Additional Information: | © 2011 American Psychological Association |
| Divisions: | Management |
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management |
| Date Deposited: | 02 Dec 2011 09:12 |
| Last Modified: | 11 Sep 2025 08:07 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/39858 |
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