THE HARDER IT IS TO FIND, THE LESS WE LIKE IT; AT LEAST, WE SAY SO

Abstract

In common buying frameworks of interest for consumer behavior, top-down and bottom-up attentional mechanisms interact, with the prevailing one changing frequently. The current study investigated the effects of increased effort to locate a stimulus on the self-reported valence and intensity associated with the respective stimulus. Two types of stimuli, of positive and negative valences, were evaluated. Both were placed in two visual fields with distractors of the same type; while the distractors were the same, their placement in one field facilitated the target location while in the other made it more difficult. Significant differences were found for the same stimulus in the two visual fields it was presented in concerning the valence, and more moderate regarding the intensity. Within each of the four resulting visual fields (positive stimulus easy to find, positive stimulus difficult to find, negative stimulus easy to find, and negative stimulus difficult to find, respectively), significant negative correlations were found between the time to first fixation (TFF) on target and the self-reported emotion valence; a significant positive correlation between TFF on target and self-reported intensity was found only for the negative stimulus presented in the difficult to find placement.