CANCELLATION AND FOCUS - THE ROLE OF SHARED AND UNIQUE FEATURES IN THE CHOICE PROCESS

A feature matching comparison process was used to derive a model for preference choices in which features shared by the choice alternatives are canceled and greater weight is placed on the unique features of the alternative that is the starting point of the comparison. These aspects of the cancellation and focus model were tested in two experiments. In Experiment 1, after making a series of preference judgments between paired items that either shared good features and had unique-bad features (unique-bad pairs) or shared bad features and had unique-good features (unique-good pairs), subjects evaluated both the chosen and rejected alternatives. As expected, for unique-good pairs the bad features of the alternatives were canceled, whereas for unique-bad pairs the good features were canceled, resulting in higher postchoice evaluations of alternatives judged from unique-good pairs. In Experiment 2, the predicted advantage in postchoice evaluations of the products of unique-good over unique-bad comparisons (derived from the cancellation aspect of the model) was unaffected by whether the paired alternatives were encountered sequentially or side by side. In contrast, the relative preference of the subject or referent of a pair (derived from the focus aspect of the model) was eliminated when the choice alternatives were encountered side by side rather than sequentially, because a side by side comparison reduced the extent to which the features of the alternative under focus would be used to recruit features of the referent for use in the comparison. Implications of the cancellation-and-focus model of choice and its relation to other models of choice are discussed. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.