Don’t Know Why, But I Had This Craving: GOAL-DEPENDENT AUTOMATICITY IN IMPULSIVE DECISIONS

Consumer impulsiveness is an issue with strong implications both for marketers and public policy makers. Much literature in this field has dealt with self-control and the ability to delay gratification. In this paper, we explore the ramifications of certain impulsive behaviors that may be frequently engaged in over time. We show that such decisions are driven by a goal of hedonic gratification that in turn drives behavior automatically upon encountering relevant situational cues. We use the framework of goaldependent automaticity via three studies that show how gratificatory goals, whether primed or chronically accessible, affect impulsive behavior outside of conscious cognition among impulsive people but drive such behavior consciously among non-impulsive people (Study 1), how this motivation to act increases over time among impulsive people (Study 2) and whether such behavior is controllable (Study 3). Our findings impact the theoretical underpinnings of impulsive behavior and suggest that not all impulsive decisions are characterized by a conscious experience of urge and reason. We also provide evidence that impulsive behaviors are not merely spontaneous affective decisions; rather, they strengthen over time in a way that cannot be accounted for by an evaluative explanation. Our findings also have important implications for marketers and public policy makers as they demonstrate a much more subtle route to affecting consumer behavior, one in which consumers can be primed with a goal of gratification that then proceeds automatically to behavior. Don’t know why, but I had this craving: GOAL-DEPENDENT AUTOMATICITY IN IMPULSIVE DECISIONS To uncontrol it belongs to choose the enjoyment of pleasures when reason would restrain, and although one believes that it would be better not to participate in them, to participate in them all the same, and while thinking one ought to do fine and expedient things yet to abstain from them for the sake of one's pleasures. Aristotle Most literature on impulsive behavior has dwelt on single lapses of judgment that stress the lack of consideration of potential long-term negative consequences of such an action (e.g., Hoch and Loewenstein 1991, Rook and Hoch 1985). Accordingly, the traditional account of impulsive behavior has dwelt on the enormous conflict between urge and reason. It depicts humankind as prisoners of rationality that holds them back from acting on their desires. Self-control is a virtue and impulsiveness is a vice, and the person is torn between acting on his or her impulse or restraining him/herself. For instance, Puri (1996) describes impulsiveness as emanating out of a consideration of the certainty and accessibility of benefits and costs of an action. Rook and Fisher (1995) held that people act impulsively only when they deem it normatively appropriate to do so. There are several points of view on what constitutes or characterizes impulsive behavior. One view, held by economists has posited that people show a preference for a smaller but more immediate reward over a larger delayed reward when the smaller reward is closer in time to the present. However, when there is a shift in time such that both rewards are more delayed, people switch their preferences to the larger reward. This irrationality is deemed as impulsiveness (e.g., Ainslie 1975, Ainslie and Haslam 1992) and is characterized by a hyperbolic discounting function. Other studies have adopted an affectdriven explanation, arguing that impulsive behavior is characterized by an experience of spontaneous or low-road affect (e.g., Rook 1987, Shiv and Fedorikhin 1999, 2000). Three points need to be stressed here. First, the cognitive explanation that impulsive behavior is characterized by a consideration of relative benefits and costs implies that people will keep revisiting the battle between urge and reason every time they have an opportunity to engage in the behavior. However,