Correction for Negative Mood Bias in Product Judgment: Hedonic vs. Utilitarian based Product Attitude

The present study was designed to demonstrate how consumer judgment corrections could be affected in two different ways. First, when consumers are under negative mood condition and primed with utilitarian processing, the amount of correction of a target judgment when aware of the affective bias are likely to be more than those under negative mood condition and primed with hedonic processing. Second, the consumers’ mood bias correction direction could affect their judgment, and this is divided into two possible situations. In the first situation, when consumers sense a shift in mood state (from positive to negative or vice versa) and perceive this as a potential bias factor toward the target judgment, then they will correct opposite to the shifting direction of mood state. In the second situation, when consumers sense no shift in mood state but perceive the current mood status as potential bias factor toward the target judgment, then they will correct opposite to their mood state. Two studies were performed to investigate the hypothesis, and the results demonstrated that when consumers are aware of their affective bias and have sufficient cognitive resources, they are likely to correct their biases opposite to the shift in mood state or current mood state. This occurs usually more among the utilitarian user than the hedonic user.