Itamar Simonson - US grants

The Effect of Expecting to Evaluate and of Forming Performance Expectations on the Evaluation Process and Outcome People are increasingly asked to evaluate their experiences õ their satisfaction with the quality of products they purchase, services rendered to them, and so forth. However, there is little research examining how these evaluations are formed and what factors influence their content. For example, does it make a difference if evaluations are elicited from individuals spontaneously (the individual asked for the evaluation does not anticipate being asked) versus deliberately (from individuals informed that an evaluation will be requested after the good or service is provided)? The proposed research will examine differences between spontaneous and deliberate evaluations resulting from a variety of factors including recall, primacy effect, the effect of a `peak event`, the correlation between judgment and recall, susceptibility to context effects, susceptibility to order effects and the influence of irrelevant reasons.