Positive moods can encourage inertial decision making: Evidence from eye-tracking data

Abstract

We examine whether emotion can encourage inertial decision making, which is an emergent research topic in online shopping. Based on the information processing view, inertia is conceptualized as a decision process that involves repeated usage of a similar effortless information search pattern across multiple problems, and we propose that this conceptualization can be quantified using an eye-movement index based on the string-editing algorithm. We then examine whether positive moods, which have been shown to increase impulsive shopping, may promote inertia. Subjects, who either received positive moods priming or calculation (mood-suppressing) priming, participated in an eye-tracking experiment with multi-attribute decision tasks presented in a web map format like the Google Maps. The results showed that positive moods increased process inertia. We conclude that inertia can be quantified according to the information processing view, and that happy consumers tend to repeatedly use an effortless information search pattern to evaluate multiple products.