Michel Tuan Pham
Biographic Data
| ID | 100603 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michel Tuan Pham |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michel Tuan |
| FAMILY NAME | Pham |
| SIGNATURE | PHAM M T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Columbia University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0717-5191 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 273 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
What Makes Consumption Experiences Feel Special? A Multimethod Integrative Analysis
This article addresses a simple theoretical question of high substantive relevance: What makes a consumption experience special in a consumer’s mind? To answer this question, the authors report an extensive multimethod investigation involving a grounded theory analysis of numerous consumer narratives and in-depth interviews, a field survey, a scale development study, a natural language processing (NLP) analysis of more than 3 million Yelp reviews…
Benchmarking Scholarship in Consumer Research: The p -Index of Thought Leadership
The assessment of consumer scholarship must move beyond a mere counting of the number of “A”s on a researcher’s CV to include at least some measure of impact. To facilitate a broader assessment of scholarship in consumer research, we provide detailed statistics on the productivity and citation impact of the field’s 340 main gatekeepers: the editors, associate editors, and editorial board members of the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal…
A Liberating-Engagement Theory of Consumer Fun
The experience of fun plays a major role in the consumer society. Drawing on a grounded theory approach, we advance a psychological theory of consumer fun. Through an integration of in-depth interviews, narrative analyses, controlled experiments, structural equation modeling, and a photo-ethnography, our multimethod investigation makes four main contributions. First, we show that the experience of fun rests on the combination of two psychological…
The Smartphone as a Pacifying Technology
In light of consumers' growing dependence on their smartphones, this article investigates the nature of the relationship that consumers form with their smartphone and its underlying mechanisms. We propose that in addition to obvious functional benefits, consumers in fact derive emotional benefits from their smartphone-in particular, feelings of psychological comfort and, if needed, actual stress relief. In other words, in a sense, smartphones are…
The Pleasure of Assessing and Expressing Our Likes and Dislikes
Although consumer behavior theory has traditionally regarded evaluations as instrumental to consumer choice, in reality consumers often assess and express what they like and dislike even when there is no decision at stake. Why are consumers so eager to express their evaluations when there is no ostensible purpose for doing so? In this research, we advance the thesis that this is because consumers derive an inherent pleasure from assessing and exp…
Affective Boundaries of Scope Insensitivity
People can be surprisingly insensitive to quantities in valuation judgments—a phenomenon called scope insensitivity, which is generally attributed to the operation of affective processes in judgment. Building on research showing that affect is inherently a decision-making system of the present, we propose that scope insensitivity is more likely to be observed in decisions that are psychologically proximate to the immediate self. Consistent with t…
Uncertainty Increases the Reliance on Affect in Decisions
How do psychological states of uncertainty influence the way people make decisions? We propose that such states increase the reliance on affective inputs in judgments and decisions. In accord with this proposition, results from six studies show that the priming of uncertainty (vs. certainty) consistently increases the effects of a variety of affective inputs on consumers’ judgments and decisions. Primed uncertainty is shown to amplify the effects…
Affect as a Decision-Making System of the Present
A variety of empirical findings reviewed in this research support the general thesis that the affective system of judgment and decision making is inherently anchored in the present. Building on this thesis, this research advances the specific hypothesis that affective feelings are relied on more (weighted more heavily) in judgments whose outcomes and targets are closer to the present than in those whose outcomes and targets are temporally more di…
Consumers' Trust in Feelings as Information
The diagnosticity of feelings in judgment depends not only on their representativeness and relevance, but also on people's trust in their feelings in general. Trust in feelings is the degree to which individuals believe that their feelings generally point toward the “right” direction in judgments and decisions. Six studies show that a higher trust in feelings (a) increases the reliance on feelings as a judgment criterion, (b) amplifies the influe…
Feeling the Future: The Emotional Oracle Effect
Eight studies reveal an intriguing phenomenon: individuals who have higher trust in their feelings can predict the outcomes of future events better than individuals with lower trust in their feelings. This emotional oracle effect was found across a variety of prediction domains, including (a) the 2008 US Democratic presidential nomination, (b) movie box-office success, (c) the winner of American Idol, (d) the stock market, (e) college football, a…
When Do People Rely on Affective and Cognitive Feelings in Judgment? A Review
Although people have been shown to rely on feelings to make judgments, the conditions that moderate this reliance have not been systematically reviewed and conceptually integrated. This article addresses this gap by jointly reviewing moderators of the reliance on both subtle affective feelings and cognitive feelings of ease-of-retrieval. The review revealed that moderators of the reliance on affective and cognitive feelings are remarkably similar…
Regulatory Focus, Regulatory Fit, and the Search and Consideration of Choice Alternatives
This research investigates the effects of regulatory focus on alternative search and consideration set formation in consumer decision making. Results from three experiments yield two primary findings. First, promotion-focused consumers tend to search for alternatives at a more global level, whereas prevention-focused consumers tend to search for alternatives at a more local level. Second, promotion-focused consumers tend to have larger considerat…
Emotion and Rationality: A Critical Review and Interpretation of Empirical Evidence
The relation between emotion and rationality is assessed by reviewing empirical findings from multiple disciplines. Two types of emotional phenomena are examined—incidental emotional states and integral emotional responses—and three conceptions of rationality are considered—logical, material, and ecological. Emotional states influence reasoning processes, are often misattributed to focal objects, distort beliefs in an assimilative fashion, disrup…
Informational Properties of Anxiety and Sadness, and Displaced Coping
Replicating Raghunathan and Pham (1999), results from two experiments confirm that while anxiety triggers a preference for options that are safer and provide a sense of control, sadness triggers a preference for options that are more rewarding and comforting. Results also indicate that these effects are driven by an affect-as-information process and are most pervasive when the source of anxiety or sadness is not salient. Finally, our results docu…
Promotion and Prevention across Mental Accounts: When Financial Products Dictate Consumers& Investment Goals
We propose that consumers ’ investment decisions involve processes of promotion and prevention regulation that are managed across separate mental accounts, with different financial products seen as representative of promotion versus prevention. Consistent with this hypothesis, we show that (a) investors are differentially sensitive to gains and losses and differentially risk seeking depending on the financial products being considered and (b) tha…
Ideals and Oughts and the Reliance on Affect versus Substance in Persuasion
Motivation research distinguishes two types of goals: (a) ideals, which relate to people's hopes, wishes, and aspirations, and (b) oughts, which relate to people's duties, obligations, and responsibilities. We propose that, in persuasion, the accessibility of ideals increases consumers' reliance on their subjective affective responses to the ad relative to the substance of the message, whereas the accessibility of oughts increases consumers' reli…
Affect Monitoring and the Primacy of Feelings in Judgment
Multidisciplinary evidence suggests that people often make evaluative judgments by monitoring their feelings toward the target. This article examines, in the context of moderately complex and consciously accessible stimuli, the judgmental properties of consciously monitored feelings. Results from four studies show that, compared to cold, reason-based assessments of the target, the conscious monitoring of feelings provides judgmental responses tha…
All Negative Moods Are Not Equal: Motivational Influences of Anxiety and Sadness on Decision Making
Affective states of the same valence may have distinct, yet predictable, influences on decision processes. Results from three experiments show that, in gambling decisions, as well as in job-selection decisions, sad individuals are biased in favor of high-risk/high-reward options, whereas anxious individuals are biased in favor of low-risk/low-reward options. We argue that these biases occur because anxiety and sadness convey distinct types of inf…
Representativeness, Relevance, and the Use of Feelings in Decision Making
It has been suggested that evaluations may be based on a "How-do-I-feel-about-it?" heuristic, which involves holding a representation of the target in mind and inspecting feelings that this representation may elicit. Previous studies have shown that reliance on such feelings depends on whether or not they are believed to be representative of the target. This article argues that reliance on feelings also depends on whether feelings toward the targ…
Contingent Processes of Source Identification
Effective communication requires that consumers attribute the message content to its intended source. The proposed framework distinguishes four types of source identification processes—cued retrieval, memory-trace refreshment, schematic inferencing, and pure guessing—and delineates their contingencies. Two experiments examine portions of the framework, and experiment 2 introduces a new methodology for decomposing multiple processes. Findings sugg…
Cue Representation and Selection Effects of Arousal on Persuasion
A popular prediction in persuasion research is that decreased ability to process information increases reliance on peripheral cues and decreases reliance on central claims. This article explains why this prediction does not necessarily hold when processing capacity is impaired by high arousal. Three experiments suggest that two types of processes underlie arousal effects on persuasion. Arousal induces selective processing of cues that are diagnos…
Affective reactions to consumption situations: A pilot investigation
Representativeness, Relevance, and the Use of Feelings in Decision Making
It has been suggested that evaluations may be based on a "How-do-I-feel-about-it?" heuristic, which involves holding a representation of the target in mind and inspecting feelings that this representation may elicit. Previous studies have shown that reliance on such feelings depends on whether or not they are believed to be representative of the target. This article argues that reliance on feelings also depends on whether feelings toward the targ…
Affect Monitoring and the Primacy of Feelings in Judgment
Multidisciplinary evidence suggests that people often make evaluative judgments by monitoring their feelings toward the target. This article examines, in the context of moderately complex and consciously accessible stimuli, the judgmental properties of consciously monitored feelings. Results from four studies show that, compared to cold, reason-based assessments of the target, the conscious monitoring of feelings provides judgmental responses tha…
Ideals and Oughts and the Reliance on Affect versus Substance in Persuasion
Motivation research distinguishes two types of goals: (a) ideals, which relate to people's hopes, wishes, and aspirations, and (b) oughts, which relate to people's duties, obligations, and responsibilities. We propose that, in persuasion, the accessibility of ideals increases consumers' reliance on their subjective affective responses to the ad relative to the substance of the message, whereas the accessibility of oughts increases consumers' reli…
Promotion and Prevention across Mental Accounts: When Financial Products Dictate Consumers& Investment Goals
We propose that consumers ’ investment decisions involve processes of promotion and prevention regulation that are managed across separate mental accounts, with different financial products seen as representative of promotion versus prevention. Consistent with this hypothesis, we show that (a) investors are differentially sensitive to gains and losses and differentially risk seeking depending on the financial products being considered and (b) tha…
The Smartphone as a Pacifying Technology
In light of consumers' growing dependence on their smartphones, this article investigates the nature of the relationship that consumers form with their smartphone and its underlying mechanisms. We propose that in addition to obvious functional benefits, consumers in fact derive emotional benefits from their smartphone-in particular, feelings of psychological comfort and, if needed, actual stress relief. In other words, in a sense, smartphones are…
Informational Properties of Anxiety and Sadness, and Displaced Coping
Replicating Raghunathan and Pham (1999), results from two experiments confirm that while anxiety triggers a preference for options that are safer and provide a sense of control, sadness triggers a preference for options that are more rewarding and comforting. Results also indicate that these effects are driven by an affect-as-information process and are most pervasive when the source of anxiety or sadness is not salient. Finally, our results docu…
Cue Representation and Selection Effects of Arousal on Persuasion
A popular prediction in persuasion research is that decreased ability to process information increases reliance on peripheral cues and decreases reliance on central claims. This article explains why this prediction does not necessarily hold when processing capacity is impaired by high arousal. Three experiments suggest that two types of processes underlie arousal effects on persuasion. Arousal induces selective processing of cues that are diagnos…
Consumers' Trust in Feelings as Information
The diagnosticity of feelings in judgment depends not only on their representativeness and relevance, but also on people's trust in their feelings in general. Trust in feelings is the degree to which individuals believe that their feelings generally point toward the “right” direction in judgments and decisions. Six studies show that a higher trust in feelings (a) increases the reliance on feelings as a judgment criterion, (b) amplifies the influe…
Regulatory Focus, Regulatory Fit, and the Search and Consideration of Choice Alternatives
This research investigates the effects of regulatory focus on alternative search and consideration set formation in consumer decision making. Results from three experiments yield two primary findings. First, promotion-focused consumers tend to search for alternatives at a more global level, whereas prevention-focused consumers tend to search for alternatives at a more local level. Second, promotion-focused consumers tend to have larger considerat…
Affect as a Decision-Making System of the Present
A variety of empirical findings reviewed in this research support the general thesis that the affective system of judgment and decision making is inherently anchored in the present. Building on this thesis, this research advances the specific hypothesis that affective feelings are relied on more (weighted more heavily) in judgments whose outcomes and targets are closer to the present than in those whose outcomes and targets are temporally more di…
Contingent Processes of Source Identification
Effective communication requires that consumers attribute the message content to its intended source. The proposed framework distinguishes four types of source identification processes—cued retrieval, memory-trace refreshment, schematic inferencing, and pure guessing—and delineates their contingencies. Two experiments examine portions of the framework, and experiment 2 introduces a new methodology for decomposing multiple processes. Findings sugg…
A Liberating-Engagement Theory of Consumer Fun
The experience of fun plays a major role in the consumer society. Drawing on a grounded theory approach, we advance a psychological theory of consumer fun. Through an integration of in-depth interviews, narrative analyses, controlled experiments, structural equation modeling, and a photo-ethnography, our multimethod investigation makes four main contributions. First, we show that the experience of fun rests on the combination of two psychological…
Affective reactions to consumption situations: A pilot investigation
Feeling the Future: The Emotional Oracle Effect
Eight studies reveal an intriguing phenomenon: individuals who have higher trust in their feelings can predict the outcomes of future events better than individuals with lower trust in their feelings. This emotional oracle effect was found across a variety of prediction domains, including (a) the 2008 US Democratic presidential nomination, (b) movie box-office success, (c) the winner of American Idol, (d) the stock market, (e) college football, a…
Benchmarking Scholarship in Consumer Research: The p -Index of Thought Leadership
The assessment of consumer scholarship must move beyond a mere counting of the number of “A”s on a researcher’s CV to include at least some measure of impact. To facilitate a broader assessment of scholarship in consumer research, we provide detailed statistics on the productivity and citation impact of the field’s 340 main gatekeepers: the editors, associate editors, and editorial board members of the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal…
Affective Boundaries of Scope Insensitivity
People can be surprisingly insensitive to quantities in valuation judgments—a phenomenon called scope insensitivity, which is generally attributed to the operation of affective processes in judgment. Building on research showing that affect is inherently a decision-making system of the present, we propose that scope insensitivity is more likely to be observed in decisions that are psychologically proximate to the immediate self. Consistent with t…
The Pleasure of Assessing and Expressing Our Likes and Dislikes
Although consumer behavior theory has traditionally regarded evaluations as instrumental to consumer choice, in reality consumers often assess and express what they like and dislike even when there is no decision at stake. Why are consumers so eager to express their evaluations when there is no ostensible purpose for doing so? In this research, we advance the thesis that this is because consumers derive an inherent pleasure from assessing and exp…
What Makes Consumption Experiences Feel Special? A Multimethod Integrative Analysis
This article addresses a simple theoretical question of high substantive relevance: What makes a consumption experience special in a consumer’s mind? To answer this question, the authors report an extensive multimethod investigation involving a grounded theory analysis of numerous consumer narratives and in-depth interviews, a field survey, a scale development study, a natural language processing (NLP) analysis of more than 3 million Yelp reviews…
Uncertainty Increases the Reliance on Affect in Decisions
How do psychological states of uncertainty influence the way people make decisions? We propose that such states increase the reliance on affective inputs in judgments and decisions. In accord with this proposition, results from six studies show that the priming of uncertainty (vs. certainty) consistently increases the effects of a variety of affective inputs on consumers’ judgments and decisions. Primed uncertainty is shown to amplify the effects…
Affective reactions to consumption situations: A pilot investigation
Cue Representation and Selection Effects of Arousal on Persuasion
A popular prediction in persuasion research is that decreased ability to process information increases reliance on peripheral cues and decreases reliance on central claims. This article explains why this prediction does not necessarily hold when processing capacity is impaired by high arousal. Three experiments suggest that two types of processes underlie arousal effects on persuasion. Arousal induces selective processing of cues that are diagnos…
Contingent Processes of Source Identification
Effective communication requires that consumers attribute the message content to its intended source. The proposed framework distinguishes four types of source identification processes—cued retrieval, memory-trace refreshment, schematic inferencing, and pure guessing—and delineates their contingencies. Two experiments examine portions of the framework, and experiment 2 introduces a new methodology for decomposing multiple processes. Findings sugg…
Representativeness, Relevance, and the Use of Feelings in Decision Making
It has been suggested that evaluations may be based on a "How-do-I-feel-about-it?" heuristic, which involves holding a representation of the target in mind and inspecting feelings that this representation may elicit. Previous studies have shown that reliance on such feelings depends on whether or not they are believed to be representative of the target. This article argues that reliance on feelings also depends on whether feelings toward the targ…
All Negative Moods Are Not Equal: Motivational Influences of Anxiety and Sadness on Decision Making
Affective states of the same valence may have distinct, yet predictable, influences on decision processes. Results from three experiments show that, in gambling decisions, as well as in job-selection decisions, sad individuals are biased in favor of high-risk/high-reward options, whereas anxious individuals are biased in favor of low-risk/low-reward options. We argue that these biases occur because anxiety and sadness convey distinct types of inf…
Affect Monitoring and the Primacy of Feelings in Judgment
Multidisciplinary evidence suggests that people often make evaluative judgments by monitoring their feelings toward the target. This article examines, in the context of moderately complex and consciously accessible stimuli, the judgmental properties of consciously monitored feelings. Results from four studies show that, compared to cold, reason-based assessments of the target, the conscious monitoring of feelings provides judgmental responses tha…
Promotion and Prevention across Mental Accounts: When Financial Products Dictate Consumers& Investment Goals
We propose that consumers ’ investment decisions involve processes of promotion and prevention regulation that are managed across separate mental accounts, with different financial products seen as representative of promotion versus prevention. Consistent with this hypothesis, we show that (a) investors are differentially sensitive to gains and losses and differentially risk seeking depending on the financial products being considered and (b) tha…
Ideals and Oughts and the Reliance on Affect versus Substance in Persuasion
Motivation research distinguishes two types of goals: (a) ideals, which relate to people's hopes, wishes, and aspirations, and (b) oughts, which relate to people's duties, obligations, and responsibilities. We propose that, in persuasion, the accessibility of ideals increases consumers' reliance on their subjective affective responses to the ad relative to the substance of the message, whereas the accessibility of oughts increases consumers' reli…
Informational Properties of Anxiety and Sadness, and Displaced Coping
Replicating Raghunathan and Pham (1999), results from two experiments confirm that while anxiety triggers a preference for options that are safer and provide a sense of control, sadness triggers a preference for options that are more rewarding and comforting. Results also indicate that these effects are driven by an affect-as-information process and are most pervasive when the source of anxiety or sadness is not salient. Finally, our results docu…
Emotion and Rationality: A Critical Review and Interpretation of Empirical Evidence
The relation between emotion and rationality is assessed by reviewing empirical findings from multiple disciplines. Two types of emotional phenomena are examined—incidental emotional states and integral emotional responses—and three conceptions of rationality are considered—logical, material, and ecological. Emotional states influence reasoning processes, are often misattributed to focal objects, distort beliefs in an assimilative fashion, disrup…
Regulatory Focus, Regulatory Fit, and the Search and Consideration of Choice Alternatives
This research investigates the effects of regulatory focus on alternative search and consideration set formation in consumer decision making. Results from three experiments yield two primary findings. First, promotion-focused consumers tend to search for alternatives at a more global level, whereas prevention-focused consumers tend to search for alternatives at a more local level. Second, promotion-focused consumers tend to have larger considerat…
When Do People Rely on Affective and Cognitive Feelings in Judgment? A Review
Although people have been shown to rely on feelings to make judgments, the conditions that moderate this reliance have not been systematically reviewed and conceptually integrated. This article addresses this gap by jointly reviewing moderators of the reliance on both subtle affective feelings and cognitive feelings of ease-of-retrieval. The review revealed that moderators of the reliance on affective and cognitive feelings are remarkably similar…
Consumers' Trust in Feelings as Information
The diagnosticity of feelings in judgment depends not only on their representativeness and relevance, but also on people's trust in their feelings in general. Trust in feelings is the degree to which individuals believe that their feelings generally point toward the “right” direction in judgments and decisions. Six studies show that a higher trust in feelings (a) increases the reliance on feelings as a judgment criterion, (b) amplifies the influe…
Feeling the Future: The Emotional Oracle Effect
Eight studies reveal an intriguing phenomenon: individuals who have higher trust in their feelings can predict the outcomes of future events better than individuals with lower trust in their feelings. This emotional oracle effect was found across a variety of prediction domains, including (a) the 2008 US Democratic presidential nomination, (b) movie box-office success, (c) the winner of American Idol, (d) the stock market, (e) college football, a…
Affect as a Decision-Making System of the Present
A variety of empirical findings reviewed in this research support the general thesis that the affective system of judgment and decision making is inherently anchored in the present. Building on this thesis, this research advances the specific hypothesis that affective feelings are relied on more (weighted more heavily) in judgments whose outcomes and targets are closer to the present than in those whose outcomes and targets are temporally more di…
Uncertainty Increases the Reliance on Affect in Decisions
How do psychological states of uncertainty influence the way people make decisions? We propose that such states increase the reliance on affective inputs in judgments and decisions. In accord with this proposition, results from six studies show that the priming of uncertainty (vs. certainty) consistently increases the effects of a variety of affective inputs on consumers’ judgments and decisions. Primed uncertainty is shown to amplify the effects…
Affective Boundaries of Scope Insensitivity
People can be surprisingly insensitive to quantities in valuation judgments—a phenomenon called scope insensitivity, which is generally attributed to the operation of affective processes in judgment. Building on research showing that affect is inherently a decision-making system of the present, we propose that scope insensitivity is more likely to be observed in decisions that are psychologically proximate to the immediate self. Consistent with t…
The Pleasure of Assessing and Expressing Our Likes and Dislikes
Although consumer behavior theory has traditionally regarded evaluations as instrumental to consumer choice, in reality consumers often assess and express what they like and dislike even when there is no decision at stake. Why are consumers so eager to express their evaluations when there is no ostensible purpose for doing so? In this research, we advance the thesis that this is because consumers derive an inherent pleasure from assessing and exp…
The Smartphone as a Pacifying Technology
In light of consumers' growing dependence on their smartphones, this article investigates the nature of the relationship that consumers form with their smartphone and its underlying mechanisms. We propose that in addition to obvious functional benefits, consumers in fact derive emotional benefits from their smartphone-in particular, feelings of psychological comfort and, if needed, actual stress relief. In other words, in a sense, smartphones are…
A Liberating-Engagement Theory of Consumer Fun
The experience of fun plays a major role in the consumer society. Drawing on a grounded theory approach, we advance a psychological theory of consumer fun. Through an integration of in-depth interviews, narrative analyses, controlled experiments, structural equation modeling, and a photo-ethnography, our multimethod investigation makes four main contributions. First, we show that the experience of fun rests on the combination of two psychological…
Benchmarking Scholarship in Consumer Research: The p -Index of Thought Leadership
The assessment of consumer scholarship must move beyond a mere counting of the number of “A”s on a researcher’s CV to include at least some measure of impact. To facilitate a broader assessment of scholarship in consumer research, we provide detailed statistics on the productivity and citation impact of the field’s 340 main gatekeepers: the editors, associate editors, and editorial board members of the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal…
What Makes Consumption Experiences Feel Special? A Multimethod Integrative Analysis
This article addresses a simple theoretical question of high substantive relevance: What makes a consumption experience special in a consumer’s mind? To answer this question, the authors report an extensive multimethod investigation involving a grounded theory analysis of numerous consumer narratives and in-depth interviews, a field survey, a scale development study, a natural language processing (NLP) analysis of more than 3 million Yelp reviews…
Psychology (20 works) · Social Psychology (17 works) · Cognitive psychology (12 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (9 works) · Feeling (9 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification (7 works) · Affect (linguistics) (6 works)