The Experience of Thinking

When retrieving a quote from memory, evaluating a testimony's truthfulness, or deciding which products to buy, people experience immediate feelings of ease or difficulty, of fluency or disfluency. Such "experiences of thinking" occur with every cognitive process, including perceiving, processing, storing, and retrieving information, and they have been the defining element of a vibrant field of scientific inquiry during the last four decades. This book brings together the latest research on how such experiences of thinking influence cognition and behavior. The chapters present recent theoretical developments and describe the effects of these influences, as well as the practical implications of this research. The book includes contributions from the leading scholars in the field and provides a comprehensive survey of this expanding area. This integrative overview will be invaluable to researchers, teachers, students, and professionals in the field of social and cognitive psychology.

Christian Unkelbach is Professor for General Psychology at the University of Cologne, Germany. He is currently Associate Editor of the journals Experimental Psychology and Social Psychology. His research focuses on processing fluency, valence asymmetries, prejudice against Muslims, and sport psychology. He has authored numerous articles in international journals covering these topics. Rainer Greifeneder is Professor for Social Psychology at the University of Basel, Switzerland. His research focuses on experiences of thinking, affective feelings, intuitive decision making, consumer choice, and ostracism. He has authored numerous articles in international journals covering these topics.

Greifeneder & Unkelbach Experiencing Thinking Part 1: Foundations of Fluency Research Unkelbach & Greifeneder A general model of fluency effects in judgment and decision making Topolinski The sources of fluency: Identifying the underlying mechanisms of fluency effects Garcia-Marques, Mackie, Claypool, & Garcia-Marques Once more with feeling! Familiarity and positivity as integral consequences of previous exposure Hansen & Wänke Fluency in Context: Discrepancy Makes Processing Experiences Informative Part 2: Classic Fluency Effects in New Perspective Wänke Almost everything you always wanted to know about ease-of-retrieval effects Brinol, Tormala, & Petty Ease and Persuasion: Multiple Processes, Meanings, and Effects Häfner Assimilation or contrast? How fluency channels comparison processing Halberstadt & Winkielman When good blends go bad: How fluency can explain when we like and dislike ambiguity Part 3: The Usefulness of Fluency Oppenheimer & Alter The Fluency Sleeper Effect: Disfluency Today Promotes Fluency Tomorrow Reber Critical Feeling: The Strategic Use of Processing Fluency Herzog & Hertwig The Ecological Validity of Fluency Greifeneder, Bless, & Scholl About swift defaults and sophisticated safety nets: A process perspective on fluency's validity in judgment Part 4: Final Assessment Fiedler Fluency and Behavior Regulation: Adaptive and Maladaptive Consequences of a Good Feeling Unkelbach & Greifeneder Thinking about "experiences of thinking": What have learned and where do we go from here