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The Continuum of Consumer Choice

Human consumption is multi-​faceted and so requires inter-​disciplinary exploration in order to explain a spectrum of experiences that is at once particular and all-​ pervading. Consumer choice is a microcosm of human activity which transcends the purview of the archetypal marketing or consumer psychology textbook. Its perspective is that of social science itself. This book understands the study of consumer choice as a paradigm of human socio-​economic activity and seeks further understanding of its socio-​economic and philosophical bases. The Continuum of Consumer Choice provides a novel view of consumer choice based on the temporal horizon of the consumer, giving rise to a spectrum of consumption styles from the everyday to the extreme. The focus is on explaining this continuum in behavioral, cognitive, and neurophysiological terms, affording the reader a unique perspective on the intellectual basis of consumer psychology and marketing. The reader gains insight into a critical combination of economic psychology, neurophysiology, and philosophy, which contributes to establishing marketing and consumer research as scholarly academic pursuits. The book’s particular focus is the proper place and form of an intentional (cognitive and perceptual) explanation of consumer choice. This is an essential monograph for advanced students in consumer psychology and marketing as well as for researchers in these areas. It is particularly relevant to marketing and consumer theory, providing appreciation of their scholarly foundations. It also appeals to students, lecturers, and researchers in social science generally who are alert to the intellectual potential of consumer psychology and marketing as contributors to a full understanding of human behavior and experience. Gordon R. Foxall is Distinguished Research Professor at Cardiff Business School and Visiting Research Professor of Economic Psychology at Reykjavik University. He holds a PhD in industrial economics and business studies (University of Birmingham), a PhD in psychology (Strathclyde University), and a higher doctorate (Doctor of Social Science (DSocSc)) also from the University of Birmingham. He is the author of 350 refereed papers and chapters and 35 books, and has held visiting positions at the Universities of Oxford, Michigan, Guelph, South Australia, and Durham. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, the British Psychological Society, and the British Academy of Management. His most recent books are Intentional Behaviorism and The Theory of the Marketing Firm.

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The Continuum of Consumer Choice Gordon R. Foxall

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Gordon R. Foxall The right of Gordon R. Foxall to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​20157-​3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​20160-​3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​003-​26251-​0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/​9781003262510 Typeset in Times New Roman by Newgen Publishing UK

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables Foreword Preface Acknowledgments Key Abbreviations 1 Introduction PART I

vii ix x xiii xiv xv 1

Conceptualizing Consumer Choice

11

2 Context, Valuation, and Rationality

13

3 A Research Strategy for Consumer Psychology

31

4 The Significance of Temporal Horizon

43

PART II

Levels of Exposition

63

5 A Suite of Models

65

6 Coming to Terms with Intentionality

90

7 Neural Foundations of Valuation

112

vi  Contents PART III

Confronting Conceptual Duality

131

8 Responsive Behavior and Considered Action

133

9 Complementarity and Incommensurability

152

10 Confluence

178

Bibliography Index

199 213

Figures

1 .1 2.1 2.2 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 8.1 8 .2 8.3 9 .1 9.2 9.3

The Continuum of Consumer Choice Generic Behavioral Perspective Model Operancy Consumer behavior and consumer action Valuation by temporal horizon The principle of bundling The extensional Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM-​E) Patterns of consumer-​situation Bilateral contingency The intentional Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM-​I) Emotional systems and pleasure, arousal, and dominance Patterns of contingent affective response The neurophysiological Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM-​N) Informational reinforcement simpliciter as a bilateral contingency Reciprocal informational reinforcement as a bilateral contingency Interactive social reinforcement as a bilateral contingency Reciprocal social reinforcement as a bilateral contingency Symbolic reward as an asymmetric bilateral contingency Symbolic reward as a symmetric bilateral contingency The tripartite brain Stylized structure of a typical neuron Transfer of neurotransmitter at a synapse The mesolimbocortical pathway Scheme of learning by prediction error Bilateral contingency analysis of short-​and long-​range picoeconomic interests Determination of temporal discounting rate Styles of consumer activity: discounting, affect, and cognition sub-​continua Inter-​level relationships Links among the sources of valuation Valuation in light of reward prediction errors

4 14 19 45 48 58 66 68 69 73 76 78 80 101 103 104 106 108 109 113 115 116 118 120 137 142 143 164 165 171

viii  List of Figures 9.4 10.1 10.2 10.3

Valuation in light of somatic markers Subjective valuation, V2, as a Janus-​variable Sources of explanation over the continuum Super-​personal and sub-​personal correlates of an affective marker

174 181 187 189

Tables

6.1 Patterns of informational reinforcement. The four patterns form a continuum of increasing inter-​connection: (A) → (B) → (C) → (D) 6.2 Explanations of informational reinforcement 9.1 Levels of exposition and modes of explanation

96 110 162

Foreword

In the last few decades, due in part to tremendous advances in technology, significant progress has been made in understanding the neurophysiological basis of behavior and cognitive processes. Diverse levels of analysis have been employed in this enterprise, ranging from molecular research to the study of large-​scale organization of brain circuits, which have been incorporated into the broad area of behavioral and cognitive neuroscience. But what is the relevance of findings stemming from neuroscience to the explanation of consumer behavior? How can such findings be incorporated into behavioral and cognitive research about consumer behavior? This book addresses these fundamental questions by proposing an integrated approach of consumer behavior, well-​ grounded in the most recent academic advances in the field. The proposal is based on three versions of the Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM) of consumer behavior, a theoretical framework that has inspired a great amount of theoretical and empirical research in several countries for more than 40 years. The approach emphasizes that styles of consumer choice compose a continuum from routine shopping, at one extreme, to compulsions and addictions, at the other extreme. The book presents a consistent theoretical approach that explains consumer behavior along this continuum from three different views that complement each other: extensional, intentional, and neurophysiological perspectives. First, the extensional model (BPM-​E) offers a portrayal of consumer behavior rooted in the consequences it produces, whether reinforcing or punishing. It emphasizes publicly available variables, making it a powerful tool for understanding consumer choices in the marketplace. Second, the intentional model (BPM-​I) delves into the realm of mental processes, exploring perceptions, deliberations, and choices that underpin consumer actions. This model explores the subjective valuation of goods and services, grounded in the consumer’s learning history and current perceptions. But the journey does not end there. The book introduces a third iteration of the BPM, one that examines the neurophysiological substrates of consumer choice (BPM-​N). This cutting-​edge approach considers the very neural activity that ignites

Foreword  xi when we anticipate rewards, providing a fresh perspective on the concept of value in consumer behavior. These models, each with its unique perspective, are not isolated paradigms but integral components of a comprehensive research program. This program adheres to a three-​stage methodology for the behavioral sciences, from theoretical minimalism to intentional interpretation and, ultimately, evaluation. It rigorously scrutinizes the role of intentional interpretation in explaining consumer choices, guiding us toward a deeper understanding of the factors influencing our decisions. This book provides an important addition to the already well-​developed research program, initiated by Gordon Foxall decades ago. Since then, the Behavioral Perspective Model has been consolidated in productive lines of empirical research, in relevant philosophical developments concerning the very nature and scope of behavioral sciences, in theoretical interpretation of the behavior of marketing firms, and, above all, in a sophisticated theoretical approach to interpret and explain consumer behavior. And, as in all his dozens of books, Foxall has gifted us an inspiring, challenging, and well-​written text that takes us on a pleasant voyage to the leading edge of knowledge. Jorge M. Oliveira-​Castro Professor, Institute of Psychology, University of Brasilia October 2, 2023

Preface

The multi-​faceted human experience of consumption requires for its explication a multi-​disciplinary exploration in which economic psychology, neurophysiology, and philosophy (to name a few) converge on a milieu that is at once particular and all-​pervading. Within its broadly based intellectual framework, such explanation rests in part on cognitive psychology and this relies in turn on unobservable variables that are not directly amenable to empirical analysis. “Beliefs,” “attitudes,” and “intentions” are simply not available for experimental and statistical analysis in the way products and store layouts are. They carry quite dissimilar implications for explanation. Because cognitivism is the dominant paradigm for consumer psychology, it is tempting to accept its reliance on such latent variables without question, without critical methodological analysis. Instead, it is necessary to examine critically whether there is a case for adopting an intentional mode of explanation (based on perceptual and cognitive inferences about consumer action) at all and, if it is deemed necessary, the form it should take. This is the approach of intentional behaviorism, the philosophy of economic psychology on which this volume is based. Its research strategy requires, as a first stage, the exhaustive investigation of a non-​cognitive (extensional) model in order to ascertain the necessity if any of an intentional portrayal of consumer choice. If a cognitive account is found necessary, then a second stage becomes obligatory: the construction of an intentional interpretation to account for those aspects of consumer choice not amenable to a behaviorist explanation. Finally, the intentional behaviorist research program requires a rigorous standard by which the intentional interpretation may be evaluated and, where necessary, amended and further tested through empirical research. The first two stages lead to incommensurable accounts of consumer choice, something which further motivates critical appraisal and integration. Ascertaining whether this latter is possible and, if so, how it might be accomplished is a task of the third stage, with which this book is principally concerned. The intentional behaviorist research program is an interdisciplinary perspective, involving an unusual range of interests that includes economics, psychology, marketing, philosophy, and neuroscience. Not everyone has invested in all of these. I have, therefore, provided expositions of key background topics and referenced others. This has also, minimally I hope, made some repetition inevitable, though I have attempted to make iterative treatments cumulative so that the effect is progressive.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for opportunities to discuss some of the themes of this work with Professor Jorge Oliveira-​Castro, University of Brasilia, Brazil; Professor Rafael Barreiros Porto, University of Brasilia, Brazil; Professor Valdimar Sigurdsson, Reykjavik University, Iceland; and Professor Asle Fagerstrøm, Kristiana University, Norway. For their careful reading of parts of the manuscript, I thank Professor Carla Borges, University of Brasilia, Brazil; Professor Linda A. W. Brakel, University of Michigan, USA; Professor Shawn Patrick Gilroy, Louisiana State University, USA; Professor Paul M. W. Hackett, Emerson College, Boston, USA; Professor Peter H. Morgan, Cardiff University, UK; Dr. Oscar Robayo-​Pinzon, Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá, Colombia; Professor Sandra Rojas-​ Berrío, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia; and Professor Marithza Sandoval-​ Escobar, Konrad Lorenz University Foundation, Colombia. Remaining errors and omissions are mine alone. Some previously published material has been incorporated. Parts of Chapter 8 appeared in Foxall, G. R. (2023). The neurophysiological Behavioral Perspective Model and its contribution to the intentional behaviorist research program, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 17:1190108. The descriptions of consumer rationalities in Chapter 2 are developed from material that appeared in Brakel, L. A. W. and Foxall, G. R. (2022). Vaccine refusal: a preliminary interdisciplinary investigation, Frontiers in Public Health, 10:917929. Parts of the discussion of the neurophysiology of reinforcement and reward in Chapter 7 are informed by my Addiction as Consumer Choice: Exploring the Cognitive Dimension (2016). At Routledge, I am grateful to Alexandra Atkinson, Terry Clague, and Naomi Round Cahalin. Most of all, I am deeply grateful, as always, to my wife, Jean, not only for her invaluable editorial skills but also for being the raison d’être.

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Key Abbreviations

Acronyms are generally expanded within the text. Some of the commoner ones are also listed here. ACC anterior cingulate cortex Ach acetylcholine DA dopamine dlPFC dorsolateral prefrontal cortex dNAcc dorsal nucleus accumbens GABA gamma-​aminobutyric acid LTP long-​term potentiation mOFC medial orbitofrontal cortex mPFC medial prefrontal cortex NAcc nucleus accumbens OFC orbitofrontal cortex PCC posterior cingulate cortex PFC prefrontal cortex PPC posterior parietal cortex RPE reward prediction error SN substantia nigra SNc substantia nigra pars compata vlPFC ventrolateral prefrontal cortex vmPFC ventromedial prefrontal cortex VS ventral striatum VTA ventral tegmental area

1 Introduction

Abstract This chapter overviews the book to provide a focus for succeeding chapters. The Continuum of Consumer Choice is defined by a sequence of styles of consumer activity ranging from the routine to the extreme. The explanation of this spectrum of consumption, especially insofar as it requires intentional (cognitive and perceptual) explanation, is the subject of this book. The intentional behaviorist research strategy aims to accomplish this through the application of two versions of the Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM), first exploiting the extensional model fully before turning to the intentional model to provide an account of those aspects of behavior which are not amenable to a behaviorist portrayal. The subsequent synthesis of these models is problematic in view of the incommensurability of the paradigms to which they belong. A third version of the BPM, the neurophysiological model, is proposed as a potential source of critique, evaluation, and integration. Overview Consumer choice presents a microcosm of human behavior. There are few human activities that cannot be understood in terms of our resource-​constrained selection among alternative courses of action to provide the functional and social means of enhancing our well-​being. Consumption understood in these broad terms extends well beyond the purview of the archetypal marketing or consumer behavior textbook: its perspective is that of social science itself. Ultimately, then, the aim which imbues but extends well beyond this monograph is to better understand the nature of consumer choice as a paradigm of human socio-​economic activity. Its focus is provided by the intentional behaviorist research program which is concerned with ascertaining the proper place and form of an intentional (perceptual and cognitive) explanation of consumer choice (Foxall, 2020). Intentional behaviorism does not assume the inevitability of cognitive explanation just because it is the taken-​for-​granted paradigm in the social and behavioral sciences. Its indispensability, if such there be, needs to be demonstrated. Surprisingly perhaps, that most parsimonious perspective, radical behaviorism, readily finds a place in this endeavor. It forms the basis of a model whose initial DOI: 10.4324/9781003262510-1

2  Introduction purpose is to determine how far its theoretically minimalist depiction can illuminate socio-​economic behavior. This has proved a useful exercise in its own right by producing results that might not otherwise become evident. But its second purpose is more far-​reaching: to identify the necessity –​ if such there be –​ of a cognitive explanation, suggesting its form, and acting as a source of its evaluation. Simply put, when this behaviorist model’s capacity to elucidate behavior is exhausted, a cognitive explanation becomes essential. Then, a second model, based on intentional reasoning, can be formulated, one concerned not with the explanation of behavior determined by the rewards and punishers it attracts, but with the interpretation of action, the outcome of the consumer’s desires, beliefs, affects, and other perceptions. The first model employs a super-​personal level of exposition which relates consumer behavior to its environmental consequences, the reinforcing and punishing outcomes that alter its rate of repetition; the second model employs a personal level of exposition in which the consumer’s reconstructed phenomenology is employed to make her action intelligible. It does so by revealing the intentionality with which her actions, assumed to be those of a rational actor, are consistent. The subsequent task is to evaluate this second, assuredly corrigible intentional model. This strategy idealizes the consumer as an intentional system, broadly following the approach originated by Daniel Dennett (1978) but, I think, rendered more rigorous in the context of intentional behaviorism. These models and their accompanying levels of exposition and modes of explanation have been the subject of earlier work. This book is vitally concerned with them too, but its originality lies, first, in its concern with the sub-​personal level of exposition through the introduction of a neurophysiological model of consumer choice and, second, with the inter-​relationships among the three levels. Although it is a cardinal principle of intentional behaviorism that the mode of explanation requisite for a particular level of exposition cannot be employed at other levels, the questions of whether and, if so, how the levels of exposition can be related are central to developing a unified understanding of consumer choice. The conception of a Continuum of Consumer Choice is highly instructive in this quest for integration. It portrays consumer activities as ranging from the most routine and commonplace to the most extreme and compulsive. Choosing a familiar brand of an item that is used every day exemplifies the first, constituting as it does the selection of a well-​known and trusted commodity: a minimum of uncertainty is involved. Even if the consumer’s first-​preferred brand is unavailable, there are likely others which perform as satisfactorily, and there is also minimal risk, since most such items are relatively inexpensive. The opposite pole of this Continuum locates more extreme consumer behaviors characterized by compulsive buying and other tendencies toward addiction. These more excessive modes of consumer behavior are often marked by preference reversal, economic irrationality, and, at the ultimate extreme, social disruption such as the loss of friends, spouse, home, or job. The behaviors involved are typically exacerbated by neurophysiological excess. Between the poles of the Continuum lie such activities as credit purchasing which expedites consumption, albeit at the cost of a higher final payment; despoiling the

Introduction  3 environment, say, by unauthorized disposal of waste or the profligate use of finite resources like fossil fuels, which may reduce the costs or enhance the benefits of short-​range consumption but subsequently impose much larger outlays; over-​ consumption, notably of food and alcohol, and compulsive shopping which confers immediacy of ownership, again at a high price in the longer term. Indeed, with the possible exception of the most routine consumer choice, all the consumer behaviors listed require that the consumer pay more, sooner or later, for temporal convenience; even everyday purchasing may leave the consumer vulnerable in some degree to similar considerations. It is easy for most of us to surrender the future to immediate preferences, even when we are fully aware of the consequences. The idea of consumer choice encapsulates this tension between acts of consumption that take place at different times, each with its own outcomes, which differ in the extent to which they are reinforcing or punishing, rewarding or aversive. What fundamentally distinguishes the activities that compose the Continuum of Consumer Choice is the extent to which the consumers involved discount the future consequences of their activities. Each kind of activity is marked by its own temporal horizon. This brings us to the definition of consumer choice. The Continuum of Consumer Choice Consumer choice is economic and social activity in which selection among alternatives reflects a degree of delay discounting, theoretically ranging from zero discounting to maximal discounting. Temporal discounting is marked by more or less impatience. At its zenith, the so-​called weakness of will or akrasia is the basis of extreme consumer choice as it manifests in compulsive behaviors and addictions. At its nadir, it can be characteristic of routine purchasing and consumption. It is least apparent in everyday brand choice within a tried and tested consideration set –​ though even here there may be a temptation to, say, over-​consume in the face of an attractive price promotion. And, in its more moderate forms, it still marks a spectrum of trade-​offs between the willingness to seek longer-​term satisfactions and the imperatives of immediacy. Hence, compared with everyday product, brand, and store choices, intermittent purchasing –​of consumer durables and other big-​ticket items –​ may occasion greater tendency toward immediate acquisition and use of products and services even at the cost of taking on a credit agreement or spending more than one initially allocated. Such unwillingness to live within one’s current means signals a tendency toward over-​consumption, more serious examples of which include environmental despoliation, excessive eating and drinking to yield hedonic gratification rather than homeostatic regulation, and which shade into compulsive purchasing, hoarding, and compulsive acquisition. The most extreme style of consumer choice is addiction. The common factor in all of these is the degree of time preference, typically the demand for more immediate gain, even if this proves costlier in the longer term. Different consumers, in different situations, behaving with different products and services, exhibit different temporal horizons. Some consumers, situations, and socio-​economic goods attract or display a leisured approach; others are

4  Introduction

Figure 1.1 The Continuum of Consumer Choice.

characterized by the real or apparent need to obtain the merchandise more quickly and use it more rapidly. Extreme consumer choice which shows up in compulsion or addiction may be seen as a failure of temporal horizon, but less serious instances may still reflect a degree of “time lapse.” This diversity of styles of consumer choice, ordered according to the degree of temporal discounting each entails, defines the Continuum of Consumer Choice which was briefly described above and is shown in Figure 1.1. The question raised in this book is how this array of consumer styles can be understood, without resort to simplistic banalities such as “this is what consumers like” or “buyers of X have a positive mental attitude toward X.” The intentional behaviorist research strategy, incorporating several versions of a model of consumer choice known as the Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM), attempts a more cogent response. Its research program is concerned with the proper place of cognitive and perceptual explanations, an intriguing quest since, although mentalist (or “intentional”) accounts of human behavior are ubiquitous, they are based on explanatory variables that are simply not in themselves empirically available for scientific investigation. They must be inferred. What, then, can we say about their status and necessity? Four sub-​continua may be identified within the overall pattern shown in Figure 1.1. Among them, one refers to consumers’ styles of activity (ranging from considered action (purported to be motivated by the requirements of routine consumer choice) and responsive behavior (extreme consumer choice); the others capture differences in consumers’ affective styles (from “liking” to “wanting” and even “craving”), styles of temporal discounting (“shallow” versus “steep”), and their cognitive styles (from “top-​down” to “bottom-​up” information processing.) These sub-​continua will be described further in Chapter 8, in terms of their neurophysiological underpinnings, but we shall encounter their implications at various points before then. The Intentional Behaviorist Research Program Specifically, the rationale of the intentional behaviorist research program is to clarify where and when cognitive explanation is both necessary and justified. Its associated research strategy employs two special versions of the BPM to address the task of identifying where intentional explanation becomes indispensable in the explanation of consumer choice and the form it should take. The models in question are, respectively, an extensional (for the moment we may understand this as simply non-​cognitive) portrayal of socio-​economic behavior and a corresponding

Introduction  5 intentional approach based on cognition, perception, and affect. The strategy is based on a simple rationale: that when the former is no longer able to explain, the latter must be employed to fill in the gaps. Since these models present competing, antithetical, and indeed incommensurable perspectives, some philosophical rationale is necessary for their deployment and, in particular, for the integration of their results. The evaluation of the interpretations generated using the intentional model is thus a key element in the research program, part of which necessitates the introduction and application of a third version of the BPM, based on the neurophysiological substrates of consumer choice. The extensional portrayal (BPM-​E) treats consumer behavior as a response to the reinforcing and punishing consequences that similar behavior has previously produced. Reinforcing outcomes of purchase and consumption are those which increase the likelihood of the behavior in question being repeated, while the receipt of aversive or punishing consequences is assumed to decrease that probability. The variables involved are publicly available, operationally specified and measured with high intersubjective agreement. The intentional model (BPM-​I) depicts consumer action in terms of mental processes such as perception, deliberation, and cognitive choice. Its rationale is to extend the purview of this approach to new situations and areas of explanation which are not amenable to extensional characterization. These models also have implications for the conceptualization of value. BPM-​E understands it as an intersubjective agreement reached by the parties to a transaction in the marketplace. BPM-​I is concerned with subjective valuation of what is to be given up in a transaction (usually money in the case of the consumer) and what is likely to be obtained (a product, service, or other good). Neuroeconomics provides a third conception of value, understood as the level of neuronal activity excited by the presentation of anticipated reward which is integral to the neurophysiological Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM-​N). These models play unique roles within the intentional behaviorist research strategy, a three-​stage methodology for the behavioral sciences, comprising theoretical minimalism, intentional interpretation, and evaluation. The initial, extensional, stage is intended to ascertain whether it is feasible on scientific grounds to portray the consumer as a utility-​maximizing system and how the utility involved is to be construed. Only when consumers have been shown empirically to maximize utility and the nature of what it is that they maximize has been identified, again empirically, and extensional explanation has been exhausted, is the second stage, based on intentional interpretation, justified. The intentional interpretation builds on the empirical knowledge accrued during the theoretically minimalist stage. It is, therefore, possible to deliver an interpretation that is consistent with “fact-​based” findings. However, this second stage produces an account of consumer choice that differs qualitatively from that with which theoretical minimalism is concerned: it generates an interpretation which cannot be directly subjected to empirical examination. The third stage is designed to rigorously evaluate the intentional interpretation by reference to its consonance with cognitive theory and, ultimately, its capacity to generate hypotheses that are tested by means of such

6  Introduction extensional sciences as behavioral economics and neuroeconomics. The strategy is fully described in Foxall (2020) and reviewed in Chapter 3. The quest for theoretical unity involves two dimensions along which the models are related. The first raises the question of how well the models interact in the explanation of the range of consumer choices depicted on the Continuum. This is the problem of their complementarity. It is a concern over the horizontal relationships between the models. Are they part of a unified explanation of the patterns of consumption arrayed over the spectrum or disparate and incongruent perspectives on consumer choice? The second is the question of how well the explanations provided by these models, given their belonging to immiscible levels of exposition, can “co-​operate” in a general understanding of consumer choice that takes all three levels of exposition into consideration. This is the problem of their incommensurability. It is a concern over the vertical relationships of models that severally represent the super-​personal, personal, and sub-​personal levels of exposition, and each of which employs a mode of explanation that cannot be measured by the canons of judgment appropriate to the others. Can the competing viewpoints of the models achieve any degree of rapport? Role of the Neurophysiological Model The extensional and intentional models have been developed and appraised in several ways, the results of which have been described in several monographs.1 The standard methods of hypothetico-​deductive reasoning have been applied to this task in the case of BPM-​E. BPM-​I has been judged on the basis of its (1) consistency with the empirical findings derived from testing the extensional model; (2) predictive capacity; (3) rendering intelligible phenomena that are beyond the scope of the extensional analysis; and (4) consistency with cognitive theory. Work is progressing on all these fronts as well as the extensional model’s (5) capacity to engender hypotheses based on economic analysis such as those provided by operant behavioral economics, neuroeconomics and picoeconomics, and (6) consistency with neurophysiological evidence relevant to consumer choice. While the neurophysiological model (BPM-​N) by no means bears the full responsibility for evaluation in the following chapters, its development and deployment provide an important focus. This is, therefore, an appropriate time to elaborate the rationale for its inclusion in the BPM suite of models. Neural valuation, which played an important albeit embryonic role in Foxall (2020), now comes to the fore. The neuropsychology of consumer choice concerns consumption insofar as it may be elucidated in terms of the biology of the central nervous system. The emphasis is on neural influences on intellect, sentience, and behavior. But the book is not narrowly concerned with the links between neuropathology and cognition, useful as this can be as a means of understanding “normal” activity. Rather, it assumes a broader perspective: the purview of multiple scientific and socio-​scientific fields which elucidate the central sphere of human and animal endeavor, namely, consumption. Thus far, the intentional behaviorist research program has concentrated on the application of extensional and intentional

Introduction  7 behavioral science paradigms to elucidate consumption. By bringing neuroscience to bear, the aim is to enhance understanding of their interaction and capacity for co-​operative exposition. This is a quest that calls for more than the association of consumer psychology and neuroscience in a spirit of multi-​disciplinarity. It is a genuinely inter-​disciplinary perspective that employs not only these disciplines but also aspects of economics, neuroeconomics, and neurophilosophy. The question of how the consumer comes to value one product, retail outlet, or brand over others, insofar as this process is reflected in her neurophysiology, invites intellectual exploration of the concept of neural valuation in relation to the other uses of “valuation” such as the subjective value consumers hold in their minds and the intersubjective valuations reached by transacting in the marketplace. In contrast to the differing levels of subjectivity which attach to these other notions, neural valuation might be considered an “objective” portrayal since it is measurable in terms on which pretty well everyone is agreed. As a near-​universal facet of experience, consumer choice is not just concerned with acquiring and using social and economic products and services: it might be seen as a paradigm of all that the social and behavioral sciences comprehend. Any research program concerned to understand consumer choice ought, therefore, to feature a neurophysiological dimension simply on the grounds that have been adumbrated. But there are rather more specific reasons for BPM-​N as a component of intentional behaviorism. The research program is more than a sequence of unrelated paradigms. Because intentional explanations depend on latent variables that are not directly available for scientific analysis, its goal is to explore what if anything is the justification for a cognitive portrayal. This is pursued through the establishment and exploitation of a behaviorist methodology and ascertaining the point at which it becomes incapable of further elucidating observed conduct. It is here that intentional explanation becomes necessary. A little elaboration of the nature of the three models will elucidate the nature of the program. The BPM generically employs the concept of the consumer-​situation (the immediate precursor of socio-​economic behavior) to elucidate consumer activity. And, to reiterate, the special models deal, respectively, with the relationship between behavior and its environmental (reinforcing and punishing) consequences (BPM-​E), and that between action and the desires, beliefs, affects, and other perceptions that render it intelligible (BPM-​I). The understandings of consumer value inherent in each of these models provide the key to its characteristic conception of the consumer-​situation. As noted above, BPM-​ E comprehends value in the context of intersubjective exchange: past behavior (e.g., how much has been paid to acquire a unit of a commodity) weighted by the opportunities for reinforcement currently available predicts and explains further consumer choice. This is an extensional view of value. BPM-​I portrays value as an intra-​personal conception of the worth of economic and social goods. Such subjective valuation, which accounts for the consumer’s choices on subsequent consumption occasions, reflects her learning history (as it exists in memory) and her perceptions of the current consumer behavior setting. This is an intentional conception of value.

8  Introduction Within this framework, the third, neurophysiological, model is required, for two particular reasons. First, the pursuit of a comprehensive understanding of consumer value necessitates a neurophysiological depiction of the consumer-​situation, based on the neural valuation of products and services. Neural valuation is the rate of dopaminergic action potentials in response to stimuli that reflect the availability of reinforcers (socio-​economic goods) and the contexts in which they are or have been available. Second, the neurophysiological configuration of consumer choice acts as a source of evaluation of the intentional behaviorist research program as it has been outlined. Hence, the third stage of intentional behaviorism, as pursued in this volume, entails –​ initially –​ the evaluation of the intentional interpretation in light of its consistency with neurophysiological evidence, especially that which pertains to valuation. In this quest, the neurophysiological model is employed, first, to undergird a conceptual dual process theory based on the extensional and intentional models and, second, as a contributor to an integrated understanding of consumer choice. The advent of BPM-​N, therefore, makes available an original source of critique. But this alone cannot accomplish the comprehensive evaluation of the intentional behaviorist research program. A second stream of appraisal, related to the neurophysiological dimension but reaching over and above its purview, is the examination of how the extensional and intentional approaches to consumer choice combine in the general elucidation of consumer choice. This appraisal is vitally concerned with the problems of complementarity and incommensurability, the resolution of which is central to the quest for the unification of the modes of explanation that underpin the research program. Conclusion The chapters that follow comprise three parts: Part I –​Conceptualizing Consumer Choice; Part II –​ Levels of Exposition; and Part III –​ Confronting Conceptual Duality. Chapters 2–​4, forming Part I, are concerned with the conceptualization of consumer choice. Chapter 2, entitled “Context, Valuation, and Rationality,” presents some of the key analytical tools employed in the book: the generic model of consumer choice utilized in intentional behaviorism (BPM), conceptions of value and valuation central to understanding consumer choice, and an account of consumers’ goals and rationality. The philosophical basis of intentional behaviorism and the definition of consumer choice are, respectively, the subjects of Chapter 3, entitled “A Research Strategy for Consumer Psychology” and Chapter 4, entitled “The Significance of Temporal Horizon,” which are closely linked. Chapters 5–​7, making up Part II, deal with the levels of exposition on which extensional, intentional, and neurophysiological depictions of consumer choice are founded. The BPM, the subject of Chapter 5, entitled “A Suite of Models,” describes these versions of the model. Two imperatives of further explication arise out of Chapter 5: the demonstration that extensional and intentional investigations indeed provide the basis of the sequential research strategy that intentional behaviorism proposes, and the further description of the neurophysiological sources of

Introduction  9 valuation on which the neurophysiological BPM rests. Chapter 6, entitled “Coming to Terms with Intentionality,” links the preceding chapters through a critique of the explanatory paradigms that are called for in order to account for the phenomenon of informational reinforcement which is a central component of the BPM. It argues forcefully that, notwithstanding the vital contribution made by extensional explanation, an intentional interpretation is an inescapable component of the attempt to comprehensively understand the nature of socio-​economic choice. Chapter 7, entitled “Neural Foundations of Valuation,” delves into the sources of neural value that underpin the neurophysiological model, particularly as they underpin reinforcement and reward. This chapter informs both the discussion of the neurophysiological model which precedes it in Chapter 5 and the conceptual dual process depiction of consumer choice which follows it in Chapter 8. The last three chapters, constituting Part III, relate to the confrontation of conceptual duality apparent in the foregoing analysis. Two methodological issues are highlighted: the problem of complementarity concerns the interactions of the extensional and intentional models across the spectrum of styles of consumer choice that comprise the Continuum, while that of incommensurability involves the explanatory independence of the paradigms employed to account for observed patterns of consumer choice. These questions are tackled, first, by juxtaposing the extensional and intentional versions of the BPM as conceptual antipodal sources of explanation and employing the results of empirical neurophysiological research to critically examine the basis of this conjecture. This is the subject of Chapter 8, entitled “Responsive Behavior and Considered Action,” in which the neurophysiological model takes center stage in the evaluation of the extensional and intentional versions. This chapter takes the form of a critical evaluation of the extensional and intentional models as polar extremes of a dual process conception of behavioral explanation (consumer behavior as the stimulus-​bound outcome of an agential environment versus consumer action as the outcome of consumer phenomenology). Chapter 9, entitled “Complementarity and Incommensurability,” takes up the epistemological problems outlined above in greater detail. In connection with the former, it builds, first, on the findings of the neurophysiological research reviewed in the preceding chapter, and second, on those from research on aggregate patterns of consumption. The book concludes with further theoretical elaboration. Chapter 10, entitled “Confluence,” develops the concept of Janus-​variables, introduced in Foxall (2020), as a means of transcending the incommensurable levels of exposition to which the extensional, intentional, and neurophysiological models belong. Janus-​ variables are personal level constructs which represent events at the super-​personal and sub-​personal levels and thereby permit a measure of integration among the levels without compromising their explanatory independence. Note 1 See Foxall (1996/​2015, 2010, 2016a, 2016b, 2017a, 2017b, 2020).

Part I

Conceptualizing Consumer Choice

2 Context, Valuation, and Rationality

Abstract The generic Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM) is concerned with the situation of consumer activity, spatially and temporally. It encapsulates the explanatory mode adopted by the three special versions of the BPM that play a significant role in assessing the contributions of extensionality and intentionality in the explanation of consumer choice. The explanatory variables –​ consumer-​situation, consumer behavior setting, and utilitarian and informational reinforcement –​ are explicated and related to the concept of operancy which links physical and social reinforcement with affective reward. This leads into a treatment of value and valuation as they apply to consumer activity as it is envisaged by the extensional, intentional, and neurophysiological versions of the BPM. Finally, a range of kinds of rationality are considered in light of consumers’ goals, from philosophical and psychological rationality through economic, biological, and economic-​psychological rationalities to a-​rationality. The Generic Behavioral Perspective Model Consumer-​Situation

Figure 2.1 portrays the generic Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM), which seeks to explain consumer choice by reference to the context in which it takes place. This context is the “consumer-​situation,” which comprises the stimuli that currently impinge on the consumer’s behavior (the “consumer behavior setting”) and her prior record of behaving in similar situations in the past (her “learning history.”) What the consumer does, how the consumer values, is assumed to be a function of this situation. The generic model proposes, therefore, simply that “consumer activity” is a function of the “consumer-​situation” and that the situation in question is composed of the consumer’s consumption history and the elements of her current setting which encourage purchasing and/​or consumption. In other words, the consumer-​situation, though it is operationalized in different terms in each of the models, forms the immediate precursor of consumer activity and consumer valuation. This consumer activity has consequences which, by modifying DOI: 10.4324/9781003262510-3

14  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice

Figure 2.1 Generic Behavioral Perspective Model. The stimulus field that composes the consumer behavior setting consists of discriminative stimuli (SD) which set the occasion for the reinforcement and punishment (Sr/​p) of a response (R). Another kind of antecedent stimulus is the motivating operation (MO) which enhances the relationship between the R and the Sr/​p, making it more attractive. The SDs and MOs that form the consumer behavior setting are primed by the reinforcing a punishing outcomes which previous, similar behavior occasioned (i.e., the consumer’s learning history). This synergistic effect brings a consumer-​situation into being.

the consumer’s learning history, shape her future consumer-​situations, and so influence whether she will repeat this behavior. The essence of the model is the portion enclosed within the dashed ellipse (Figure 2.1). The idea of a consumer-​situation, comprising the current consumer behavior setting as it is primed by the relevant history of reinforcement and punishment, will be elaborated in Chapter 5, but for now we may note some essential different emphases of the special models we shall meet there. In the extensional model (BPM-​E), the consumer-​situation is simply the interaction of this setting with this history1 –​that is of current stimuli that influence the consumer’s behavior and the effects such stimuli have had on her behavior in the past. In the intentional consumer-​situation (the subject of BPM-​I), each of the environmental influences on consumer behavior that comprise the extensional model is depicted as subjective representations of those variables. The consumer’s learning history is her experience as she recalls it; the stimulus field that comprises the consumer behavior setting, her cognitive, conative, and affective perceptions of these variables; and the utilitarian and informational reinforcement to which they refer, the expected future outcomes of her next phase of consumer choice. In BPM-​N, the alternative courses of action open to the consumer are objectively appraised in terms of the rate of dopaminergic action potentials they evoke either through their actual presentation at the super-​personal level or in the course of their cognitive and affective rehearsal at the personal level. Each of these consumer-​situations is, therefore, concerned with the establishment of valuation that is peculiar to it: V1 in the case of the extensional consumer-​ situation where interpersonally agreed values are established at the super-​personal level, V2 in the case of the intentional consumer-​situation where subjective valuation occurs at the personal level within the mentality of the individual, and V3 in

Context, Valuation, and Rationality  15 the neurophysiological consumer-​situation where neural values are computed at the sub-​personal level. Hence, the special versions of the generic model present alternative conceptions of the variables that compose the consumer behavior setting, learning history, consumer-​situation, and behavioral consequences, depending on the explanatory purpose assigned to it. In BPM-​E, the consumer behavior setting is the complex of stimuli that make up the physical and social context in which one is purchasing or consuming: for example, the store in which one is shopping and the people who are also present. These stimuli are assumed to be specifiable as observable entities whose (again, observable) effect on one’s responses can be employed to predict and control further instances of this kind of activity. The accumulated behaviors of the consumer and the reinforcing and punishing outcomes thereof compose her learning history which also contributes to the prediction of her future behaviors. In the case of laboratory animals, which have unstintingly given their all to the advancement of psychology, this learning history can be specified fairly unambiguously. The consumption history of the middle-​aged human consumer, however, may well be more obscure than this, something which casts doubt on an entirely extensional approach to explain (i.e., predict and control) what people do outside the laboratory –​ at least if a single consumer’s behavior is under scrutiny. By contrast, in the aggregate, consumers’ behaviors, considered within what is conceptualized as their controlling context, can often be rigorously observed and predicted in empirical research on the basis of, say, statistically analyzed panel data. It is on this basis that research in consumer behavior analysis has proceeded (Foxall, 1998, 2017a.) To sum up, the value of a product or service is quantified as whatever the consumer is willing to exchange for it, the work or money she will expend in order to acquire the reinforcement she desires and avoid the punishing consequences of consumption. On this foundation, consumer behavior analysis has accumulated a considerable volume of findings that chart the sensitivity of consumers’ choices to price and reinforcement contingencies. This suffices for an extensional analysis. The personal value the consumer accords a reinforcer or reward is a subjective evaluation of its personal benefits to her, and this is the stuff of intentional interpretation. The neurophysiological depiction of the events underlying this activity highlights how the neuronal valuation of different behavioral options quantifies the potential reinforcement and reward that will follow appropriate appetitive and consummatory responding. The Scope of the Consumer Behavior Setting

An important property of the consumer behavior setting as it contributes to the consumer-​situation is its scope, that is, the number and variety of behavioral opportunities it presents or permits. A (relatively) closed consumer setting permits one, or at most a few, behavioral options. Take a bank, dental surgery or casino, dining in a restaurant, for instance: in each case, the consumer is severely limited in terms of the range of behaviors she can perform, her opportunities to leave the

16  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice situation, and the necessity to conform to a predetermined course of action while she is there. A (relatively) open consumer behavior setting, however, allows a large number of behavioral options, which the consumer can adopt “at will”: a party, say, listening to the radio or viewing television in one’s own home, alone, where one is free to switch stations as the mood takes one, or taking lunch in a self-​service cafeteria. Between these are consumer behavior settings that are intermediate in scope, such as supermarket shopping, travelling on a (corridor) train or cruise ship, and wandering through an art gallery: all these are partly structured and limited by physical and social encroachments, but they also provide a good deal of discretion in what one does and how one manages it. Utilitarian and Informational Reinforcement

The outcomes of consumer activity are the ensuing reinforcers and punishers that influence the rate at which the consumer will repeat the behavior or action in similar contexts. Positive reinforcement is an increase in the rate of responding following the receipt of a positive reinforcer. Receiving a smile in return for saying “Thank you” increases the likelihood one will express gratitude on subsequent occasions. Negative reinforcement is also marked by an increase in the rate of responding but this follows the avoidance of, or escape from, an aversive consequence. Drinking a cool beer when one is very thirsty increases the likelihood one will adopt this remedy next time one is parched. Punishment is a reduction in the rate of responding following the receipt of an aversive consequence. Feeling extremely dizzy and nauseated after smoking a cigarette makes further consumption of this product less likely.2 The BPM bifurcates the idea of reinforcement into functional and social components which it terms utilitarian reinforcement and informational reinforcement, respectively. Utilitarian reinforcement refers to the consequences of behavior which inhere in the functional benefits of owning and using a good, what it does practically for the consumer. The reinforcing consequences of owning and driving a car include the ease of travel, the convenience of visiting a large number of geographically separated places, of giving lifts to family members. In short, a car reinforces behavior by virtue of its capacity to assuage the problems of “getting from A to B.” Almost any car in decent working order provides these benefits, although they are not without costs. Such benefits are utilitarian (or functional) reinforcers. However, some cars do more than provide transportation: for most people, a Rolls Royce or a Porsche also affords social status and a personally experienced sense of self-​esteem. (Some cars attract negative kudos, of course: unfashionable, perhaps cheaper and less powerful cars, and those with a larger carbon footprint like “gas guzzlers.”) These are examples of informational or socially based reinforcement (and, perhaps, punishment). The origin of the distinction is described by Wearden (1988) who drew attention to studies showing that when participants in psychological experiments were required to perform simple tasks in order to attain rewards such as coins of little value, points, or small food samples, they often

Context, Valuation, and Rationality  17 reacted by ostentatiously disposing of these items, for example, by throwing them out of the window of the room in which the study was taking place. However, when the experimental tasks were undertaken by teams of participants, whose attainments were highlighted by charts showing their progress in amassing the food items, currency or points, participants’ engagement increased noticeably and they evinced demonstrable involvement in the proceedings. This latter source of reinforcement was dubbed “informational” in contrast to the utilitarian reinforcement provided by the tangible remuneration they received. The import of these studies derives from the minimal utilitarian benefit conferred by the reinforcers as compared with their social significance within the confines of the experimental situation. The distinction between utilitarian and informational sources of reinforcement has proved a valuable conceptual advance in the analysis of consumer behavior which clearly reflects not only the functional benefits accessed by owning and using products and services but also the social cachet that many economic and social goods confer. The aversive stimuli that feature in negative reinforcement and punishment may also be bifurcated into their utilitarian and informational reinforcement components. Operancy

It is now possible to define the mechanism through which behavior and action are shaped and maintained in more detail. We often speak of the goods acquired and used during consumption, the “benefits,” as “rewards.” More technically, we may refer to them as “reinforcers.” As Skinner (1953) took pains to point out, reinforcement is something that happens as a result of behavior, while a reward is something received by the individual who behaves. The behavior is reinforced, while the person or other organism may be rewarded. A reinforcer can also be understood as something for which an organism will work (Rolls, 2018). More significantly, a reinforcer is something an organism will continue working for: its receipt increases the probability of the behavior that led to its delivery. By contrast, a punisher is something the organism will work to rid itself of. Its receipt leads to a reduction in the performance of the behavior that bought it about. In each case, it is the behavior, the behavioral response that the organism emits, that is reinforced or punished, not the person or animal. We shall return to the organism but for now it is the probability of the response that is all-​important. Such a response is described as operant because it operates on the environment to produce consequences (Skinner, 1971),that is, the reinforcers and punishers, including socio-​economic goods (and “bads”), that influence the rate at which this and similar responses are performed in similar contexts. Understanding a reinforcer as something the organism works for and a punisher as something it works to avoid or escape suggests that the former is an item it sets great store by, finds pleasing, or values, while the latter is something it disvalues, dislikes, or finds worthless or irksome. The good the consumer obtains is valued in terms of the amount of work she is willing to do to obtain it, usually understood as the amount of money she surrenders for it (which is after all usually a measure of the work she has done). Valued items can often be exchanged for other valued

18  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice items in the marketplace, a practice that is enhanced by the appearance of a unit of exchange such as money. A pecuniary economy means that it is not necessary to find someone who coincidentally wants to exchange what a consumer has to offer for something another consumer wants. Money provides a store of value which enables the consumer to postpone a purchase while taking advantage of the opportunity to raise the funds for it by selling a commodity someone else wants. We can think of the buyer and seller in each case as having a personal or subjective valuation of the goods she wishes to trade. As a result of the market process, the subjective values of each party to a successful transaction result in intersubjective values, or prices, that are available to other potential consumers as indications of what an item is worth in a social situation (Foxall, 2021). Emotional feelings or affect3 accompany the anticipatory and consummatory responses that make up the process of consumer choice. These affective reactions also have neurophysiological underpinnings and we may regard feelings as the ultimate reinforcing and punishing outcomes of consumer behavior, the ultimate outcomes of a chain of behavioral effects that regulate the frequency of behavior. As such they are the rewarding and sanctioning effects of consumption as they impinge directly on the organism and are felt by her, and they thereby exert a directing influence on her further actions qua consumer that mediate the reinforcers and punishers that are the visible consequences of consumption. Concepts such as desires, beliefs, and felt emotions, which are alien to behaviorist explanation, are seen in cognitive psychology as the very causes of or reasons for action, or at the very least criteria with which action should, in a rational being, be consistent. We expect rational beings to act in consonance with their desires and beliefs, their emotions and perceptions, and this is the minimal assumption on which a cognitive approach to psychological explanation may proceed. We can, therefore, investigate the consumer’s intentionality –​the sum total of their mental states –​ in order to try to interpret, and possibly predict, their behavior, and perhaps to explain it. Although these two broad schools are generally seen as antithetical to one another (as at one level they certainly are), they have been employed complementarily, albeit sequentially, in the philosophy of economic psychology known as intentional behaviorism (Foxall, 2020). Models of consumer choice based on extensional (behaviorist) and intentional (perceptual and cognitive) frameworks of conceptualization and analysis have formed part of this endeavor. The third model to enter the suite, based on the contribution of neurophysiology to the understanding of consumption, is not an alternative to the others; rather, it provides a level of understanding that increases the predictability and explication of consumer choice. As will become apparent, it is also one source of a critical stance on them. Figure 2.2 illustrates reinforced behavior (responding), its context (the consumer behavior setting), and its affective outcomes (pleasure, arousal and dominance, and their obverses), a relationship which is succinctly described as “operancy.” All three BPM models employ the logic of reinforcement and reward depicted in this figure, but they differ in terms of how they define the components: utilitarian and informational reinforcement and consumer behavior setting scope are defined

Context, Valuation, and Rationality  19

Figure 2.2 Operancy. Operancy connects reinforcement and reward in the shaping and maintenance of behavior. Consumer response or activity (behavior or action) leads to utilitarian and informational reinforcement which in turn elicits affective rewards, namely, pleasure/​unpleasure and arousal/​unarousal. Prior to the consumer’s responding, simply being in a consumer behavior setting elicits a feeling ranging from dominance (open setting) to submissiveness (closed setting).

and measured as publicly available stimuli in the case of the extensional model, as inferences of consumers’ perceptions in the intentional model, and as neural bases of emotion in the neurophysiological model. Value and Valuation Conceptions of value and valuation are highly pertinent to unravelling the nature of consumer choice and its explanation. Reams have been written on the nature of value and valuation, just by philosophers and economists, and they are far from alone. We have to simplify in order to make progress, and no attempt is made here to review the whole literature of value and valuation. Instead, the discussion is confined to intersubjective, subjective, and neural values.4 In a word, value is the assignment of worth from the most positive to the most negative along a continuum that proceeds monotonically (see Kahnt and Tobler, 2017, p. 109). One dimension of valuation is graphically represented by patterns of behavior. Animal activity, including that of humans, is marked by approach to stimuli that increase the rate of behaving (positive reinforcers) and by avoidance of or escape from stimuli that reduce behavioral frequency (aversive stimuli). Reinforcers are adaptive and positively valued while punishers are maladaptive and disvalued. On the understanding that a reinforcer is something which an organism works to obtain and a punisher is something that it works to avoid, this link between the consequences of a behavior and its value is clear. In marketing transactions, money is exchanged for a reinforcer in the form of a product or service; in a labor market transaction, a specified amount of work is performed in order to obtain money (Foxall, 2021). Money therefore counts as a

20  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice reinforcer if it is obtained by working in a labor market. And if the surrender of money is taken as a proxy for working, this act is reinforced by the receipt of a product or service. Some financial acts, such as lending money commercially, are reinforced by the conferral of further money in the form of interest or dividends. The price at which an exchange takes place in a non-​coercive market may be thought of as a measure of the intersubjectively agreed value of the good provided by one party and the money the other party surrenders in order to obtain it.5 Before transacting, both buyer and seller attach subjective values to what they are seeking to obtain and what they are having to give up in order to do so. Subjective values reflect to some extent the intersubjective values achieved in previous transactions but they also embody a range of personal, economic, and social factors that can only be assessed by the individuals who make the exchange. Each will, for herself, have some individual notion of what the commodities in question are worth not only in terms of the functional uses to which they may be put but also as indictors of the recipient’s social status and self-​esteem. The level of subjective value ascribed to a commodity reflects the magnitude and probability of the reinforcer that is expected to be obtained. This is the reinforcer indicated by the situation in which the transaction occurs, viewed through the lens of the individual’s history of purchasing and consuming similar reinforcers. The third source of valuation, deriving from the neurophysiological precursors of obtaining and using social and economic goods, is especially useful. Padoa-​ Schioppa (2009) points out on the basis of single-​cell recordings, Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and lesion studies that an abundance of results identify neural representations of value: they are prominent in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) where lesions impede the making of choices. He concludes that, on the basis of a small number of “reasonable” assumptions, “any large set of choices can be accounted for as if the choosing subject maximized an internal value function” (Padoa-​Schioppa, 2009, p. 335). Crucially, however, he also notes that the conceptualization of value in economics is behavioral and logical rather than psychological: since values are inferred from behavior, they cannot be measured independently of choice. It is, therefore, circular to assert that choice maximizes value. Such circularity is avoided if values are neurophysiologically computed: then, if the relevant neural event correlates with a behavioral index of value, the former provides an independent measure of value and the statement that consumers’ choices maximize value becomes falsifiable. “For this reason, I view the discovery that values are indeed encoded at the neural level as a major conceptual advance and perhaps the most important result of neuroeconomics to date” (Padoa-​Schioppa, 2009, p. 335; see also Glimcher, 2010; Padoa-​Schioppa, 2007; Serra, 2021). The capacity of this third conception to evaluate the extensional and intentional models will become more apparent in later chapters, especially those that form Part III. Neural valuation is indexed by the rate at which dopaminergic neurons fire as they communicate in the process of preparing the individual for a response to the opportunities and threats posed by environmental stimuli. The problem this raises for explanation is that the three notions of “value” we have noted belong to

Context, Valuation, and Rationality  21 different levels of exposition, each of which has a mode of explanation that is peculiar to it. As long as their incommensurability is borne in mind, there is no difficulty in using them, severally, to elucidate various aspects of consumer choice. But it would be satisfying to achieve a portrayal embracing their singular contributions in a more unified framework of conceptualization and analysis. Part III is vitally concerned with this integrative quest. Consumer Rationality It is impossible to consider the implications of consumer valuation without an understanding of consumer rationality. Kacelnik (2006) distinguishes three rationalities relevant to the study of animal behavior. Psychologists and philosophers emphasize the process in which decisions are made, asking whether it is in accordance with principles of rational thinking (“PP-​rationality”). Economists, by contrast, stress the consistency of choice behaviors during decision-​making and consumption, regardless of the particular goals reached or the processes employed (“E-​rationality”). For biologists, the achievement of fitness that supersedes that of conspecifics is the criterion of rational behavior (“B-​rationality.”) None of these, however, is sufficient to capture the idea of rationality as it is encountered in economic psychology, which forms the disciplinary basis of intentional behaviorism (Foxall, 2020). In addition to these PP-​, E-​, and B-​rationalities, it is necessary to consider economic psychological (“EP-​”) rationality and a-​rationality. Although the following discussion of consumer rationality anticipates some later arguments, it serves also as a template for their development. Before examining in greater detail the various styles of rationality relevant to consumer activity, however, it is pertinent to consider what consumer decision-​making and activity is directed toward, that is, i.e., the goals of the consumer. Consumers’ Goals

Decision-​making is the process in which opportunities for reinforcement and reward are evaluated in light of goals and the costs of attaining them, and an apparently optimal course of action is selected. The distal goals of behavior are phylogenetically shaped: reinforcers and rewards that regulate the frequency of behavioral responses are goals whose attainment enhances biological fitness. Rolls (1999, p. 61) links emotional rewards and reinforcing contingencies: “emotions are states produced by instrumental reinforcing stimuli.” In another analysis that confirms the idea of operancy and adds to it the sub-​personal dimension of the neurophysiological, Politser (2008, p. 29) writes, A person’s goals are the states that he is motivated by pleasure to seek and by fear to avoid… . [G]‌oals serve as the comparison standards against which outcomes are evaluated… . Many representations of goals are enabled by circuits involving the premotor and parietal cortex, caudate, and putamen, as well as the PFC… . [D]opamine signals in the PFC gate changes in goals. Parts

22  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) also help maintain intermediate goals in working memory as one implements plans to achieve one’s objectives. He also appears to suggest that the pre-​behavioral process of decision-​making is itself reinforced by affective reactions: “Evaluations, such as pleasure or displeasure, result from the comparison of outcomes and goals… . The comparisons between outcomes and goals depend on hardwired biology as well as learning-​related biological changes.” (Ibid.) This further linking of super-​personal reinforcement, personal affect, and sub-​personal valuation is welcome for its unifying tendency, but leaves unsaid the roots of operancy. This link is supplied by Rolls (2005) who points out that the broad primary (biological) goals of behavior are influenced by genes which “selfishly” regulate what will act as primary reinforcers and punishers to promote their survival through the biological fitness of organisms that are their vehicles (Dawkins, 1976). Although genes specify the general adaptive goals of behaving by determining what can act as primary (utilitarian) rewards, they do not fix the specific behaviors or the secondary reinforcers that generate them. For human consumers, secondary reinforcers emerge through experience, especially the social interaction that establishes and maintains informational reinforcement. The secondary goals, more proximal mainsprings of action, reflect ontogenetic development in their particular typologies, though the capacity for and motivation toward social reinforcement are biologically based. Analysis based on the BPM indicates close relationships between the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment and reported emotions (Foxall, 2011, 2017a; Foxall et al., 2012): utilitarian reinforcement has been consistently associated with pleasure, informational reinforcement with arousal, and the scope of the consumer behavior setting with dominance. Consumer activity is directed toward the maximization of contingent positive reinforcers and ensuing affective rewards, minimization of aversive stimuli and affective sanctions. Consumers set strategic objectives, within the framework of evolutionarily and operantly sourced objectives derived from their unique consumption histories: preferences for products and brands, retail outlets, magnitude and timing of purchases, and so on. Far from the monolithic maximization of utility assumed in economics, what consumers optimize is a combination of both utilitarian and informational reinforcement which can be measured intersubjectively (Oliveira-​Castro and Foxall, 2017; Oliveira-​Castro et al., 2016a, 2016b). This is apparent from analyses within the BPM-​E paradigm. However, BPM-​I presents the consumer as an idealized intentional system (Dennett, 1978, 1987) that maximizes the personalized and subjective rewards of gaining utilitarian and informational reinforcement. These rewards include the affective outcomes of utilitarian and informational reinforcement, namely, pleasure, arousal, and dominance which increase the likelihood of the behavior’s being repeated; consumer choice is also subject to the negative affects that are the converse of these and which have the effect of making the behavior less probable. BPM-​N seeks the neurophysiological substrates of the behaviors or actions that eventuate in the consumer’s obtaining and using these benefits and disbenefits. All of these processes will feature strongly in Chapters 5 and 7.

Context, Valuation, and Rationality  23 PP-​Rationality

The criterion of rational versus non-​rational beliefs is the manner in which they are arrived at, rather than their contents or the behaviors to which they lead (Kacelnik, 2006). Kacelnik is clear that what qualifies now as a rational belief based on the information available at the time of its inception may turn out to be non-​rational if new understandings arise. Hence, belief in the geocentric nature of the solar system was rational in an era which relied on naïve observation of the sun and the earth but yielded to a heliocentric view with the enhanced sophistication of physical instrumentation. Scientific and technological advance will yet entail similar modifications of beliefs which today are entirely rational. This tentative nature of belief is an important take-​home message from consideration of the nature of PP-​rationality. Nonetheless, irrationality is possible in the case of the individual who avoids information which is currently available, who deliberately or purposefully takes no note of what is known and what is likely, especially if the potential sources of the knowledge she might take on board and allow to influence her behavior are systematic, scientific, and based on a generally accepted methodology that works in other contexts such as experimental analysis. E-​Rationality

Economics assumes that a rational actor, such as a consumer, maximizes utility (defined roughly as the amount of satisfaction she gains from owning and consuming commodities). Moreover, E-​rationality is based on the assumption that an economic actor will be consistent over a series of choices. It therefore assumes the transitivity of preferences: a consumer who prefers product x to product y and y to z must necessarily choose x rather than z. This pattern of responses displays transitivity; to deviate from it by selecting, say, x over y, y over z but z over x shows intransitive preference, inconsistency, and thus economic irrationality (Rubinstein, 2012). There are many instances where this preference axiom is not met in practice (Houston, 2012). For one thing, if the consumer’s state alters, she may display apparently economically irrational behavior without our questioning her consistency. As Kacelnik (2006, 92) points out, his preferring lamb to ice cream at 8 pm, ice cream to coffee at 9 pm, but nevertheless choosing coffee over lamb at 9.30 seems to contravene the principle that acts of consumption display transitivity. However, in practice, such a pattern of behavior scarcely attracts the criticism that it lacks consistency since there has been a change in the individual’s state over this sequence of choices. In standard neoclassical formulations of consumer rationality, however, there is a rather rigid assumption that tastes do not change through time. (Later formulations of economic behavior assume, less rigidly, that only broad categories of consumption objects remain unchanged through time.) But those human consumers who discount the future hyperbolically (Ainslie, 1992; hyperbolic discounting will be elaborated in Chapter 4) display intertemporal preference reversal. They often set

24  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice out to accept a larger later reward, but just as a smaller less delayed substitute becomes available, they switch to it. One may be resolute after breakfast in planning to avoid a palatable but unhealthy food at lunchtime, but comes the midday break it is easy to give in. This is economically irrational only if one has a rather rigid view of the consistency required of a rational economic actor. But a consumer may propose determinedly to save over two years for a Bang and Olufsen sound system, only to buy an inferior product after six months just because she now has the money for it. Even less rigidly, after a year of saving, she may spend the sound system money that has accumulated on a vacation, a choice of a totally disparate consumption category. Even this is not irrational if her tastes can be sufficiently broadly conceived as entertainment. However, if she spends a large sum of money on a weight loss program, only to indulge frequently in “forbidden” foods thereafter, her behavior is by all accounts economically irrational, because it undermines the utility to be gained from her expenditure by incurring further pecuniary and nonpecuniary costs that act against that utility being realized. Radical behaviorism,6 by emphasizing only utilitarian reinforcement, is essentially a paradigm founded on the assumption of E-​rationality. The natural alliance between operant psychology and microeconomics to form operant behavioral economics reiterates this emphasis.7 This does not mean that radical behaviorism ignores social reinforcement; it does, however, rarely take it into operational consideration. By and large, the goal ascribed to the consumer in operant behavioral economics is the maximization of utilitarian reinforcement. BPM-​E covers this on the level of social and behavioral science, but it is also a matter for BPM-​N insofar as it entails the objective definition and measurement of socio-​economic value. Even BPM-​E goes beyond utility maximization simpliciter by embracing both utilitarian and informational reinforcement. But it requires BPM-​I to elucidate the full significance of this potentially subjective dimension of socio-​economic evaluation. B-​Rationality

Fitness assumes the role in biology that is occupied by utility in economics. The behavior of individuals is the result of the genetic material provided in the course of evolution by natural selection. Rationality is, therefore, not to be sought in the conduct of the agent but in the biological procedures that have emerged from the evolution of biologically rational mechanisms. It is these mechanisms that determine whether the behavior of a single agent is rational; as Hurley and Nudds (2006, p. 22) summarize it, “A B-​rational individual is one whose behavior maximizes its inclusive fitness across a set of evolutionarily relevant circumstances.” The recognition of individual differences in behavioral tendency is essential to the interpretation of consumer choice, as it is to the analysis of socio-​economic activity in general. The critical stance that leads the investigator to enquire how apparently deviant behavior is to be understood, notwithstanding the explicative logic of her chosen paradigm, is key. B-​rationality is indisputably a matter for BPM-​N but it has implication for the economic analysis of behavior that is the

Context, Valuation, and Rationality  25 stuff of BPM-​E; together, they provide the foundations of neuroeconomics, which is central to understanding the significance of neural events in social and behavioral science. The neurophysiological basis of affect which will be discussed in Chapter 7 also brings B-​rationality into considerations raised by BPM-​I. BPM-​N is further capable of contributing to the intentional behaviorist research program through its provision of a standpoint from which to conduct a rigorous critique of the extensional and intentional models, especially as they work in tandem to explain the whole gamut of consumer choice. EP-​Rationality

E-​rationality, attributed on the basis of strict economic reasoning, differs from that found in economic psychology which emphasizes both the economic consistency of behavior and its modification by the thinking and feelings of individuals. Economists generally understand utility in terms of the objective attributes provided by products and services; this facilitates economic calculations and comparisons of commodity sets that make a variety of attributes available (e.g., Ross, 2014). However, economic psychology proposes a broader understanding of utility in terms of the kinds of reinforcement a consumer achieves through consumption (Foxall, 2016b, 2020). Utilitarian reinforcement approximates the economist’s conception of utility, namely, the functional benefits of acquiring and using economic goods. In addition, however, there is evidence that humans regulate the rate of their behavior in line with the informational consequences it has previously produced. We have noted, for instance, that posting scores or other measures of performance affects the frequency of behavior, especially in social situations. While utilitarian reinforcement is mediated by the product whose use supplies functional rewards, informational reinforcement is socially mediated; the rewards it confers take the form of social esteem, honor, and regard. Ultimately, it inheres in the self-​esteem the actor feels as a result of behaving in a particular manner. Crucially therefore, the consumer’s utility function comprises not only the utilitarian reinforcement specified by the economist but also the informational reinforcement that is additionally recognized by economic psychology. What the consumer actually maximizes is apparently a combination of utilitarian and informational reinforcement (Foxall and James, 2002, 2003). This assumption has been tested empirically (Oliveira-​Castro et al., 2016a, 2016b; Oliveira-​Castro and Foxall, 2017) by using the Cobb–​Douglas utility function in analyses of brand choice for routinely purchased food items on the basis of consumer panel data. The function employed was:

U ( x, y ) = xa yb 

(2.1)

where U represents utility, x is the quantity of utilitarian reinforcement consumed, y is the quantity of informational reinforcement consumed, and a and b are

26  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice empirically determined parameters such that a +​ b =​ 1. The results indicate that the function fitted the data closely; moreover, the parameters a and b were specific to each product category and consistent for a given product over time periods, showing a always larger or always smaller than b (with the sole exception of one out of the 12 cases investigated). The results indicate that it is possible to measure for each product category the relative importance, for consumers, of utilitarian and informational reinforcement. Since informational reinforcement, considered intentionally, is a source of subjective reward, something ultimately conferred by oneself on oneself, and because it may vary with the state and current circumstances of the individual, it is a frequent source of changes in her utility function and its effect may be to render her behavior apparently irrational to an onlooker. This may be why human choices often are modified with the passage of time, why preference reversal is commonly observed in successive situations that offer differing levels of reward (Ainslie, 1992; Foxall, 2016a, b). Consumer behavior analysis, which forms the theoretically minimal first stage of the intentional behaviorist research strategy, is firmly based on both utilitarian and informational reinforcement. This fits well the extensional paradigm insofar as informational reinforcement can be defined in intersubjective terms that can enter an experimental or psychometric investigation. In the context of intentional interpretation, however, informational reinforcement opens the analysis of consumer choice to the intra-​personally motivated pursuit of symbolically based reinforcement and reward. There is clearly a spectrum of styles of consumer choice which reflect in varying proportions the capacity for such idiosyncratic personal expression. This is relevant in varying ways to all three models. The intentional interpretation, forming the second stage of the intentional behaviorist research strategy, is founded on the assumption that consumers maximize a combination of utilitarian and informational reinforcement: in addition, therefore, to considerations of the functional utility of socio-​economic goods, it understands the consumer’s goal as maximizing both functional and social/​symbolic benefits of consumption. The sources of utilitarian reinforcement derive from the functional benefits conferred by ownership and deployment of socio-​economic goods (products and services). The sources of informational reinforcement are (a) social, inter-​personally delivered benefits that can be objectively defined and measured in the context of BPM-​E; they are also (b) rewards delivered by the consumer herself for her own behavior, typically in the form of self-​esteem based on her personal judgment of the worth of her accomplishments, as well as reflecting the social approval to which they lead. These subjectively derived rewards cannot enter directly into an extensional portrayal of consumer choice: they are the stuff of intentional interpretation, which falls within the province of BPM-​I. A-​Rationality

Economic-​psychological rationality suggests that an individual can so behave as to obtain a degree of personal reward based on feelings of self-​esteem that reflect the

Context, Valuation, and Rationality  27 exercise of personal discretion, existential freedom. This may range from denial of the reasons customarily given for what is presented as rational behavior to outright defiance of the conventional wisdom for regulating behavior, especially in a social context. If such an action is based on a radical and groundless rejection of the reasons for sensible conduct, we may refer to it as irrational, but this pathological response is comparatively rare. Persons who in general function normally within society may well assume a subjective interpretation of the facts behind the advocacy of a specific course of action. But such a deviation from social norms and mores is seldom completely groundless in the sense that the individual bases her actions on no intellectual or moral justification whatever. The bases of her reasoning that justifies her deviant activity may be erroneous but they are not absent. Although such a-​rational behavior is socially deviant, it is not performed without any justification whatever. The problem is that, although the kinds of belief that may plausibly justify action are reasonable to the neurotic, they are not reality-​tested (Brakel, 2009; Brakel and Foxall, 2022 Foxall, 2017a, in press.) Part of the import of informational reinforcement lies in the capacity of the individual to act in ways that are objectively suboptimal if they enhance her personal sense of worth by adverting to her capacity to determine for herself the actions she will enact and therefore to control the consequences for herself rather than in some socially prescribed manner. Individuals are free to abjure the norms imposed by collective intentionality (Brakel and Foxall, 2022, pp. 3–​4). This is a possibility that must be firmly borne in mind in the analysis of consumer choice, particularly that which tends toward the extreme pole of the Continuum of Consumer Choice. A-​rationality is intimately connected with this connation of informational reinforcement. It stems from an inability to discern the difference between beliefs-​ proper which are reality-​tested, tensed, and rational and neurotic beliefs which are tinged with fantasy (Brakel, 2009). It reflects a deficiency in the correct comprehension of propositional attitudes which mistakes wishing, hoping, conjecturing, and so on for true beliefs. A-​rationality is seen in more extreme consumer choice but it is by no means absent in other consumption styles. In fact, it is something that to a greater or less extent we all engage in from time to time and it might even be considered a necessary palliative to the pressures of life. It is only when it becomes the norm –​when over-​consumption begins to have a deleterious effect on finances, social life, ability to earn a living –​that it is problematic. As such, its rationality has ceased to be that of the philosopher or psychologist –​consistency of our behavior with reasoned and reasonable canons of judgment –​ or for that matter the economist, biologist, or economic psychologist –​and has reverted to a rationality based on self-​will, distortion of the rules of the game in favor of a personally defined reality that has no, or at least severely limited, social or physical consequences. I think we can all imagine this as a description of what motivates some behaviors. However, the serious component of neurotic behavior is that the person of whom it is characteristic is not mentally ill. Just like us, they function perfectly adequately much or most of the time, but occasionally lapse. The difference lies in the frequency and seriousness of the lapses they make. The serious component is the extent to which they rationalize their behavior to themselves, mistaking the rules

28  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice that govern their actions for scientifically validated rules of conduct, and seeking dubious reasons but reasons nonetheless for what they do. For example, disordered gamblers may believe in the “gambler’s fallacy” that a series of losses is guaranteed to be redressed by the laws of averages –​ a neurotic insistence that a just universe will intervene to save them; imagine that a “near-​miss” is indicative that they are getting closer to an outright win; entertain the notion that they are acquiring a skill –​ in a game of chance in which there is no place for level of expertise; or plead entrapment, the sentiment that they have invested so much in this game that it is only sensible to continue in order to capitalize on previous expenditure: this is the familiar sunk costs myth. Such behavior is not irrational; it is the attempt to apply logic in making choices. It is, however, logic that is inappropriate to the prevailing contingencies of reinforcement and punishment. While it is especially prominent in compulsive and addictive actions, moreover, it may also have a bearing on more routine consumer behaviors in which the consumer determines that she will abjure the conventions of group norms and seek her personally defined sources of symbolic reinforcement and reward (Foxall, in press). Summary and Conclusions Three points are apparent from consideration of the generic BPM in relation to valuation, and consumer rationality. First, we have seen that Rolls argues that broadly conceived goals are set genetically during a phylogenetic process that enables and encourages individual survival and biological fitness. This is achieved by the specification of the reinforcers that contribute to both, in accordance with Kacelnic’s conception of B-​rationality. These goals can be summed up as the attainment of utility based on both its functional and inter-​personal attributes, a consideration which arises from a broadened conception of E-​rationality into EP-​rationality. More specifically, an implication of this is that consumers do not purchase products and brands: they seek to obtain utility-​maximizing bundles of utilitarian and informational reinforcement within their budgetary confines. This imputed goal nicely links biological, social, and personal dimensions of wanting and liking. Second, through experience of obtaining and consuming goods that supply utilitarian and informational reinforcement, construed extensionally as an operant process or intentionally as a matter of perception, the consumer acquires patterns of responding that optimize the acquisition of these outcomes of behavior. Third, we may further consider this socio-​economic procedure in terms of the formation of desires, beliefs, affects, and perceptions and acting upon them, which falls within the purview of BPM-​I. In particular, these aspects of intentionality comprise the contingency representations which shape and maintain the sequence of consumer choice (Foxall, 2017a). The motivation of responsive behavior and considered action depends not only on the way in which the consumer values utilitarian reinforcement but also her valuation of the self-​esteem that is the outcome of

Context, Valuation, and Rationality  29 her acting from personal motivation which, despite the immediate gratification it delivers, may eventuate in longer-​term deleterious consequences. The experience of informational reinforcement within the context of EP-​rationality may become more extreme and reflect A-​rationality. Finally, we note that EP-​rationality is germane to these two processes of reinforcement and reward, respectively, which constitute operancy. Consumers are, therefore, expected to act in ways that maximize utilitarian and informational reinforcement and, especially, the values inherent within them. It will become apparent that value may be conceptualized at the super-​personal, personal, and sub-​personal levels of exposition. At the super-​personal level of exposition, value (V1) is typically the exchange value established in a transaction in the form of a mutually acceptable trade. Or, it may simply be the “transaction” between the contingencies which prescribe the surrender of a specified quantity of money for a particular magnitude of reinforcement and reward, as these contingencies are presented by the natural order. At the personal level, value (V2) consists in intentional objects which represent the values obtained in the course of previous exchanges, or the value accorded the commodities that appear in the consumer’s current behavior setting, the value the consumer would accord an as-​ yet-​unavailable commodity, and so on. V3 is the value of a commodity the consumer is presented with, either directly within her current behavior setting or in thought as mediated by the rate of neuronal firing. The question that this raises is whether, and if so how, these conceptions can be reconciled. The addition of a neurophysiological model of consumer choice is expected to contribute theoretically to the intentional-​behaviorist research program in two ways. First, it should clarify the relationships among the styles of consumer choice depicted on the Continuum in terms of the contribution that the hypothesis that BPM-​E and BPM-​I constitute polar opposites in the explanation of consumer choice. This is the problem of establishing complementarity. By showing how the extensional and intentional models work together to explicate the various styles of consumer choice across the Continuum, the neurophysiological model should demonstrate how BPM-​E and BPM-​I work in tandem, even when their influences overlap, to promote a comprehensive understanding of the focal styles of consumer activity. The alternative to demonstrating complementarity is the conclusion that one of the models is superfluous. Second, it should enhance understanding of how the problem of the incommensurability of extensional and intentional explanations might be assuaged by suggesting how the levels of exposition at which each member of the BPM suite operates. Foxall (2020) proposed that the events involved in establishing V1 at the super-​personal level could be represented as intentional objects at the personal level, but offered little or no understanding of how a similar relationship between the sub-​personal and personal might be effected. The development of a neurophysiological model, however, might permit this relationship to be elaborated. Hence, BPM-​N promises also to address the problem of incommensurability. Complementarity and incommensurability are central concerns of Part III.

30  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice Notes 1 Details of the operational measurement of the elements of the extensional consumer-​ situation may be found in Foxall (2017b). 2 These definitions generally follow Skinner’s (1953, 1974) usage, which allows for subtle distinctions to be made about the environmental events that control behavior. Note, especially, that both positive and negative reinforcement involve an increase in the rate of responding: positive reinforcement means working harder, paying more, or performing more responses to obtain the reinforcer; negative reinforcement means increasing the performance of an evasive behavior, one that allows an aversive consequence to be escaped. 3 I generally employ “affect” to refer to feelings (a personal level construct) which arise from emotions (sub-​personal). This is broadly consistent with Damasio’s (1994) usage which will be discussed further in Chapter 7. 4 For a philosophical treatment, see inter alia Davidson (2001). 5 An interesting aspect of consumer valuation is the “essential value” of a commodity, be it a brand, product, or retail outlet (Hursh and Silberberg, 2008). The starting point is the amount that the consumer would consume (purchase or use) at a zero price and the measure of essential value consists in the extent to which she defends (maintains) this level of consumption as price rises. The extent to which she does so provides a measure of how much she values the commodity, its essential value. Essential value is clearly related to elasticity of demand and is measured as its reciprocal. A more detailed exposition of essential value in relation to consumer behavior analysis and the model employed in this book can be found in Advanced Introduction to Consumer Behavior Analysis (Foxall, 2017b). For application to the Behavioral Perspective Model, see Oliveira-​Castro et al. (2011) and Yan et al. (2012a, 2012b). 6 The goal of radical behaviorism is to reveal the stimulus field that makes observed responses predictable and controllable: it seeks no further explanation. This identification of the stimuli that render behavior predictable and malleable is the closest radical behaviorists come to explaining the behavior. In fact, in a nod to Machian positivism, most prefer to say they are only describing the behavior and its controlling context: see Mach (1893/​1974) and Bridgman (1927). Though the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle and the later logical empiricism had little influence on the development of radical behaviorism (Smith, 1986; Zuriff, 1985), Mach’s strictly descriptive positivism certainly influenced Skinner’s early epistemological development: see Foxall (1996/​2015, Chapter 15). 7 The conceptual consonance between operant psychology and microeconomics has frequently been noted (Foxall, 2016d; Foxall et al., in press).

3 A Research Strategy for Consumer Psychology

Abstract Cognitive explanations raise epistemological problems not faced by accounts confined to observable variables. Hence, intentional behaviorism sharply distinguishes extensional reasoning, which eschews reference to intentional idioms, from intentional inference which rests explicitly on mental events. This is a fundamental distinction and intentional interpretation requires reasoned justification precisely because the variables on which it relies are not directly available for empirical examination. Intentional behaviorism is, therefore, a philosophically based strategy and this chapter grounds its stages conceptually. The first stage, theoretical minimalism, is founded upon a behaviorally based extensional methodology; the second, interpretative stage, is founded on mentally inferred intentionality; and the third stage, neurophysiologically based evaluation, is based on a biologically founded mode of extensional explanation. Philosophical bases of each stage of the strategy are described for theoretical minimalism (the understanding of behavior), intentional interpretation (action), and neurophysiological evaluation (choice). Their incommensurability, a leitmotiv for the book, is also raised and discussed. Russell’s distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description is reviewed as a prelude to the account of the nature of consumer choice in Chapter 4. The Problem of Intentionality Many explanatory components of cognitive models are unobservable: beliefs, attitudes, and intentions, for instance, must be made empirically available to the researcher and operationalized, that is, in the form of measures of observable behavior from which the latent variables are inferred. The explanatory variables are abstract and theoretical and rely, if they are to enter investigations and explanations, on reasoned agreement on how they can be captured by proxy variables derived from what people say and how they overtly behave. Psychometrics, for instance, must be founded upon a firm, intersubjective agreement among researchers and users of research on the relationship of behavioral measures to the intentional DOI: 10.4324/9781003262510-4

32  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice constructs to which they point and the latent variables they seek to make operationally concrete. Only if these considerations are adequately addressed can we arrive at consistent interpretations of the data. This problem provides the substance of the intentional behaviorist research program (Foxall, 2020) in seeking to provide a rationale for cognitive explanation. This chapter sets out the philosophical bases of the extensional and intentional approaches. Theoretical Minimalism: Accounting for Consumer Behavior The purpose of the extensional model is to make clear the need, if any, for a cognitive explanation by developing a framework of conceptualization and analysis that is devoid of conceptual overtones, one based on a psychological theory that gives rise to explanations couched in language that avoids intentional idioms such as desiring, believing, thinking, and perceiving. BPM-​E, by establishing patterns of activity that depend on what happens to the consumer, reveals what (if anything) can only be explained as the consumer’s self-​initiated actions. The obvious candidate for the foundation of such a model is radical behaviorism which accounts for behavioral responses solely in terms of the stimuli which antecede them. These are, first, the proximate stimuli that make up the physical and social setting in which behavior occurs, namely, discriminative stimuli and motivating operations. This stimulus field, extensionally defined, is empirically available to the experimenter, that is, it is capable of being observed and measured so that its effects on responding can be ascertained. And they are, second, the more distal stimuli that have followed similar responses in the past, the reinforcers and punishers that influence the rate at which these responses are likely to be performed again in similar circumstances. Extensional and intentional explanations differ in the language they use, the kinds of sentences they employ, and their criteria for establishing the truth value of the statements they make. We have said that extensional explanation eschews intentional (or mentalistic or cognitive) terminology. More particularly, it relies on two specific criteria for establishing the intelligibility of its explanations: the substitution criterion and the criterion of existential inference (Searle, 1983). According to the first criterion, a statement’s being true remains unchanged if one term is substituted for another as long as both refer to the same object (i.e., the identical person, thing, or idea). Both terms have the same extension. For example, in the sentence “The economy is in recession,” we can substitute “has exhibited negative growth for two consecutive quarters” for “is in recession” since both terms denote to the same thing. The statement retains its meaning whichever is used. That is all that is implied by saying that the sentence exhibits extensionality. However, were our original sentence, “Margo believes that the economy is in recession,” we could not alter this to “Margo believes that the economy has shown negative growth for two consecutive quarters” without abandoning the truth value of the sentence. The two expressions are not substitutable; Margo may not know that a recession is so defined, for instance. She may hold the belief about recession without having the knowledge that this indicates (at least) two adjacent quarters

A Research Strategy for Consumer Psychology  33 of economic downturn. Another way in which this is often put is to say that in this case the expressions are not co-​extensive. Second, and this is the criterion of existential inference, the objects mentioned in an extensional sentence must actually exist somewhere in the world for the truth of the sentence to be ascertained. “Margo is taking a course in macroeconomics at Stanford University” implies that there is such a macroeconomics course in existence onto which Margo is enrolled. This sentence is extensional because its extension, a macroeconomics course at Stanford University, avails us of the opportunity to ascertain its truth value by reference to an external situation. The sentence’s conditions of satisfaction can be assessed by our verifying the existence of a macroeconomics course at Stanford University onto which Margo is a student. There being such a course, at such a university, and having Margo in question as a learner –​ all these can be verified and the truth value of the sentence can be determined. Needless to say, “Margo believes that Santa Claus is taking a degree in reindeer-​based aeronautics at North Pole U” is not a sentence whose conditions of satisfaction can be met since none of the entities to which it alludes has a real-​ world referent that can be checked out. Such a sentence fails the test of existential inference and is, therefore, intensional. Extensional and intensional sentences exhibit mutually incompatible locutions, making translation between them impossible. They give rise, therefore, to contrary approaches to explanation in which their characteristic modes of discourse cannot be mingled: hence, the explanations based upon them are incommensurable.1 The initial model of consumer choice must, therefore, be composed of language and reasoning that meet the substitution criterion and the criterion of existential inference. The language must be “referentially transparent,” that is, it must allow the substitution of coextensive terms without altering truth value, and refer to existing entities. The capacity of such a model to elucidate observed consumer choice fulfils two broad functions. It, first, establishes knowledge that could be found by no other means, pointing out the extent to which consumption is the outcome of the environmental stimuli that provide its setting and the effects of its prior consequences on its rate of emission. This information would not be uncovered by an intentionally based research framework. Second, if the empirical investigations to which it gives rise are pursued to the point where the logic of the extensional paradigm can no longer provide adequate explanation, on its own terms, of the data they generate, then this situation affords justification for the institution and pursuit of an intentional paradigm. This leads on to the second stage of the intentional behaviorist research strategy, which relies on the intentional idioms that radical behaviorism and other extensional sources of explanation so meticulously avoid. In discussing Margo’s beliefs, we have already met the linguistic form characteristic of intentional analysis. Intentional explanation employs propositional attitudes, sentences that comprise what philosophers call an attitude, a verb such as thinks, believes, and desires, and a proposition, using a phrase beginning with “that.” An example of a propositional attitude is “Peter thinks that the sky is blue.” “Thinks” is the intentional attitude, while “that the sky is blue” is the proposition or content of the statement. Other, corresponding, propositional attitudes exhibit

34  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice novel attitudes while keeping the content constant: “Peter believes that p,” “desires that p,” and so on, where p stands for the propositional content “the sky is blue.” The implication of this for the explanation of action is that rational beings are expected to act in consonance with their propositional attitudes. We know from social psychology that this is likely to be the case only when there is close situational correspondence between the propositional attitude and the circumstances in which an individual is able to act (Foxall, 2005). The empirical basis for consumer activity made available through the pursuit of theoretical minimalism has revealed the assumptions on which an interpretation must be founded. In BPM-​I, the consumer is treated as an idealized intentional system that maximizes utilitarian and informational reinforcement on the basis of contingency representations which encapsulate its memories of its consumption experience and the stimuli that compose the consumer behavior setting. Intentional Interpretation: Accounting for Consumer Action Intensional Sentences

The mention of “intensional sentences” is important, for “intensionality” is a linguistic matter, a property of sentences. Intentionality, on the other hand, is a matter of phenomenal experience, the aboutness of mental states. Intentionality is “that capacity of the mind by which mental states refer to, or are about, or are of objects and states of affairs in the world other than themselves” (Searle, 2004, p. 119). Intentionality is, therefore, a capability of the mind, and inheres in the desires, beliefs, affects, and other perceptions by which humans represent the world and their relations with it. As a mental (first-​personal, subjective, experiential) phenomenon, it does not exist outside the mind. The distinction is made very plain by Searle, who writes, “Intentionality-​with-​a-​t is … that property of the mind by which it is directed at or about or of objects and states of affairs in the world independent of itself” (2004, p. 22). Intensionality-​with-​an-​s, however, arises from verbal accounts of intentionality as a property of sentences (especially those parts of them that contain propositional attitudes) that contain intentional idioms (attitudes), such as desires or believes, and propositions that refer to an intentional object. To quote Searle further (2004, p. 22): “Intensionality-​ with-​an-​s is opposed to extensionality. It is a property of certain sentences, statements, and other linguistic entities by which they fail to meet certain tests of extensionality.” The connection between intentionality and intensionality derives from the observation that sentences that are about intentional states tend to be intensional (Searle, 2004, p. 122). The states themselves are intentional (and are therefore representations of their conditions of satisfaction); but the statements about these states are not simply representations of these conditions of satisfaction: they are representations of their representations. The truth value of the original intentional states relies on correspondence with some aspect of the world. That of the sentences, however, is found in what is in the mind of the person to whom they refer.

A Research Strategy for Consumer Psychology  35 Hence the truth or falsity of such sentences does not depend on how things are in the real world as represented by the original (i.e., mental) intentional states, but how things are in the world of representations as it exists in the minds of the agents whose intentional states are being represented. (Searle, 2004, p. 124) To make this clearer, let us revert to what Margo studies and believes. When one says, “The economy is in recession,” one is talking about the economy and the truth value of this statement revolves around there being or not being an economy (even if it is an entity that must be somewhat abstractly delineated) that demonstrates this. But the statement, “Margo believes that the economy is in recession,” alludes not to the economy but to Margo and what she knows. One is not, therefore, justified in making the substitution “exhibits two quarters of stagnation” in the absence of evidence that Margo possesses the requisite knowledge. The truth value of the sentence is a fact about Margo which inheres in the contents of her mind, and this is the basis of the substitutability criterion. Again, when one says, “Margo is studying macroeconomics,” this is an extensional statement about Margo and a university course, the truth value of which is found in facts that exist in the real world. But when one says, “Margo believes that Santa is taking a course in transport economics,” since Santa does not exist, the sentence is intensional. The truth value of the sentence does not hinge on the existence or non-​existence of Santa Claus but on what Margo is thinking, and this is the basis of the existential inference. The foregoing has established that extensionality and intentionality, along with intensionality, possess distinct criteria of truth value and, therefore, provide not only alternative linguistic usages but also incommensurable sources of explanation. There is no possibility, for instance, of translating intentional sentences unambiguously into extensional renditions (Chisholm, 1957; Dennett, 1969; Quine, 1960, 1969). Whereas, in pursuing an extensional portrayal of consumer choice, we rely on language that meets the substitution criterion and that of existential inference, in an intentional interpretation the criterion of truth value. That we cannot gain entry to an individual’s mental processes in order to establish whether they actually have the desires and beliefs they claim means we must look for publicly available evidence in the form of verbal and non-​verbal behaviors that are consistent with their professed intentionality or that which we reconstruct to render their behavior more intelligible. The intentional interpretation is necessarily such a third-​personal reconstruction, not entirely unlike that proposed by Dennett (1978, 1987) in the form of “intentional systems theory” but resting on an understanding of intentionality as a property of mental events rather than a convenient folk-​psychological means to rather vague prediction. It is, however, more useful than this by virtue of having a more systematic, empirical, and theoretical basis that provides truth criteria for the veracity or validity its statements. Intentional Objects

A central concept here is that of “intentional objects,” a notion which will be integral to the development of the theory of consumer choice. While there is

36  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice debate about the nature of intentional objects –​ see, for instance, Searle (1983), Strawson (2010), Crane (2002), and Tallis (2021) –​ a straightforward use of the terms extensional object and intentional object, which appears consistent with the understanding of extensionality and intentionality developed here, is as follows. An extensional object is an existent element of the objective world such as the planet Venus. Linguistically, this planet, Venus, is the extension of the term “Venus.” It is also the extension of “the morning star” (known also as “Phosphorous”) and “the evening star” (“Hesperus”). In the statement “Jacob believes that that is the morning star,” however, “the morning star” is an intension (or specific meaning), an element in a sentence embodying the content of a propositional attitude. This element is an intentional object. So, an intentional object is the content of an attitude such as believes or desires or loves. Its existence lies within that propositional attitude and it may not have an extension at all. A person can believe that Santa is on his way in the complete absence of any such being. Dennett (1969, p. 21) notes that, with respect to the term intentional inexistence, “… it is not altogether clear whether Brentano meant by his prefix ‘in-​’ that these objects enjoy a form of non-​being, or existence in the mind, or both.” For present purposes, an intentional object certainly enjoys intentional inexistence in the second of these senses, and perhaps also the first. Intentional Systems

Dennett (1983, p. 242) defines an intentional system as “a thing whose behavior is predictable by attributing beliefs and desires (and, of course, rationality) to it.” Since prediction on this basis is likely to be gross (by which I mean non-​specific), I would say in place of “is predictable”: is rendered interpretable, that is, made intelligible and predictable in a general sense. In addition, an intentional system is understood in intentional behaviorism as having personhood. Interpretation in terms of intentionality may be simple or elaborate depending on the purposes of the exegetist. Several of the following orders of intentionality will prove useful later, especially in Chapter 6 (see, e.g., Dennett, 1983). First-​order intentionality is expressed in terms of one’s possession of desires and beliefs, as in x believes that p or y desires that q, where p and q denote propositional clauses that do not include intentional idioms. In behaviorism, treating the consumer as a first-​ order intentional system, therefore, means attributing to her the desires, beliefs, affects, and other perceptions that make her observed behavior sensible in ways that extend beyond an operant analysis. Second-​order intentionality contains desires and/​or beliefs which are themselves about desires and/​or beliefs, as in x believes that y believes in fairies or x hopes that y will soon realize that x is not coming. Hence, treating the consumer as a second-​order intentional system attributes metacognition and/​or metaperception to her: it denotes her desires, beliefs, affects, and other perceptions about the desires, beliefs, affects, and other perceptions of another person. Higher orders of intentionality keep multiplying the dependent propositional clauses. So, third-​order intentionality is exemplified by x wants y to imagine that x believes in Santa Claus; and, fourth-​order

A Research Strategy for Consumer Psychology  37 intentionality is typified by x hopes that y believes that z desires that a will plan to arrive on time. Evaluation: Accounting for Consumer Choice The intentional interpretation is evaluated according to a range of criteria including its fruitfulness as a source of further (empirical and theoretical) investigation and its consistency with cognitive theory. In particular, in the current context, it is evaluated as a dual process theory of consumer choice appraised by means of a neurophysiological model of consumer choice, BPM-​N, which provides evidence of the indispensability of both the extensional and intentional models as contributors to a comprehensive understanding of consumer choice. We cannot establish truth criteria for the intentional interpretation in terms that are as rigorous as those used in the case of the theoretically minimalist model. But the incorporation of a neurophysiological model allows both BPM-​E and BPM-​I as well as their inter-​relationships to be critically explored. BPM-​N is also an extensional model.2 Insofar as it forms the basis of an empirical research program therefore, the appropriate truth criteria are those applied to BPM-​E. Its evaluative role extends beyond this, however, through its indication of the relationship between BPM-​E and BPM-​I considered as poles of a conceptual dual process theory of consumer choice (see Chapter 8). Explanations provided by BPM-​E and BPM-​I are, in themselves, incommensurable but the import of each depends on that of the other. Each is indispensable to a full account. We need, therefore, to establish their status as polar opposites that jointly enhance explanation. BPM-​N is instrumental in this regard in that it confirms the separate but integral explanatory functions of the extensional and intentional models. In particular, it provides confirmation of the roles of neurophysiological influences in determining the rate of temporal discounting sought by the consumer and the consequent tendency toward behavior that displays impulsivity or action based on reflection. Incidentally, the designation of BPM-​N as the model of consumer choice does not exclude the relevance of the other models to the analysis of choice. It simply adverts to the fact that the sub-​personal depiction of value is objectively associable with choice in a way in which it is not available to the super-​personal and personal depictions. The Root of Incommensurability The reasons that have been given for the incompatibility of extensional and intentional sentences render the modes of explanation which embody them incommensurable. Locutions which are proper to one are inadmissible at the other since their underlying logics and criteria for the establishment of their truth value are distinct and exclusive. Although it is common to find that they are mixed –​ for example, the everyday discourse that asks “what was my car thinking when it hit the tree?!” or scientific talk that speaks of the affinity of certain chemicals as their “wanting” to merge, or even in philosophy. The last is apparent, for instance, in Dennett’s

38  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice intentional stance which invites the prediction of events by ascribing to them the “appropriate” desires and beliefs. Such usage invokes what Bennett and Hacker (2003) refer to as the mereological fallacy, which is the ascription of properties that belong rightly at the level of the whole to its parts. It is impermissible on this basis to refer to the desires and beliefs of one’s stomach or liver, let alone of atoms or electrons, for these are qualities that properly belong only to the level of an entire person. There is no need to be Gradgrindian about this: we all use folk expressions such as these in routine conversation and, while explaining complex ideas, we adopt them as a manner of speaking that is communicative by way of analogy. The point is that, when they are attributed to entities other than persons, they cannot be seriously embraced as concepts that ultimately carry explanatory weight in scientific or philosophical accounts. In such contexts, actions such as believing and desiring, feeling and perceiving carry significance only if they are carried out by a person; it makes no sense to attribute them to either a part of a person or an inanimate physical object. (The same might be said of attributing these qualities to a conglomerate of persons, such as a nation.) People viewed as agents think, reason, and value: their actions are, therefore, properly explicable in intentional terms; neurons respond to stimuli: they are therefore explicable in the extensional terminology that is appropriate to that, which inheres in what Dennett calls the physical stance. How different this is from the extensional explanation provided by BPM-​E in which the behavior of people, viewed as conditionable entities, operant systems, is accounted for when it is shown to covary with the stimuli that precede or succeed it. The terminology differs in each case and so does the mode of explanation. It is the immiscibility of explanations, the preclusion of their employing in an explanatory manner, concepts and terms that belong to one mode of explanation (i.e., extensionality or intentionality), that is the basis of their incommensurability. While the use of intentional idioms like desiring and believing is entirely permissible as a manner of speaking, a metaphor, the integrity of scientific discourse relies on our ability to differentiate such usage from that which expected to count as a scientific justification. Recognition of the incommensurability of the explanations appropriate to the extensional and intentional levels of exposition leads to the guiding principle of explanatory independence (mentioned in Chapter 1) which maintains the separation of the levels by rigorously apportioning the extensional and intentional modes of explanation to their respective super-​personal and personal domains. Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description It will assist several discussions in later chapters to elaborate the distinction drawn by Bertrand Russell (1910), to which brief allusion has been made, between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Knowledge by acquaintance arises through direct experience, as in a person’s perceiving that the sky is darkening as they watch the clouds move across the sun. It is first-​personal and perceptual. Knowledge by description most obviously relies not on personal

A Research Strategy for Consumer Psychology  39 perception but on the reports of others: for someone who has never left England, knowledge that, even on a perfect summer’s afternoon, the Australian day may transition rapidly into night without an intervening period of dusk, can come only from descriptions of people who have witnessed it or to whom it has been similarly related. It is third-​personal and cognitive. In the first case, my knowledge is non-​propositional: I just know how things are through witnessing them. In the latter, where a visitor to Australia, say, describes the shortness or non-​existence of dusk, it is propositional: I now know that p. And the knowledge I have gained personally by acquaintance can, of course, subsequently be related to myself and others propositionally when I come to believe that what I have experienced is the case or leads another person to believe it. Both knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description are intentional and, therefore, the province of BPM-​I. The perceptions (including affects) and the desires and beliefs which are all part of BPM-​I’s stock-​in-​trade are embraced by this dichotomy, which is essential to the portrayal of activity as action. There is, then, a sense in which I can claim to know my own thoughts and feelings directly, that is, by being personally acquainted with their contents.3 Our knowing of our consciousness by acquaintance rather than by description is sufficient, McGinn argues, to establish that there is a mind–​body problem. Moreover, for all that knowledge by acquaintance is non-​propositional, it is genuine knowledge: it is through knowing by acquaintance that we understand at all what consciousness is. Knowledge by acquaintance is prerequisite to knowledge by description and propositional knowledge would be impossible without it. It is knowledge by acquaintance which, by providing implicit understanding of the phenomena of consciousness, legitimizes our using mental language to make our own and others’ behavior intelligible, to the extent that the limitations of our introspection permit. Knowledge by acquaintance is, therefore, prior to knowledge by description. Even if I am a research biologist, my knowledge of photosynthesis is by description; but, whoever I am, my knowledge of my elation is by acquaintance. As McGinn (2004, p. 8) puts it, “No propositional knowledge would be possible unless we know some things in a non-​propositional way.” The implication is that knowledge by description is grounded in knowledge by acquaintance.4 Two points of emphasis emerge from these considerations: the import of the distinction itself and their order of precedence. First, the distinction drawn here is a fundamental one: between perception (including affect) and cognition, between knowledge based on direct ineffable experiential contact with the world of stimuli and the analysis of this experience to make it intelligible to oneself and to others. Knowledge by acquaintance carries the potential for a rapid response to environmental stimuli, while knowledge by description permits a studied and considered response (which might override the implications of knowledge by acquaintance.) This distinction is, therefore, the basis of the responsive behavior and considered action on which many dual process theories rest and it is the logic which undergirds the “styles of activity” sub-​continuum of the Continuum of Consumer Choice. Perceptually founded knowledge by acquaintance, based on direct experience and awareness, is the basis of consciousness, and from it we simply “know” without

40  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice the necessity of any elaboration. By contrast, cognitively acquired knowledge by description relies on rumination, appraisal, and deliberation which are all based on inputs supplied by knowledge by acquaintance. Second, perception-​based knowledge by acquaintance is fundamental. Without it, knowledge by description would be unthinkable. The extrinsic knowledge that comes through cognitive processing is inevitably grounded in the intrinsic knowledge that is perceptual. These are not alternatives which can be engaged by the exercise of discretion, but sequential components of the procedure by which animals deal with the world. There is always the possibility, of course, that knowledge by description communicated by another person in the absence of one’s own prior perceptual experience may be the spur to further cogitation on our part; but the conveyed knowledge is derived perceptually on the part of the communicator and must presumably engender some actual or imagined perceptual basis in ourselves before we accept and consider it. The treatment of perception and cognition in mainstream psychology by and large accepts this distinction; certainly, both fall within the ambit of intentional psychology, the paradigm that is the antithesis of radical behaviorism and which provides the conceptual framework from which BPM-​I is derived. Radical behaviorism, which is the paradigm within which BPM-​E originates, deals with the phenomena on which Russell’s distinction is based in different terms, and thus belongs to a distinct mode of explanation. This is operant psychology. It is important to note, therefore, that the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description is not that between these paradigms, nor that between BPM-​E and BPM-​I. Another ramification of the distinction is that the problem of mind–​brain relationships –​the so-​called “mind-​body problem” –​stems from the impossibility of making appropriate connections between the two kinds of concept. What is required is a novel kind of concept that falls into neither camp but mediates between them, thereby melting away the conceptual dualism that lies at the heart of the difficulty. Without such bridging concepts, we have knowledge by acquaintance of consciousness which is captured only in introspective concepts, and knowledge by description of the way in which the brain works which are caught only by perceptual concepts. The solution to the mind–​body problem lies in discovering a concept that spans the two domains, the biconditionality. McGinn (2004) argues that this is impossible. Referring to the required concept which will solve the problem of finding the a priori entailments, spanning the explanatory chasm, as “P,” he notes that given our present cognitive capacities P will either be an introspective concept or a perceptual concept. Thus, the conceptual dualism that is the essence of the problem will not have been overcome. There appears no means of bridging the gap: “Our concepts of consciousness are acquaintance-​based, but any objective description of conscious states are not –​so the latter can never adequately capture the former” (McGinn, 2004, p. 22). “What would a concept of consciousness be like that was not acquaintance-​based, that did not require being conscious in order to possess it?” (p. 22). The conceptual dualism with which McGinn presents us appears inescapable and its acceptance is sometimes described as “the new mysterianism.”

A Research Strategy for Consumer Psychology  41 Summary and Conclusions This is a pivotal chapter which relies for its coherence on rather detailed conceptual expositions and arguments that cannot be summarized further without losing their import. Now that the philosophical groundwork has been laid, however, the concept of consumer choice itself be defined and elaborated, enabling the Continuum of Consumer Choice to be re-​described on the basis of its embodiment of consumers’ conflicting temporal horizons (in Chapter 4), so that the extensional, intentional, and neurophysiological models may be introduced (Chapter 5), the necessary progression from theoretical minimalism to intentional interpretation developed and illustrated (Chapter 6), and the foundations of neural valuation summarized (Chapter 7). Having accented the incommensurable differences between the levels of exposition, it becomes possible to address the problem of conceptual duality and seek its implications and possible assuagement (in Chapters 8, 9, and 10). Notes 1 This is apparent from Searle’s analysis as well as that of Chisholm (1957): the use of some (i.e., “intentional”) verbs places logical restrictions on sentences that cannot be overcome by trying to translate the sentence into physical or nonintentional terms (cf. Quine (1960). For further discussion, see Foxall (2020). 2 BPM-​E plays an essential role in the intentional behaviorist framework as the source of an initial extensional depiction of consumer behavior vis-​à-​vis the intentional portrayal of consumer action that is the focus of BPM-​I. As such, BPM-​E is generally described as the “extensional” model. BPM-​N, given its provision of a neurophysiological foundation for the rate of temporal discounting, which I have argued is the basis of consumer choice, is here designated as a means of accounting for consumer choice. 3 The skeptic, of course, would deny that anyone other than he or she has thoughts and feelings: the privacy of first-​hand phenomenal experience renders consciousness by definition inaccessible to other. Such consideration might be taken as justifying a solipsistic stance but this would render discourse on consciousness sterile. Like most people, I infer that other humans, who are after all physiologically similar to me and whom I can assume to have evolved by means of the same biological and social processes, have a private consciousness on the basis that their behavior, especially their verbal behavior, is consistent with this assumption. To take the solipsistic stance is therefore surely to assert that one is a special creation. To expand Descartes’s axiom, “I think; therefore, I am. You are; therefore, you think.” Bear in mind that this reasoning might not convince the determined skeptic and that our granting reality to the private consciousness of each and every human being does not mean that subjective experience can enter directly into a scientific, experimental analysis of behavior. At best, we may claim that measures of behavior, especially verbal behavior, and neurophysiology constitute proxy variables for consciousness. Note also that even radical behaviorism embraces the existence of such private events as thinking and feeling (Skinner, 1945, 1974), though it casts them as responses and thus denies them causal efficacy. 4 Although cognitions and perceptions differ fundamentally in that, while the former are propositional, the latter are not, they have in common their have mind-​to-​world direction of fit. That is, they describe the way the world is and the mind must accept or conform

42  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice to this. The truth value of a propositional statement, such as the belief that the world exists in a particular way, is determined by ascertaining whether the actual state of the world conforms to the proposition’s claim. Perception, though non-​propositional, is also an understanding of how the world is, comprising conscious knowledge a state of affairs. Hence, its direction of fit is also mind-​to-​world. I have covered this in relation to intentional behaviorism in Foxall (2016b,2017a).

4

 he Significance of Temporal T Horizon

Abstract The nature of explanation in consumer psychology now requires a formal understanding of what consumer choice is and how it differs from consumer behavior and consumer action. This has five components. First, consumer behavior, consumer action, and consumer choice must be distinguished. Second, consumer choice can then be defined by reference to changes over time in consumers’ valuation of goods. Third, it is then possible to delineate consumer choice in terms of conflicting temporal horizons. Fourth, this means that the styles of consumer activity that compose the Continuum of Consumer Choice can be more formally designated in terms of the degree of temporal discounting they entail. Finally, the role of perception in the explanation of consumer choice can be assigned. Behavior, Action, and Choice A consumer is an owner and/​or user of an economic and social commodity which acts as a source of utilitarian and informational reinforcement and thereby regulates the extent to which she will exchange money or other goods or work to obtain the commodity. The terms “consumer behavior” and “consumer choice” are often used interchangeably to denote the whole gamut of socio-​economic behaviors involved in acquiring, displaying, and using products and services. Here we speak of consumer choice in a more restricted fashion, however, to denote situations where a consumer selects one of two or more options which have quite distinct implications in both their short-​and long-​term consequences. Consumer Behavior and Consumer Action

First, it is useful to clarify what is meant by “consumer behavior” as opposed to “consumer action,” which together constitute “consumer activity.” The difference inheres in the mode of explanation involved. Behavior and action are theoretical conceptions, construals of activity which make it analytically tractable. Behavior is portrayed as occurring on the basis DOI: 10.4324/9781003262510-5

44  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice of causes to which the individual is involuntarily subjected, whereas action is portrayed as voluntary or deliberate activity in itself or as its intended or unintended consequences (Dretske, 1988). While behavior involves bodily movements, mental events, as well as physical events, actions are bodily movements of a particular kind. Hornsby (1981) distinguishes these meanings of activity by the subscripts I for intransitive and T for transitive. By way of illustration, “The meltingT of the chocolate” is something a person or agent does, while “The meltingI of the chocolate” is something that happens to or within the chocolate. Actions, then, are distinguished by being transitive, not intransitive, movements. A movement of the body, seen as an intransitive activity, is not, therefore, the same as a bodily movement conceived as a transitive activity. While both behavior and action refer to bodily movement in some sense, they depend, respectively, on the intransitive and transitive moods of the verb to move. “The moving of my arm” depends on whether the gerund moving is understood intransitively (“My arm’s moving”) or transitively (“My moving my arm”). The first is a physical disturbance of my arm (it could be by someone else or by the motion of the train in which I am travelling; the second, to the moving of my arm by me. The distinction reflects the assumption that the agency involved originates beyond myself (i.e., in the environment) or is within me (my self). Bodily movementsT are among the possible causes of bodily movementsI: hence, the two are related but distinct.1 Consumer behavior is considered to be determined by the stimuli that compose the consumer behavior setting in which it occurs. In speaking of consumer behavior, we are electing to describe and explain observed consumer activity by reference to an extensionally construed consumer-​situation. Consumer behavior is regarded as stimulus-​bound, reflecting the consumer’s learning history, her previously enacted behavior of a similar kind, and the reinforcing and punishing consequences it has engendered. This history primes the stimuli that compose the current consumer behavior setting by transforming a neutral stimulus field into learned stimuli that are capable of shaping and maintaining sequences of behavior. By contrast, consumer action is the outcome of what the consumer does: her actions as they reflect her psychological makeup, her desires, beliefs, affects, and other perceptions. The activity in question may be topographically identical in both cases, but if it is designated “behavior” it suggests that the activity is responsive to environmental stimulation while “action” denotes the activity of a consumer who, to some degree, initiates it. Behavior is the activity of an organism that is occasioned by events external to it, something that happens to the organism, which is passively involved in the process. It is explicable, in terms of an extensional framework of conceptualization and analysis, as operant activity. Action, by contrast, is something that the organism does, originating within it, and with which it is actively engaged. Its interpretation rests upon the framework of conceptualization and analysis based on intentionality. The distinction between consumer behavior and consumer action, conceptual and theoretical, inheres in the distinctive ways in which we describe and explain observed consumer activity (Figure 4.1).

The Significance of Temporal Horizon  45

Figure 4.1 Consumer behavior and consumer action. Consumer activity consists in the acquisition, storage, ownership, and use of a socio-​economic good (i.e., a product or service). It comprises both consumer behavior (as stated in the text, the result of something that happens to the consumer, such as a stimulus) and consumer action (again, as the text makes clear, something the consumer does in order to achieve a goal). Behavior is activityI, while action is activityT. Behavior and action are, respectively, the foci of separate models: behavior the focus of the extensional model of (BPM-​E) and consumer action that of the intentional model (BPM-​I). Consumer Choice: Temporal Preference

The concept of consumer choice, however, cuts across this distinction since it may be described either extensionally, regarding it as behavior, or intentionally, depicting it as action. Its essence lies in a process of consumer activity that is marked by separate, even conflicting, temporal horizons. For instance, a consumer who opts to purchase a car on credit terms will eventually have to pay more for the item than would be the case if she saved up and paid cash. Another buyer who persistently chooses to consume chocolate bars now rather than a healthier lunch in an hour or so may suffer obesity or ill health at some point. And a student who favors visiting the cinema rather than reading a textbook is likely to have to cram for her exams at a later point and may still attain a lower grade. These are not the everyday alternatives that consist in putting this brand rather than that into our shopping trolley. Such brands are, physically and functionally at least, identical and it may not matter very much on that consideration which we select. At least within a small subset of tried and tested brands the selection of this one over that entails little consequence for the majority of consumers who display multi-​brand purchasing rather than strict brand loyalty (Ehrenberg, 1988; Romaniuk and Sharp, 2016; Sharp, 2010). By contrast, buying on credit, which has the great advantage that a product or service can be consumed immediately, can lead to serious cashflow difficulties when repayments fall due; preferring chocolate now can make similar choices even easier next time there is an opportunity to buy, with the result that in the longer term a compulsive tendency toward less healthy food results. Again, the cinema is enjoyable if the movie is right but there may come a point when the student’s commitment to a degree is weakened beyond recovery by putting the right to be entertained over the life of the mind. As the term is used here, consumer choices are made when one of the options available promises more immediate benefits than another, though these may be of smaller long-​term value. Moreover, the selection of such a smaller-​but-​instantly-​available

46  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice item precludes the receipt of a greater good at some time in the future. When we speak of consumer choice, we draw attention to the possibility of the consumer’s valuing the easier-​to-​acquire but sooner-​appearing item far more highly than what she knows to be a superior product or service for which she must wait. It is entirely possible that when she thought about these choices earlier in the day, she was fully resolved to hold out for the better option even though it required patience. Somehow though, the very appearance of the immediately available option, despite the knowledge that it is in some way or other the poorer alternative, raises its value dramatically. Many of us give in to temptation under these circumstances, though some consumers are able, with varying degrees of hardship, to exercise self-​control. These two types of person are said to differ in the extent to which they “discount the future,” that is, downplay in their estimation the larger or better option just because it is postponed. Coming later, it just does not have as high a value as it would confer if it was available here and now. The impatient individual is said to discount in this way “steeply”: for her, the superior outcome is devalued simply because it lies off in the future. The patient consumer discounts more “shallowly”: despite its delay, the later-​appearing item retains its differential value, which is not overwhelmed by the immediacy of the alternative good. In both cases, it is the element of conflict –​between greater and less but, especially, between now and later –​that defines what is here understood as choice. As we seek to explain the respective choices of these relatively impulsive and relatively patient consumers, we can turn to two distinct schools of psychology. Accounting for their choices in terms of the payoffs they get in the form of reinforcers and punishers amounts to a behavioristic account, in which behavior is held to be determined by the kinds of outcomes it has produced in the past. We can predict their future conduct just by knowing the kinds of consequence that similar choices have had for them in the past and the opportunities and potential costs that their current situation presents them with. The alternative mode of psychological explanation depends on the psychology of cognition and perception which deals in the desires, beliefs, emotions, and perceptions that are used to explain actions. Hence, the affective reactions of consumers to the reinforcements and punishments engendered by their behaviors may be thought of as affective rewards and sanctions, respectively, and these may be seen as the ultimate consequences of their consumer choices that influence the probability of their repeating their actions. Let us look more closely at temporal discounting as a basis for distinguishing the various patterns that consumer behavior assumes. Also known as delay discounting, temporal discounting is concerned with the current subjective value of a benefit that will be received in the future, that is, the value of that future reward as it is rated by the individual consumer in the present moment. For example, if I am offered $100, this may seem like just $90 to me right now because I have got to wait six months for it. If my benefactor offered me the $90 now, I’d be indifferent between taking that immediate benefit and waiting six months for the hundred. If they offered me more than $90 (but presumably less than $100) now, I’d take it straight away. If I could obtain the $100 from someone else in less than six months, then other things being equal I’d take that deal instead of waiting.

The Significance of Temporal Horizon  47 Delay discounting, then, relates to the declining subjective value of a reward as a result of the delay until its receipt. The interesting question is, How much will I discount or devalue the $100 in view of the time I have to wait for it? This is interesting, first, because the (subjectively imagined) present value of a reward that will be received after a long wait is less than the same reward received more immediately, but we would like to know by how much. So, following the logic of this example, if someone owed me $90 now but could not pay me for six months, I would require them to give me $100 at that time to compensate me for having to wait. If, however, I only asked for $91, I would be discounting relatively shallowly; if I demanded $200, I would be discounting relatively steeply. A second reason an individual’s discounting behavior is of interest is that it signals or reflects their degree of willingness to forego a more immediate benefit in favor of a greater future benefit. No doubt it is oversimplifying matters to put it so starkly, but choosing the later, larger reward (LLR) is said to embody self-​control, while choosing the smaller, sooner reward (SSR) embodies impulsivity, and the balance between the two may indicate proneness to weakness of will, which at its most extreme may manifest as addiction. “Self-​control,” “impulsivity,” and “weakness of will” are all loaded terms, of course, but attempting to understand them in the light of how we value the future can bring at least a modicum of rigor to the way in which we understand both routine and extreme consumption. A Matter of Valuation

The distinction between valuation established inter-​subjectively in the marketplace, subjectively through personal estimation, and neurally in terms of dopaminergic action potentials opens up a variety of explanations for consumer activity. In other words, valuations can be established through behaving, through acting, and as a result of neuronal receptivity to environmental stimulation. Each of these can be the basis of a particular conception of consumer choice, and each provides particular insight. We can understand consumer choice, the consumer’s opting for one or other good among two or more that differ in their short-​and long-​term outcomes, either in terms of the interaction of competing operant contingencies or as the interaction within the individual of personal preferences. (The two are, of course, related.) So, while according to the definition of choice just given consumer choices are made when one option promises more immediate benefits than another, though these be of smaller long-​term value, the process of executing a choice can be construed behaviorally or cognitively. What we might call “behavioral-​choice” refers to the consumer’s opting for one or other good on the basis of the consequences that similar selection has produced in the past; what we might designate action-​ or cognitive-​choice is the mental processing that the consumer is assumed to perform when reaching a decision, deciding, that is, which of the options available most closely fits her goals. While consumer choice is the subject of all three models within the BPM suite, it has a particular affinity with the concerns of the neurophysiological model given

48  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice its account of the rate at which the consumer discounts the future. We have seen that the concepts of valuation and choice are only unambiguously related –​as in the premise that the consumer’s choices maximize value –​when neurophysiologically founded valuation is considered. It is at this level that the costs and benefits of each option can be computed and compared in a manner that can be related to subsequent consumer activity. Chapter 8 will return to temporal discounting as neurally founded. But for now it is necessary to consider discounting in behavioral terms. Conflicting Temporal Horizons2

Consumer choice, like much human activity, is marked not by exponential discounting in which the discount rate remains constant but by hyperbolic discounting in which the discount rate varies with the temporal distance to the reward (Ainslie, 1992). Although the consumer may initially resolve to select LLR over SSR since, on objective grounds, the value of the former exceeds that of the latter, as SSR becomes imminent, its subjective value increases dramatically, exceeding that of LLR, and there is a strong temptation to accept the lesser reward simply because it is available immediately, thereby forgoing the greater. This tendency lies at the heart of all modes of consumer choice, certainly those placed beyond the everyday pole of the Continuum, and is particularly exacerbated in the case of extreme consumption such as addiction. But it should be emphasized that the essential conflict is near-​universal in modern, marketing-​oriented economies. Figure 4.2 formalizes the points just made. The higher line represents exponential discounting, that is, discounting at a constant rate. If exponential discounting

Figure 4.2 Valuation by temporal horizon. The curve that links to LLR shows exponential discounting, while that linking to SSR exhibits hyperbolic discounting. Were SSR always to be valued lower than LLR, its curve would also be exponential in shape, consistently falling below the LLR curve and, therefore, never intersecting with it. See Ainslie (1992) for a comprehensive treatment.

The Significance of Temporal Horizon  49 were the case for both rewards, the lower line would be similarly shaped and LLR would remain more highly valued throughout the period of interest. However, a different pattern is often observed: that illustrated by the lower line which represents a tendency toward hyperbolic discounting. While the consumer’s valuation of LLR is higher than that of SSR in the beginning (t1), as the proximity of SSR increases, its value to the consumer is vastly enhanced and, at t2, exceeds that of LLR. Although it is not inevitable that SSR will be preferred at t2, many consumers succumb at this point to the more immediate payoff and, at t3, the opportunity to acquire the superior reinforcer is relinquished by selection of the inferior. The point at which the value of SSR begins to exceed that of LLR, t2, is the consumer’s choice point. Now she has to decide whether to behave in accordance with what she knows of LLR’s enhanced but delayed benefits or to select the option that promises less but immediately. If everyday consumer choice is marked at all by discounting, it is usually of the exponential kind. But any movement away from the routine pole of the Continuum of Consumer Choice entails a choice point and an increasing propensity toward the hyperbolic discounting of the value of imminent rewards. Preference reversal of the kind illustrated in Figure 4.2 is not necessarily irrational. Its logic is that of the maximization of a quantum of utilitarian and informational reinforcement, where informational reinforcement has come to the fore. If this EP-​rationality elides, however, into A-​rationality, then the pattern of consumer choice is leaving the realm of routine buying and via intermediate consumption entering that of extreme consumer activity. Understanding these patterns of consumer activity is central to the theme of this book. Rather than assume the relevance of a cognitive (or at least intentional) explanation on the grounds that this is the dominant perspective in consumer research, there is a need to justify this stance for at least two reasons. First, there is good reason not to overlook the contributions which an extensional approach can uniquely make to the understanding of consumer choice and other socio-​economic conduct. Second, opting uncritically for a cognitive approach may overlook the reasons why it is invoked and the form it should take. Hence, the structured framework is proposed here. The inference of the intentionality by which observed consumer choice can be made intelligible is understood not as something that is the sole research strategy but as one which is necessarily preceded by the extensional specification and testing of a model of consumer choice. In summary, consumer choice entails temporal discounting: consumer choices are made when one of the options promises more immediate benefits than another, though these may be of smaller long-​term value. Indeed, the selection of such a smaller-​but-​instantly-​available item precludes the receipt of a greater good in the future. Choosing, then, simply means opting between or among alternatives. And such choice may be viewed as a behavior, which is shaped by a consumption history that translates the neutral physical and social stimuli of the consumer’s surroundings into the discriminative stimuli and motivating operations that account for her current activity. It may also be seen as action, in which this stimulus field is conceptualized not as acting directly on the consumer but through her perceptions and cognitions. While behavior and its determinants can be objectively specified

50  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice by researchers, action and the intentional constructs invoked in its interpretation rely for their veracity on her self-​reports and the inferences drawn by the investigator from her verbal and non-​verbal activities. There is another conception of choice, however, which is also of central import in our quest to justify cognitive explanation. According to this view, consumer choice involves deliberation among alternatives, each of which potentially solves a problem, leading to appropriate action which secures the selected item. Temporal Discounting or Cognitive Appraisal?

Two questions arise, however: “why define consumer choice in terms of temporal preference?” and “why understand choice in contradistinction to behavior and action?” There is, in fact, no fundamental divergence here, since all three figure importantly in the intentional behaviorist research strategy, but the distinctions are nuanced. Understanding consumer choice exclusively as behavior is to adopt a merely descriptive approach to what ultimately is convincingly demonstrable only within the narrow confines of the operant laboratory. It is to confine inquiry to that which can be understood only as activityI and, under the self-​imposed stipulation that only observable behavior and what is taken to be its controlling environment, ignoring the possibility that choice, for instance, might have significance beyond this. This is not to gainsay, the benefits that come from investigation of this kind, the unadorned establishment of what constitutes one’s ultimate subject matter at its most basic, without its initial observation being obscured by fanciful notions about its causation and significance. This approach is the very essence of theoretical minimalism and is the bedrock of progress in determining what can be known only on this basis and whether additional theoretical elaboration is required in order to understand that subject matter. But it can become the final resting place of inquiry only if it does not falter in this quest. Even though it succeeds famously in allowing conclusions to be drawn about its unique contribution to the foundation of knowledge, if it fails, either on its own terms to elucidate behavior in extensional terms, or because it no longer fits the purview of the investigator, then alternative routes to understanding must be sought, even if they are less rigorous in their demonstrative power. To define choice in terms of the relative selection of option A over option B over a large number of trials, seeing choice as revealed preference, provides unassailable insight into behavior which is not otherwise available. But it does not always capture even in its own intellectual confines the variables of which all behavior is a function. That alone provides grounds for seeking an alternative paradigm, not to overthrow the first within its own sphere of operation and significance, but to allow a more comprehensive grasp to emerge of the topic at hand. In addition, a purely extensional view of consumer choice does not seek to elucidate it by reference to the reasons economic actors give for their activities and the investigation of these as means of increasing comprehension of choice is equally valid. It may well be that by giving reasons for the observed pattern of observed behavior it is possible to understand it better and formulate more informed hypotheses for its

The Significance of Temporal Horizon  51 investigation by extensional science. Yet, regarding choice exclusively as action, while it at least portrays it as activityT, fails to focus on what is the essential character of choice itself. So unaided and unconfined, it must rest on an imputed phenomenology and an ascribed intentionality which is inferred from the action it is meant to elucidate. It enhances the description of choice regarded as behavior but adds little by way of prediction and understanding of what makes choice a peculiar facet of human experience. Choice entails conflict and portraying choice as temporal discounting reveals a potent, perhaps universal, source of that conflict, one that is relevant to all styles of consumer choice over the Continuum. Temporal conflict may not be the sole source of having to choose but it is a basic dimension of the human condition, the mainsprings of which are to found in phylogenetic and ontogenetic histories (e.g., Bickel and Marsch, 2000; Foxall, 2016a, Chapter 2; Miller and Wallis, 2009; Villmoare et al., 2023; Winterhalter, 2007). In addition, it is well-​founded on neurophysiological evidence and offers a means of relating value and behavior that the other paradigms cannot (Chapter 8, below). Accordingly, it requires for its accurate comprehension the full gamut of the kinds of rationality considered in Chapter 2, including B-​rationality. Consumer choice, construed in terms of temporal discounting, may be understood either as behavior or as action, but it does not reduce to either of them: it may be viewed for analytical purposes as either ActivityI or ActivityT, depending on the investigator’s purposes, based, for instance, on the stage of the research strategy at which she is working, but its defining character is to be found in the consumer’s temporal preference. The view that consumer choice necessitates considerations of temporal discounting (even when these are vanishingly close to minimal) stands particularly in contrast to that which defines choice exclusively in terms of cognitive decision processes. It, therefore, requires further comment. Cognitive deliberation and selection are assuredly a vital component of the intentional behaviorist methodology but the sequence of explanation on which it is based requires that an extensional account of behavior precede it. To endorse it a priori by adopting a depiction of consumer choice founded solely on cognitive deliberation would forestall the methodological process which entails initial behaviorist investigation both as an end in itself and as a guide to subsequent cognitive investigation should this be indicated. Temporal discounting may be studied directly as behavioral change in the context of modified stimulation or as a process of choice that reflects intra-​ personal contemplation. The point of the research strategy is not to choose between them but to exhaustively test the first and thereby identify the need for and shape of the second. Although it is premature to turn to the intentional account before critically examining the extensional, this is an appropriate point at which to note the viewpoint presented by the cognitive decision-​making paradigm as a source of explanation for consumer choice. Choosing, on this view, involves introspecting, the ponderance of options, and the selection of the one judged most likely to satisfy the consumer’s goals. For Padoa-​Schioppa (2007, p. 233, emphasis added), “These mental processes and the resulting behavior are ‘economic choice’.” Choice, then, consists in cognitive

52  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice processing. Further defining economic choice as “the behavior observed when individuals make choices based solely on subjective preferences,” Padoa-​Schioppa (2007, p. 334) argues that, in the course of choosing, economic actors such as consumers ascribe values to the options available to them and, through a process of comparison among them, reach a conclusion about what to buy or use. The assignation of value to each option ensures that the comparison can proceed on the basis of a common currency or unit of measurement. Padoa-​Schioppa’s description of what he designates economic choice is an important component of the view I am putting forward here, though I would confine his portrayal to the domain of BPM-​I and, therefore, the second stage of the intentional behaviorist research strategy. After all, cognitive appraisal has no place in BPM-​E. Moreover, I distinguish “choice,” which as defined above is based on temporal discounting from “decision-​making,” based on the cognitive appraisal of alternatives in the light of one’s goals. Choice, understood to involve temporal discounting, is accordingly a phenomenon which can be approached within an extensional, intentional, or neurophysiological framework of conceptualization and analysis. But decision-​making, as a mental process based on cognitive evaluation, pertains only to the intentional sphere. Note also that while Padoa-​Schioppa firmly rules out perception from his conception of choice (as cognitive decision-​ making), we shall have cause to include it as a mode of decision-​making when it is based on previous cognitive evaluation, say, in the formulation of a consideration set to whose members the consumer can react rapidly given the correct stimuli. In this eventuality, although the consumer’s decision requires of itself no cognitive involvement, the effectiveness of the perceptual processes it does involve depends entirely on prior decision-​making which is cognitively grounded. These are matters to which we shall return later in this chapter. In the meantime, the import of temporal discounting for the Continuum of Consumer Choice requires attention. Patterns of Temporal Discounting over the Continuum Consumer choices may be classified according to the degree to which they exhibit temporal discounting, as indicated by the Continuum of Consumer Choice shown in Figure 1.1. These choices range from the most routine and commonplace to the most extreme and compulsive: the spectrum is, therefore, from everyday brand, product, and retail selection, through intermittent purchasing to such intermediate activities as buying on credit, environmental despoliation through over-​exploitation of non-​renewables, and irresponsible waste management, to over-​consumption, especially of food and alcohol, and on to compulsive and addictive use of products and services. The crucial difference between these activities consists in the rate at which the typical consumer discounts the future. At the routine pole, discounting is minimal; where it does occur, it is shallow. The extreme pole is characterized by steep delay discounting, and, while the intermediate styles of consumer activity involve discounting, this is more moderate than that found in compulsive buying and addiction.

The Significance of Temporal Horizon  53 Everyday Selection

The most routine consumer choice is exemplified by the everyday selection of competing brands which, physically and functionally at least, are identical or near-​ identical. There is a minimum of uncertainty and negligible risk. In one sense, that of the utilitarian reinforcement they provide, it may not matter very much which one is selected. Within the small subset of tried and tested brands that constitute the consumer’s consideration set or “repertoire” of brands from which she chooses, the selection of this one over that entails little consequence. All of these brands have been used in the past and found to meet the consumer’s criteria for reliability and level of service. While each brand attracts a small percentage of consumers who practice sole buying over time, the vast majority of consumers display multi-​brand purchasing over a series of shopping trips rather than strict brand loyalty. (See Ehrenberg, 1988; Romaniuk and Sharp, 2016; Sharp, 2010, and, in the context of consumer behavior analysis, Foxall, 2017b; Foxall et al., in press). The complexity of the consumer’s potentially having to select among a vast number of alternative brands within a product category is assuaged by their confining their choices to their familiar and known subset. Some consumers simplify further by selecting the least expensive of the brands within their repertoire on each purchase occasion (Foxall and James, 2002, 2003). Everyday consumption of this kind involves minimal, if any, discounting since selection among the functionally equivalent, tried-​and-​tested brands that constitute the consumer’s consideration set or repertoire does not require trading-​off one against another except on very clear local criteria, such as a price advantage. Although there are several brands to choose among, there is usually no temporal difference between them. Though a consumer may purchase a brand from time to time for its slightly different functional properties (e.g., salted butter), and this may command a price premium, this is hardly a case of irrational behavior or overpaying for immediate consumption. Intermittent Purchasing

The purchase of consumer durables is less likely than everyday consumption to involve a relatively fixed consideration set since the infrequency of purchasing and the constantly changing product range mean that a decision requires fresh information gathering, evaluation, and choice on each occasion. There is more temporal discounting involved in such decisions than is the case for everyday buying. Serious trade-​offs may be apparent between competing items which differ from one another in functional terms as well as price, questions of social status, as well as technical merit. There is, therefore, a much stronger tendency for informational reinforcement to be at the forefront of decision-​making. Whereas a purchase error in the everyday context has minor consequences and may be corrected cheaply and easily, a mistake in the acquisition of a durable good or expensive item such as an exotic vacation can entail significant financial loss and forfeiture of social status and self-​esteem. There is a strong tendency, therefore, to pay excessively for the

54  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice perceived reputation of the seller and the brand (as well as for the practical and operational merits of the chosen item), to judge quality by price, and to choose a premium package of utilitarian and informational reinforcement in the effort to “buy for the future.” Intermediate Styles of Consumer Activity

Between these antipodal poles of the Continuum lie such activities as credit purchasing which expedites consumption at the cost of a higher final payment; despoiling the environment, for example, unauthorized disposal of waste or the profligate use of finite resources, which may enhance the benefits of short-​range consumption but subsequently impose larger outlays; and compulsive shopping which confers immediacy of ownership at a high price in the longer term. These activities require that the consumer pay more for temporal convenience: surrendering the future to immediate preferences. The whole range of intermediate styles of consumer activity is marked by varying degrees of over-​consumption, from the temporal convenience of acquiring otherwise inaccessible goods by entering delayed payment schemes through obtaining scarce resources without concern for future supplies or future generations, to engaging in excess buying (e.g., compulsive shopping) or indulgent usage (e.g., eating and drinking too much). The idea of consumer choice, as it is manifested in these styles of consumer activity, encapsulates this tension between consumption at different times, each with its own outcomes, be they reinforcing or punishing, rewarding, or aversive. What distinguishes these activities is the extent to which consumers discount the future consequences of their activities. Compulsion and Addiction

The opposite pole of the Continuum of Consumer Choice locates more extreme consumption. Compulsive shopping is a form of addiction and is joined as an extreme style of consumer choice by substance and behavioral addictions such as drug-​taking and gambling. While all consumer behavior may be fundamentally delineated in terms of the reinforcement patterns which shape and maintain it, addictive behavior generally entails to an exaggerated extent the pursuit of immediate reinforcement and reward at the expense of longer-​term, less favorable or even deleterious outcomes, or forfeiting later-​appearing benefits. Moreover, addiction is typically accompanied by the expression of a strong desire to cease from or at least control consumption, followed by a lapse, further resolution, relapse –​ the inter-​temporal preference reversal which is characterized by severe hyperbolic discounting (Ainslie, 1992; Foxall, 2016a). The Consumer at the Choice Point The Inevitability of Representation

The inevitability of intentional explanation is further illustrated by the attempt to account for inter-​temporal behavior solely within the extensional framework

The Significance of Temporal Horizon  55 of radical behaviorism. Consideration of this requires that we return to the consumer facing a choice point, the situation illustrated in Figure 4.2. This depicts the extreme mode of consumer choice that reflects weakness of will or akrasia in terms of hyperbolic discounting. It will be recalled that an initial preference is formed at t1, when the consumer’s future consumption requires her opting either for the smaller, sooner reward (SSR) at t3 or awaiting the LLR at t4. It is rational at t1 for her to value LLR more highly than SSR. But, given that SSR and LLR are not empirically available (i.e., not yet on offer) to the consumer at t1, how and where does this evaluation take place? A radical behaviorist account might appeal to her learning history and/​or rules –​her own or others’ –​which specify what she must do in particular circumstances to obtain a reward of greater or smaller magnitude, presumably a track. As we have seen, this alone incurs the charge that it is based on intentional reasoning. But let us confine our analysis to the position of the investigator attempting to explain (predict) her behavior from a third-​personal point of view. A learning history must be available to the investigator in the form of an inventory of the behaviors the consumer has emitted in previous, similar circumstances, along with their reinforcing and punishing consequences: the SSRs and LLRs in which they have eventuated. The problem with this is that such a learning history may not be available even to the consumer, but her current behavior is assumed, nonetheless, to be a function of her learning history. A learning history can be ascertained in the closed behavior setting of the operant laboratory where every move of a participant can be monitored and recorded. This is far from the case for a human consumer whose spending and using have taken place in open purchase and consumption settings where they have not been systematically observed or noted. Her rule-​governed behavior is similarly abstract. (It is a difficult-​enough prospect for any post-​infant consumer). The consumer may have been given a rule (a description of the contingencies) such as, “You will get an enhanced reward by waiting for the LLR,” (tracking), or “If you wait for the LLR, you are a star!” or “If you choose the SSR, you’ll get what-​for” (pliance), or “Just imagine how good you’ll feel if you are patient” (augmenting). But rules can be effective only if the consumer has the appropriate learning history and, as we have seen, this remains elusive, an abstraction rather than the sort of concrete empirically available variable on which radical behaviorism claims to rely. Even if these abstractions could be made concrete, however, there is no way of locating SSR and LLR at t1 in order that they can be valued by the consumer. At most, she has a representation of them, based perhaps on the verbal behavior of others which describes the outcomes of each course of action open to her (or rules, such as those that have been suggested). We may reasonably enquire whether the representation of which the consumer’s next response is a function is to be found in her memory of her past behavior and its consequences or in her neurons or in her internal verbal behavior, perhaps as she privately repeats the rule to herself. Whatever, she can value SSR and LLR only if she has some kind of representation of them. The idea of rule-​governed behavior may be sufficient to predict and possibly control the consumer’s behavior in these circumstances; but even if it manages this, it offers no more than a skeletal explanation of what is going on.

56  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice A similar set of circumstances obtains as the consumer approaches t3, the moment when SSR becomes available. If she discounts hyperbolically, then at t2, just prior to SSR’s becoming available, its subjective value rises dramatically, exceeding that of LLR. The probability of her selecting SSR at t3 is, therefore, vastly increased. The SSR is not available at t2, but the consumer is said, nevertheless, to value it relative to LLR; such an evaluation must be based on the assessment of another reinforcer that can be available to her only as a representation. Moreover, if the consumer rejects SSR and waits for LLR to appear at t4, she is said to value LLR more highly than SSR throughout the entire timeframe, thereby discounting exponentially (since at no time is SSR ever more highly valued than LLR). Again, given the extensional foundation of radical behaviorist explanation, we are entitled to ask for empirical validation of these valuations. It is of course possible to put forward some kind of behaviorist account of the activity considered. The impulsive consumer may be said to value SSR more highly than LLR at t3, based on an inference from, i.e., a re-​description of, what she does at t3. The selection of SSR is the valuing, that is, the valuing is the behavior. This adoption of “revealed valuation” as a behaviorally based measure of value avoids talk of representations: it simply portrays her choice behaviorally, casting her selections of SSR as a proportion of the totality of a sequence of her choices of SSR and LLR. In this case, “choice” is defined behaviorally, as the rate of relative responding, a kind of revealed preference (Herrnstein, 1997). Such description of the behavior is behaviorist in that it precludes intentional idioms and proceeds solely in terms of observed behavior. Insofar as relative frequency of responding allows prediction of subsequent behavior, the device fulfills the criterion of radical behaviorism of showing how behavior is predictable from its history of reinforcement and punishment and identifying environmental stimuli whose manipulation allows modification of the behavior. The difficulty with this for purposes of explanation rather than description is that it relies on the treatment of behavior in terms of rule-​governance, the locutions of which are necessarily intentional in form. This exercise in accounting for consumer choice as a matter of temporal discounting has led to a reinforcement of the intentional behaviorist contention that extensionality, useful as it is where it contributes uniquely to the understanding of conduct, fails when the continuity/​discontinuity of behavior must be accounted for, and this requires acknowledgment and appropriate analysis of the personal level of exposition and a curtailment of unrestrained behavioral interpretation. Furthermore, by insisting that the subject matter of behaviorism is only behavior and that nothing else is necessary, radical behaviorism seems in danger of making itself redundant. For to confine one’s analysis of discounting to a description of the behavior in question could be accomplished as easily, and certainly more parsimoniously, by the ecological psychology of Barker (1968) or the ecological behavioral science of Schoggen (1989). Explaining Behavioral Discontinuity

Although the choice of SSR may become habitual, even to the point of addiction, some consumers whose behavior is marked by extreme consumer choice manage

The Significance of Temporal Horizon  57 to modify their responses to the point of customarily selecting LLR. Ainslie (1992) describes several strategies of behavior change which depend on the akrates’ resolving to behave differently in the face of contingencies that increase the likelihood of impulsive choice. All are means by which addicts may attempt to modify their akratic behavior by making their selection of LLR more probable than that of SSR. The first, precommitment, requires a resolution to preclude the less rewarding or even aversive choice by re-​arranging the external physical or social situation. A common example is Ulysses’s binding himself to the mast prior to meeting the Sirens, but less dramatic instances are an over-​user’s ingesting a substance that will induce physically unpleasant feelings such as nausea in the event of her imbibing alcohol or drugs and a student’s arranging that friends will take her to the library as an otherwise inescapable TV show begins. All are means of reducing the chance of opting for SSR by manipulating the external environment. The second, control of attention, restricts information processing with respect to SSR. Changing one’s verbal behavior may work: just saying no; thinking about something else, or imagining the car you could buy if the money you spend on cigarettes were saved. More disruptively, the strategic move of taking a route home from the office that avoids bars or restaurants may preclude impulsive consumption. In the third, the consumer might practice preparation of emotion which requires avoidance or displacement of the emotions usually associated with SSR or the deliberate fostering of incompatible emotions. Examples are reminding oneself of the health risks of drinking to excess, imagining the angry reaction of others if one overindulges, visualizing the exotic vacation one can afford by eliminating tobacco or alcohol consumption. These picoeconomic strategies are not compatible with a behaviorist account, however; they necessitate cognitive control to escape the emotional rewards of addiction. Even rearranging the physical and social contingencies of reinforcement and punishment requires prior mental configuration of one’s present and future circumstances. A fourth strategy, which also requires mental contemplation of the contingencies and forward planning to circumvent those in operation, is what Ainslie calls “bundling,” which represents a departure from the consumer’s responding seriatim to each recurring situation in which a choice must be made. The problem with such a fractionated meeting with successive SSR/​LLR conflict is that, given the situation shown in Figure 4.2, SSR will always and inevitably assume a greater value than LLR for the akrates and this, for the consumer involved, amounts to a continuous sequence of defeats. In order to overcome this, the strategy of bundling requires the impulsive consumer to envisage the totality of future SSRs and their reinforcing and punishing outcomes in contrast to a similarly conjectured sequence of future LLRs, and their consequences. These alternative contingencies represent all of the choice points with which she will be presented over the course of her life. So arraying all the future outcomes of the streams of choices made by the consumer between SSR and LLR at a point prior to t2 may break the spell of short-​ termism by engendering the conclusion that the sum of all LLRs will in the course of time exceed that of all SSRs (Figure 4.3). Such realization, based on “bundling” the future rewards from each option into a global conception of long-​term

58  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice

Figure 4.3 The principle of bundling. The solid lines represent any of the individual members of the stream of paired SSR/​LLR choices that will be available to the individual over time. (Hence, t3 is the time of any occurrence of an SSR which is paired with an LLR that will appear at t4, and we are assuming a sequence of such SSR/​LLR pairings over time, each of which leads to a choice point at t2). The dashed lines represent the individual’s imagined aggregation of these rewards if they were all brought forward to a point just prior to the appearance of the first SSR. In this case, the aggregated LLR will always exceed the aggregated SSR and a decision to select it exclusively on subsequent occasions can be more readily made.

outcomes, assists the consumer in committing determinedly to LLR on at least the next occasion; moreover, having made this commitment, she is more likely to maintain it over a series of choice occasions. The current concern is not with empirical evidence for this proposition (see, however, Hofmeyr et al., 2010; Ainslie, 2018) but for the logic of the claim and the mode of explanation employed and its bearing on a theoretically minimal radical behaviorist account of the behavior involved. The key question to pose in this regard is: where does this bundling take place? It cannot be other than within the consumer’s private or public verbal behavior. It is, moreover, highly probable that the complexity of the task of comparative evaluation involved renders private verbal behavior essential even if this is a prelude to public verbal behavior. The verbal behavior required would entail holding representations of the streams of as yet non-​existent reward, plus the calculation of their relative values, and the making of decisions to effect the required modification of the whole tenor of her pattern of choice. These all seem like cognitive operations rather than behavioral rule-​following. Using any of the other strategies for the avoidance of temptation and habitual behavior would incur similar cognitive demands since each requires consideration of a series of future circumstances, the behaviors they will likely generate, and their outcomes. Such consideration is

The Significance of Temporal Horizon  59 necessarily intentional, requiring the representation of states of affairs, and mental, requiring cognitive processing of alternative futures. In considering strategies of behavior change, it seems that a behaviorist paradigm, which accounts for consumer activity descriptively, must yield to one which attributes cognitive decision-​ making to the consumer. This requires a shift from BPM-​E to BPM-​I in order to come to terms with the discontinuity of the consumer’s action.3 The four strategies considered may not of course exhaust the remedies available to the akrates. But, short of imposing draconian contingencies of reinforcement and punishment upon her, we must assume that something like these tactics of change must be necessary to effect a modification of her responsive behavior. They all require cognitive understanding and strategizing. Summary and Conclusions Refining Consumers’ Goals

Refining the concept of consumer choice enables us to understand the nature of consumers’ goals in greater detail. We can now say, first, that the consumer’s overall goal is to maximize utilitarian and informational reinforcement (and the affective rewards and sanctions which ensue from them) both to enhance current well-​being and to optimize biological fitness. Second, within this framework, consumer choice is the selection between competing means of obtaining utilitarian and informational reinforcement, where, third, these alternatives promise to deliver different versions of a commodity (i.e., varying levels of utilitarian and informational reinforcement) on different temporal horizons, such that the delayed option is that which prospectively delivers the larger or otherwise superior good, and, fourth, where selection of the earlier option precludes selecting the later. These conclusions require three caveats, however. First, the word between is carefully chosen to denote a two-​commodity choice in order to simplify the analysis. In practice, most consumer choices involve selection among several items. This not only makes the consumer’s task far more complicated but also increases the attractiveness of more economical routes to decision-​making. Second, this formulation renders the analysis of consumer choice amenable to all three levels of exposition which facilitates comparison and consideration of how consumer choice is to be explained. Understanding consumer choice as Padoa-​ Schioppa (2009) portrays, “economic choice” –​ cognitive processing in which consumers and other economic actors value the available options and, through comparative appraisal decide which best meets their objectives –​ is incontrovertible but, in the current framework, is relevant only to the intentional portrayal that is the domain of BPM-​I. Third, far from excluding decisions based on perceptual factors from the analysis of consumer choice on the (unobjectionable) grounds that it does not involve cognitive processing, the present analysis embraces perception as a source of the economy required by efficient decision-​making and argues that it is in any case inseparable from prior cognitive processing on which it relies for the goals that direct it. While making an extended series of decisions, the consumer’s

60  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice perceptual awareness and reactions are constantly modified not only by changes in the external environment but also by reformulated objectives and evaluations of the means of achieving them that result from constant cognitive reformulation. This is, with the changing environment itself, equally the context of perceptual action. Intentional behaviorism differs also from Padoa-​Schioppa’s view of cognition and perception which, while it is logically correct, tends from the point of view of the framework of conceptualization and analysis adopted here, to marginalize the role of decision-​based perception in the explanation of consumer choice. While the concentration on economic choice makes an inescapable point about the effect of immediate stimulation on each choice, it overlooks the reliance of cognition on perception as well as the role of cognition in facilitating further perception. It has been argued that knowledge by acquaintance is a prerequisite of cognitive functioning. To this has now been added the recognition that prior deliberation and judgment is essential as a prelude to those varieties of perception that arise from, encapsulate, and operationalize cognitive judgment in the specific milieux of consumption. These views of perception are not contradictory but complementary. Perception-​based responding of the kind we are considering in the realm of the consumer’s instant or near-​instant selection of one or other brand in a familiar product category is highly dependent on the cognitive processing that has led to the formulation of her consideration set and her subsequent ability to make rapid choices when faced, in store, with a subset of the brands that compose the category, some of which also feature in her consideration set. “Economic Choice” and “Consumer Choice”

According to Padoa-​Schioppa (2007), “economic choice” is a discrete mental function which entails the ascription of values to available opportunities on offer for purchase and/​or consumption. It is a separate cognitive operation, distinct from perception and associative learning. Economic choice is a procedure in which the members of the consumer’s consideration set are evaluated in the mind, though the computation and comparison of values occur, inter alia, in the OFC and vmPFC. They depend on a variety of attributes of each good under review, what Padoa-​ Schioppa calls “determinants,” which may be external to the decision-​maker (e.g., cost, time, delay, risk, and ambiguity) or internal to her (e.g., motivational state, (im)patience, risk attitude, and ambiguity attitude). Note that the latter reflects the consumer’s cognitive style. The final decision is the outcome of what he calls “action values”: “A neuron encodes an action value if it is preferentially active when a particular action is planned and if it is modulated by the value associated with that action” (Padoa-​Schioppa, 2007, p. 335; see also Padoa-​Schioppa, 2013). Decision-​making and economic choice are, therefore, cognitive procedures which may be further understood in terms of the valuation processes on which they are based by taking neurophysiological events into consideration. Several conclusions follow this analysis. Clearly, cognitive decision-​making, on this definition, is beyond the scope of BPM-​E but, while the cognitive processes entailed are the province of BPM-​I, it is necessary to supplement its account of

The Significance of Temporal Horizon  61 value by reference to the neurophysiological bases of neural valuation, the province of BPM-​N. Moreover, although the thrust of his approach to economic decision-​ making portrays it as cognitive, Padoa-​Schioppa recognizes other important decision processes that entail mental and neural processing. These include importantly perceptually based decision-​making, part of the domain of BPM-​I which is of significance in the comprehension of patterns of consumer choice over the Continuum. Note, however, that only his category of economic choice, is cognitive, entailing the assignation of values to competing goods and the comparison of these values. And, importantly for the present analysis, he concludes that In addition to guiding an action, values and choice outcomes inform a variety of cognitive and neural systems, including sensory and motor systems (through perceptual attention and attention-​like mechanisms), learning (e.g., through mechanisms of reinforcement learning), and emotion (including autonomic functions). (Padoa-​Schioppa, 2009, p. 353; see also Ballesta et al., 2020) These matters impinge on the explanatory roles of BPM-​I (cognition, perception, and affect) and its relationships with the extensional (reinforcement learning) and neurophysiological (neural valuation, emotion) models. While the rationality assumed by Padoa-​Schioppa is undoubtedly that derived from economics (E-​rationality), the appropriate rationality for the analysis of consumer choice is economic-​psychological rationality (EP-​rationality). Padoa-​Schioppa’s strict demarcation of cognition and perception is not, however, something that the present treatment endorses. The reason is as follows: there are, of course, purely perceptual reactions to environmental stimuli. In the context of social perception and behavior, for instance, the effect of mirror neurons is an automatic perception-​based response. These cells, located in frontoparietal cortex, fire not only when an individual performs a motivated action but also when she observes this action being performed by a conspecific (Rizzolatti et al., 2001). Hence, the mirror system is instrumental in the rapid identification and anticipation of others’ intentionality, including their affective states and their proposed behavior. Citing Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia (2006), Serra (2021, p. 30) summarizes: “Being widely automatic and pre-​conceptual, these phenomena of sensorimotor resonance do not imply the use of costly cognitive resources.” This is precisely the kind of mental procedure that, for Padoa-​Schioppa, is not a component of the decision-​ making that underlies economic choice. Other examples that include consumer activities are impulsively picking a novel item in the supermarket just to “give it a try” (a routine selection) or, for a compulsive drinker, automatically entering a bar and ordering a beer (an extreme selection). These instances are indeed devoid of cognitive decision processes and, therefore, do not qualify as economic choices in Padoa-​Schioppa’s scheme. But I shall argue that there are other perception-​based selections which do or at least which are outcomes of such decision-​making which are so tightly bound to that cognitive choice process that it is unnecessary to consider them as part of a

62  Conceptualizing Consumer Choice different entity. Opting for a particular member of one’s consideration set of tried and trusted brands on a supermarket shopping trip is so stringently tied to the preceding process of cognitive evaluation which was necessary to the establishment of the consideration set in the first place that it cannot be considered other than as a resultant component that forms part of a unified system. The perceptual response is possible only if this prior cognitive processing has occurred. The explanation of consumer choice, defined by reference to temporal preference, draws upon conceptions of behavioral evaluation, derived from super-​ personal exchange, action-​related evaluation, the outcome of personal level cognitive and perceptual appraisal, and neural evaluation, reflecting sub-​personal responses to super-​personal (environmental and public) and intra-​personal (organismic and private) stimuli. A large part of its explanation is, therefore, coincident with the conception of economic choice. Nor does this reasoning contradict Padoa-​ Schioppa’s but contextualizes it within what is a different explanatory approach to consumer choice. Looking ahead, it might be generalized that most routine consumer choice (everyday selection) depends largely on perception of brand characteristics which the consumer recognizes easily in the supermarket and buys fairly rapidly, while intermittent consumption is largely cognitive, involving the active mental processing of information on the availability and properties of products, brands, and retailers, and their relevance to the fulfilment of the consumer’s goals, and that the more extreme styles of consumer choice are largely stimulus-​driven. The implication is that BPM-​I is more relevant to the former, and BPM-​E to the latter. This is a conjecture that will be examined further in later chapters. Notes 1 This is discussed in greater detail in Foxall (2016b, Chapter 7). See also, inter alia, Dretske (1988), Hornsby (1981), Rosenberg (2016), Steward (2012), and Taylor (1964/​ 2021). 2 Important recent collections dealing with temporal discounting and impulsivity are those edited by Madden and Bickel (2010) and Stevens (2017). Key references on temporal horizon are Ainslie (1992, 2018), Bickel et el. (2012a,b, 2020), and Loewenstein et al. (2003). 3 I am not remotely suggesting that Ainslie is promoting a radical behaviorist view of the behaviors and actions involved in the process described in Figure 6.1. I am merely using this analysis as a vehicle for illustrating the essential differences between behaviorist and cognitive viewpoints.

Part II

Levels of Exposition

5 A Suite of Models

Abstract The Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM) is a suite of three models of consumer choice, which address explanation at three levels of exposition: super-​personal, personal, and sub-​personal. The extensional portrayal of consumer choice (BPM-​ E) concerns the relation of observed consumer behavior with the environmental stimuli of which it is a function. The functions of BPM-​E are, initially, to ascertain and elaborate those facets of consumer behavior that are uniquely amenable to its behaviorist methodology and, subsequently, determine the point where this approach no longer explains, thereby occasioning an intentional interpretation, and the form of such interpretation. The contribution of BPM-​E is briefly appraised and its shortcomings in the explanation of some aspects of behavior are noted. BPM-​I is introduced as a source of interpretation of consumer action based on appropriate intentional portrayals desires, beliefs, affects, and perceptions. The relationship between affect and contingency is described. This leads to a discussion of the neurophysiological BPM (BPM-​N). The conception of neural value provided by BPM-​N is an independent measure of valuation which makes it possible to investigate consumer valuation scientifically and to critically appraise the accounts of consumer behavior and action which the other BPM models present. BPM-​E: The Extensional Model The Extensional Consumer-​Situation

The origin of the extensional model is the “three-​term contingency,” the essential explanatory device of radical behaviorism which defines the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment from which behavioral responses are predictable: SD: R→Sr/​p.

(5.1)

In this formulation, a behavioral response (R) is a function of antecedent discriminative stimuli (SD) which set the occasion for reinforcement and punishment (Sr/​p) contingent on the performance of a particular response. An additional source of DOI: 10.4324/9781003262510-7

66  Levels of Exposition antecedent stimulation takes the form of motivating operations (MO) which enhance the relationship between R and Sr/​p (Michael, 1993; Catania, 2013; Laraway et al., 2003; for consideration of MO in the context of consumer behavior analysis, see Fagerstrøm et al., 2010). A basic MO might be, for instance, a state of deprivation (“hunger”) which leads to an enhanced impulse to consume food. If we are taking MO into consideration, we might refer to a “four-​term contingency” SD/​MO: R→Sr/​p

(5.2)

though “three-​term contingency” will be used here. The behavior with which radical behaviorism deals is not elicited by its stimulus field, as in classical or Pavlovian conditioning; rather, it is emitted by the organism and selected by the environment, much as effective variations are preserved in the process of natural selection (Skinner, 1981). Its rate of continuance, if any, depends on the kind of reinforcing and punishing stimulation it subsequently encounters.1 BPM-​E, therefore, treats the consumer non-​intentionally, as a contextual system, that is, one whose behavior is predictable by considering it the result of operant contingencies (Foxall, 2021). SD and MO comprise the consumer behavior setting which, primed by previous similar behavior and its consequences (i.e., learning history), form the consumer-​ situation. The extensional model is summarized in Figure 5.1. Generically, as covered in Chapter 2, the consumer-​situation is the union of temporal and spatial influences on consumer choice and is the immediate precursor of consumer activity, the antecedents from which behavior may be predicted. Within the behaviorist paradigm, this does not make the consumer-​situation the progenitor of behavior –​ this would be too theory-​laden a description; it is simply a summary of the variables from which further behavior is predictable. In BPM-​E, therefore, the consumer-​situation is no more than this interaction of the consumer’s learning history and her current behavior setting. The synergistic effect

Figure 5.1 The extensional Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM-​E).

A Suite of Models  67 of these influences is such that the learning history primes the stimulus field that composes the consumer behavior setting so that its components become discriminative stimuli and MO rather than neutral stimuli. The primed stimulus field sets the occasion for the reinforcement of particular behaviors through the provision of utilitarian (functional) and informational (social) benefits. The conception of the consumer-​situation as an extensional entity means that its elements can be objectively identified and measured; similarly, the pattern of reinforcement and punishment presented to the consumer as contingent upon her behavior is extensionally conceived and inter-​subjectively specifiable.2 It also tends to suggest that the effect of the combination of discriminative stimuli with MO in the consumer behavior setting is clearly synergistic since the outcome is more than an accumulation of stimuli: in some way it motivates behavior. But, strictly speaking, any attribution of synergy transcends the preoccupation of radical behaviorism with the description of behavior, the recording of what happens, rather than theoretical speculation as to why this is the case. The extent to which a consumer behavior setting governs consumer behavior is its scope. A relatively open setting contains many opportunities for a variety of behaviors, while a relatively closed setting restricts behavioral options to one or two. A party allows one to behave in numerous ways, for example, eating and drinking, moving around the venue at will, and talking and dancing. “Open” does not imply that any behavior at all will be tolerated but there is a gamut of options available to the consumer. Being in a formal church service, on the other hand, tends to restrict one’s behavioral possibilities to the pew in which one is sitting, singing designated hymns, listening to a sermon, and in some cases standing, sitting, and kneeling as required by convention. Eating and drinking are for the most part limited to bread and wine and talking by the congregation is discouraged except at designated points in the proceedings. Deviation from the prescribed behavior program is likely to be punished. Between these extremes are many consumer settings that range widely in scope. Operant Classes of Consumer Behavior

It is possible to classify consumer behavior in terms of the pattern of reinforcement that governs it. Utilitarian and informational reinforcement may be conceived of as either high or low, providing in each case a continuum of levels; for the ease of exposition, however, we dichotomize these so that they define the following operant classes of consumer behavior: accomplishment (which is shaped and controlled by relatively high levels of both utilitarian and informational reinforcement) hedonism (relatively high utilitarian reinforcement and relatively low informational reinforcement) accumulation (relatively high informational reinforcement and relatively low utilitarian reinforcement), and maintenance (relatively low levels of both sources of reinforcement).

68  Levels of Exposition

Figure 5.2 Patterns of consumer-​situation. Each pattern of consumer-​situation, PCS, is defined by the level of utilitarian reinforcement, the level of informational reinforcement, and the scope of the consumer behavior setting involved (from the most closed, representing restricted discretion over the range of behaviors facilitated by the contingencies in question to the most open, characterized by the highest level of discretion over the behavior performed by the consumer.) Each PCS is a summary of the myriad of actual consumer-​situations that belong to the category of contingencies it defines.

The addition to this classification of operant contingencies of the scope of the consumer behavior setting permits the definition of eight conceptual patterns of consumer-​situation shown in Figure 5.2. Each pattern of consumer-​situation is distinctively defined by reference to high–​low utilitarian reinforcement, high–​low informational reinforcement, and closed–​open consumer behavior settings. Each of these patterns of consumer-​situation, defined here in conceptual terms, represents a range of real-​world consumer-​situations.3 V1: Value at the Super-​Personal Level

Valuation considered at the super-​personal level is, strictly speaking, the amount of work or money that is expended in order to secure the reinforcer and this will have both objective and subjective components. In the context of socio-​economic exchange, however, the possibility arises of achieving an inter-​subjectively acceptable, that is, mutually recognized, estimation of value. This exchange value of a

A Suite of Models  69 commodity is established through the interlocking contingencies of the parties to a transaction that determine their bilateral (or multilateral) interactions. The concept of bilateral contingency captures the inter-​relationships of two contextual systems, each of whose behavior has implications for the structure of the other’s behavior setting. Bilateral contingency is, therefore, an interaction of the three-​term contingencies that govern the behavior of the parties to a transaction or relationship (Figure 5.3). The concept is central to the development of the theory of marketing firm (Foxall, 1999a) and is extensively developed in Foxall (2021). A bilateral contingency indicates how each of the parties to a relationship influences the behavior setting and, hence, the behavior of the other party; the interaction is reciprocal (Foxall, 1999a). Influence occurs as a result of one party’s providing discriminative stimuli and MO for the behavior of the other; in addition, each party supplies utilitarian and informational reinforcement for the behavior of the other. The sources of benefit are, therefore, both functional, in the form of utilitarian reinforcement, which is captured by economic-​psychological analysis, and social, in the form of informational reinforcement, which is captured by

Figure 5.3 Bilateral contingency. The figure sets out the basic idea of bilateral contingency involving two individuals, Ego and Other. The essential defining feature of such a bilateral contingency is that the behavior settings of the two parties are interlocked. This does not mean that their behaviors are inescapably intertwined; only that there is the capacity for each of them to influence the behavior of the other, partly by providing discriminative stimuli and motivating operations for it but, in the current context, principally by reinforcing one another’s activities through informational reinforcement. The respective three-​term contingencies that shape their behaviors are shown by the solid horizontal arrows. The interaction of behavior settings is such that a response of Ego acts as a discriminative stimulus for that of Other. Similarly, Other’s responding is a discriminative stimulus for the Ego’s behavior. These relationships are indicated by the vertical arrows. In addition, Ego’s behavior results in the receipt of positively reinforcing or aversive stimuli by Other, and the reverse is the case for Other’s behavior and its effects on Ego’s. These relationships are indicated by the diagonal dashed arrows. Depending on the extensional or intentional paradigm adopted to account for their activities, each participant is vital to the provision of the stimulus field that occasions the other’s behavior, or the instigator of the perceptions and cognitions that make one another’s actions intelligible. Not all inter-​personal interactions involve either utilitarian reinforcement or informational reinforcement.

70  Levels of Exposition socio-​psychological analysis. Bilateral contingency analysis is, therefore, broader than economic analysis alone. Appreciating the nature of the bilateral contingency, which links the marketer and consumer, necessitates the definition of the corporate behavior setting which characterizes the impetus the firm has for its behavior. This comprises, principally, its opportunities to earn sales revenue or profits in the marketplace (utilitarian reinforcement) and to enhance its reputation among current and potential consumers by displaying trustworthiness, innovativeness, and entrepreneurship (informational reinforcement). In return, the firm supplies utilitarian and informational reinforcement to the consumer in the form of better products and services (see Foxall, 2021, for a full discussion). These setting elements reflect the marketer’s history of pursuing similar strategies, its competitive position, and its capacity to pursue its strategic ends. The outcome of the reciprocal interaction of the consumer and marketer in the situation defined by a particular bilateral contingency is the formulation of an intersubjective exchange value, V1. This is the value at the super-​personal level. Both buyer and seller concur in this evaluation, at least to the extent to which it reveals the price at which they were willing to exchange the good in question in an open competitive marketplace. V1 is a conceptualization of value as an intersubjective agreement based on the price at which an exchange has taken place. More formally, we may say that, V1 is intersubjective value as established in the marketplace. This is a socially constructed index based on collective intentionality (Searle, 1995, 2010; Foxall, 2021): the widespread understanding that the market is an institution that delineates the agreed worth of an item, that at which it is reasonable for it to be exchanged for a given sum of money or another commodity. This level of valuation can be established intersubjectively and is the socially agreed worth of the item based on exchange value. Insofar as obtaining this level of value in an exchange relationship acts as an incentive to participation in a market exchange, goods or money of this value constitute a reinforcer for this behavior. This concept of value is a mainstay of most neoclassical economic analysis including that provided by operant behavioral economics. We have entertained the view that consumer choice as considered in this model, that is, as behavior, is determined by something that happens to the consumer, namely, the influence of the consumer behavior setting in which she operates (or at least it can be described and explained by reference to a consumer-​situation). Such responsive behavior is not invariably impulsive, a single uncontrolled reaction to a set of circumstances. It may be considered not as a molecular response, therefore, but as a molar series of responses to similar stimulus fields, a sequence of behavior. And it is always responsive to a learning history, that is, to the individual’s previously enacted behavior of a similar kind and the reinforcing and punishing consequences it has engendered. It appears to lie, nevertheless, at one end of a range of activities. In contrast to responsive behavior, considered action is the result of what the

A Suite of Models  71 consumer does, her conative, cognitive, affective, and perceptual phenomenology (or which must at least be described and explained by means of this appeal to intentionality). Executive functioning, which leads to considered action, is relatively slow mental processing, with considerable working memory (WM) involvement, serial processing, decontextualized (abstract), requiring high cognitive level and processing ability, reflective and learning capacity. Such an action falls within the purview of the intentional model, BPM-​I. Appraisal of BPM-​E

BPM-​E has given rise to a large volume of empirical research which relates consumer behavior to its pattern of contingent reinforcement and punishment in the contexts of product, brand, and store choice (for description and review, see Foxall, 2017a; Foxall et al., in press). This work, which is continuing, has revealed what can only be known through the pursuit of an extensional approach to consumption. It has also set the limitations of such modelling, since an exclusively extensional perspective cannot account for aspects of the continuity and discontinuity of behavior, come to terms with the personal level of consumer experience, or delimit the behavioral interpretations of choice. Further consideration is accorded the limitations of behaviorism in accounting for these aspects of behavior in later chapters but here we make the general case for intentional interpretation by the development of the intentional model, BPM-​I, as a consequence of the identification of the empirical “bounds of behaviorism.” The first source of limitation is the inability of the extensional model to account for aspects of behavioral continuity and discontinuity. Behavioral experiments sometimes change the schedule of reinforcement on which behavior is maintained. Nonhuman animals quickly adapt to the new schedule and modify their behavior accordingly. Humans are less flexible, however, and continue to behave as though the initial schedule was still in force. The possibility that humans employ verbal behavior in order to work out a strategy for gaining maximal reinforcement, to which they adhere once the contingencies have been altered, has been put forward to account for this. It is clearly a case in which the stimulus field that defines the current behavior setting cannot be held to explain or predict the observed behavior pattern. Simply to resort to “verbal behavior” in order to make sense of the new behavior pattern is hard to sustain since the verbal behavior would need to have a content (referencing to the nature of the contingencies affecting behavior) and this would necessitate an intentional interpretation (Foxall and Oliveira-​Castro, 2009.) The second limitation is the inability of the extensional model to accommodate phenomena that can only be conceptualized at the personal level of exposition. It is sometimes impossible to account for behavior without ascribing intentionality to the actor. In the radical behaviorist analysis of verbal behavior, for instance, an “autoclitic” is a verbal behavior that modifies the function of other verbal behavior (Skinner, 1957). In the sentence, “I know it is Wednesday,” “I know” modifies the strength of the assertion “It is Wednesday.” Were “I know” to be replaced by “I think” or “I believe” or “I’m certain” or “I doubt,” the strength of the statement “It

72  Levels of Exposition is Wednesday” would be modified in different ways. Smith (1994) makes use of this in a discussion of autoclitics that is critical of the standard radical behaviorist explanation of verbal behavior. He points out that, Analyzing the subject’s own behavior as a discriminative stimulus controlling the emission of other behavior is a standard behaviorist tactic for dispensing with mental entities. Skinner’s use of it breaks new ground, however, by using behavior that has not yet been emitted at the time it functions as a stimulus. In fact, it is not only the soon-​to-​be-​emitted responses that can serve as discriminative stimuli, but also the speaker’s own functional relationships with the environment. The autoclitic aspect of the complex response is thus sometimes under the control of the functional relationships that control other aspects of the response. The non-​autoclitic components of the response are primordial behavior upon which the autoclitic operates. As a result of the autoclitic process, the behavior itself emerges in a different from, and the autoclitic aspects of the total response are reinforced as a result of their ability to alter the effect of the primordial responses on an audience. (Smith, 1994, p. 165) The only way in which one can make sense of the speaker’s behavior in instances such as these is to acknowledge that part of the context of her behavior is available only to herself, that this behavior is intensional, and that it modifies her subsequent responding. The third limitation is the inability of the behaviorist perspective to precisely delimit interpretations of observed behavior. Radical behaviorists employ interpretation in instances in which the behavior with which they are concerned lies beyond a functional analysis, that is, they cannot point to the stimulus field that controls it. They assume, nevertheless, that there is such a field of stimulation and employ “behavioral interpretation” to close the gap, speculating about the discriminative stimuli and MO that might “plausibly” account for the behavior without their leaving the behaviorist camp. The problem with this is that there is no limit on the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment that they are able to imagine in order to render the behavior intelligible on their terms. It is possible to conjecture, for instance, that the individual whose behavior is the subject of the interpretation was responding to cues that lie beyond what it is feasible to identify. The only means of delimiting the behavioral interpretation is to propose what it was that this person could reasonably know given their situation. This is, of course, an intentional interpretation. All-​in-​all, these bounds of behaviorism, which require a transition from theoretical minimalism to intentional interpretation, stem from the fact that the goals of prediction and control no longer suffice: even if the radical behaviorist approach succeeds admirably on its own terms, this may not be enough for the researcher whose goals are not limited to prediction and control. But they are even more serious when the assumption of extensionality simply fails to predict.

A Suite of Models  73

Figure 5.4 The intentional Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM-​I).

BPM-​I: The Intentional Model In essence, the intentional consumer-​situation comprises the current consumer behavior setting as it is represented in the consumer’s intentionality (especially insofar as this refers to the expected reinforcing and punishing outcomes of consumer action) as primed by her learning history which is itself represented by her beliefs. Hence, the intentional consumer-​situation comprises (a) the contingency-​ representations that inform and shape the consumer’s action with respect to a set of contingencies of reinforcement that govern current and future choice, in light of (b) her perceptual and cognitive awareness of her consumption history, and (c) the beliefs which result from contemplation of that history and the probabilities of the reinforcing and punishing outcomes of further action. The intentional model is shown in Figure 5.4.4 The Intentional Consumer-​Situation

Contingency representations, which compose the intentional consumer-​situation, are propositional attitudes –​desires, beliefs, affects, and other perceptions –​which are envisaged to serve as evaluations of the reinforcing and punishing outcomes of previous behaviors. Conative contingency representations are the consumer’s desires for socio-​economic products and services; cognitive contingency-​ representations, the consumer’s beliefs about the nature, efficacy, availability, and so on of such goods. Like affective contingency-​representations, the third variety, they result from the consumer’s experience and prefigure her future consumer activity. Affective contingency representations are emotional feelings elicited by reinforcers and punishers; they are the ultimate rewards and sanctions generated by operant behavior. Not only do affective contingency representations not necessarily interfere with the rational components of decision-​making: they may help to implement it (Coricelli and Rustichini, 2009, p. 436). They may also act as the

74  Levels of Exposition affective correlates of value, since they are affective evaluations of the discrepancies between expected and actualized reinforcement. As Tappolet (2016, pp. xi–​xii) puts it, “emotions consist in perceptual experiences of values.” Affective contingency representations permit rapid decision-​making by bringing the whole gamut of previous experience to bear on current decision situations without the necessity of undertaking costly intellectual rumination and information processing. They thereby underpin both routine and extreme consumer choice, though in the former the consequences of speedy action are mostly beneficial, making repetitive decisions and actions easy and cheap to perform. In the case of more extreme consumption, however, they can lead to automatic responsive behaviors the consequences of which, especially long term, are not fully considered and evaluated. In these situations, avoidance of rash behaviors requires a cognitive intervention and perhaps also an additional emotional curb.5 In summary, the intentional consumer-​situation consists then of the mental representations of the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment which have influenced past actions and which shape future acts of purchase and consumption. These contingency representations are the beliefs, affects, and conations that encapsulate these actions and their reinforcing/​punishing and rewarding/​sanctioning outcomes. Beliefs result from the cognitive deliberation involved in the assembly of an array of goods that potentially fulfil a goal, the selection of a specific item according to the reasoned criteria by which the consumer appraises members and potential members of her consideration set, and the cognitive judgments that eventuate from the purchase of this or that specific item. Beliefs are therefore at the heart of the cognitive processing which are endemic to consumer choice itself. Affects, however, are perceptual, the outcome of interaction with environmental stimuli and reminiscences of past consumption experience. They may summarize the outcomes of prior consumption experience and the likely consequences of acting again in the current consumer behavior setting and they therefore also contain a judgmental element, an appraisal of the relevance of the experience to goals and the valuation of the utilitarian reinforcement (pleasure-​unpleasure), informational reinforcement (arousal-​unarousal), and the ambience of the setting (dominance-​submissiveness) experienced and/​or anticipated. Such affects are instant and so of great assistance to the decision process. Conation is a belief that such-​and-​such an action would be advantageous and therefore a desirable target of action. V2: Value at the Personal Level

The outcome of this consumer-​situation, prior to the consummation of a purchase, is subjective value, V2, which is the consumer’s personal cognitive estimation of the worth to her of the item to be purchased. It exists only as an intentional object, that is, accessible only to her, but which acts nevertheless as a guide to what value she is willing to surrender in order to obtain the commodity. It has both utilitarian and informational components. It may even be ineffable and not translatable, even by the consumer whose it is, into knowledge-​by-​description that would begin to objectify it. Whether it becomes objectified in the marketplace,

A Suite of Models  75 revealing the commodity’s V1, depends on the coincidence of the V2s of consumer and producer. “Coincidence” does not mean that V2s are identical but that they are contemporaneous. More formally, we may define V2 as a subjective value which exists only in the mind of the individual consumer or marketer: V2 is what the individual personally rates the commodity at. It may be expressed in terms of a notional amount of money or goods –​ that quantity for which she would be willing to exchange it. It may be more ineffable than this: the personal worth it has even though the individual would never wish to exchange it. It might be measured as the amount of work the individual has performed in making or acquiring the item, something not necessarily related to its exchange value. This notion of valuation, conceived as an intentional object is a mainstay of Austrian economic analysis; it also resonates with the idea of value in the short-​and long-​range interests that comprise picoeconomic analysis. Affective contingency-​representation emerges then as a central element in subjective valuation. Pleasure, Arousal, and Dominance as Core Affects

Mehrabian and Russell (1974) present a tripartite classification of emotions as they relate to various kinds of environment, namely, pleasure, arousal, and dominance. Mehrabian (1980) argues that these are primary adaptations, a contention that entails the identification of these emotions’ neural substrates and relatedness to adaptive behaviors. Barrett et al. (2007) confirm Mehrabian and Russell’s judgment that these three emotions are fundamental to the mental representation of emotion and relate them to reinforcement and punishment (see also Barrett, 2005; Russell and Barrett, 1999). Panksepp’s (1998, 2007) seven core emotional systems –​SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE, PANIC, and PLAY –​correspond at a general level to the three emotions adopted by Mehrabian and Russell (1974). The approximation is strengthened if, following Toronchuk and Ellis (2013), PLEASURE and POWER/​DOMINANCE are included as core emotions (Figure 5.5). Feelings of pleasure are closely related to the evolutionarily based outcomes of biological fitness; moreover, utilitarian or functional reward promotes the restoration and maintenance of homeostasis (Panksepp, 1998). Expectation of pleasure also facilitates goal orientation by contributing to the setting of objectives (Politser, 2008). The association of the core emotion of pleasure-​displeasure is associated with the utility/​disutility of behavioral consequences (Barrett et al., 2007) resulting from approach/​avoidance of specific stimuli. This accords with Rolls’s (1999) argument that the stimuli that reinforce or punish behavior evoke emotional feeling. Genetic endowment specifies not particular behaviors but the goals of classes of behavior by selecting the stimuli that will reinforce or punish approach and avoidance (Rolls, 2005).

76  Levels of Exposition

Figure 5.5 Emotional systems and pleasure, arousal, and dominance. Panksepp’s (1998) seven core emotional systems, augmented by PLEASURE and POWER/​ DOMINANCE (after Toronchuk and Ellis, 2013) and related to Mehrabian and Russell’s (1974) tripartite classification of emotions. Note that Panksepp employs uppercase letters for these core emotions which represent complex propositional systems in terms of “convenient vernacular heuristics.”

Barrett et al. (2007) specifically link “core affect,” pleasure-​displeasure, with the helpfulness or harmfulness of stimulus events, the likelihood that these outcomes will lead to rewarding or aversive consequences, and their consequent acceptance or rejection (Barrett et al., 2007, p. 377). They thereby corroborate the conclusion that these hedonic considerations indicate utilitarian reinforcement, a view expressed also by Panksepp (1998, p. 112) who argues that such positive feelings indicate to the organism that biologically useful consequences are contingent upon its responses to the stimuli in question: “Useful” stimuli … inform the brain of their potential to restore the body toward homeostatic equilibrium when it has deviated from its biologically dictated “set point” level. Affective processes are central to the homeostatic process: the experience of pleasure denotes that equilibrium has been restored (e.g., because hunger or thirst has been assuaged). As an index of material, biological equilibrium, mediated by tangible physical events, and based on the biogenic influences on behavior that give rise to primary reinforcement, the occurrence of pleasure is consistent with what consumer behavior analysis understands as utilitarian reinforcement. Affect is intentional: it comprises mental states that display aboutness and its content can be expressed in the form of propositional attitudes (Solomon, 1973). Barrett at al. (2007) suggest that the elements of emotion, other than pleasure, that

A Suite of Models  77 Mehrabian and Russell identify as central –​namely, arousal and dominance –​provide the content of core emotion (pleasure-​displeasure). These authors speak in terms of arousal-​based content, relational content, and situational content. Arousal signifies activeness and is manifest in reports of being active, attentive, wound-​up, while unarousal manifests in stillness, reported as being still, quiet, and sleepy. This active-​versus-​still dimension reflects Mehrabian and Russell’s arousal and incorporates the affective reaction to informational reinforcement. “Dominance” is generally understood as referring to interpersonal control, a context-​specific response (Sulloway, 2007). The dominance to which Mehrabian and Russell (1974) draw attention is an affective response to both physical and social environments which varies with the extent to which the setting encourages autonomy or compels conformity. What Barrett et al. (2007) call relational content is social and reflects the degree of domination or submissiveness that is felt in the presence of others; this social dimension of affective reaction suggests a response to the experienced scope of the consumer behavior setting. Their conception of situational content indexes the extent to which a setting is novel or unexpected, conducive to or obstructive of a goal, compatible or otherwise with norms and values, and capable of conferring feelings of responsibility or agency. These sources of the content of core affect are appropriate to the maintenance of or a change in the individual’s behavioral stance, that is, her readiness for action. The relationship between dominance and the BPM’s conception of the scope of the consumer behavior setting is evident from the tendency of consumers to report high levels of this emotional response in more open settings, which provide a wider range of behavioral outcomes, and which are for the most part under the control of the consumer herself rather than an external agent such as a marketer or government department. The experience of being in a setting which enables more rather than fewer courses of action may in itself be reinforcing and, more relevantly to the present discussion, rewarding; being within a restrictive environment, sanctioning, though this depends, of course, on a plethora of situational and personal factors. Affect and Contingency

Each of the categories of consumer-​situation identified in Figure 5.2 is associated with a unique pattern of emotional reaction defined in terms of the pleasure, arousal and dominance dimensions of Mehrabian and Russell’s (1974) approach to environmental psychology (Figure 5.6). These have been substantiated by a considerable volume of empirical investigation, described in detail in Foxall (2011, 2017b) and Foxall et al. (2012). The general hypotheses tested are that pleasure increases directly with utilitarian reinforcement and arousal with informational reinforcement, while dominance increases directly with the openness of the consumer behavior setting. The specific hypotheses were therefore that pleasure scores for patterns of consumer-​situation numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 would each exceed those of 5, 6, 7, and 8;

78  Levels of Exposition

Figure 5.6 Patterns of contingent affective response. The empirical research indicates that pleasure, arousal, and dominance scores were significantly higher (presented in uppercase) than those from which they were hypothesized to differ (lowercase).

arousal scores for patterns of consumer-​situation number 1, 2, 5, and 6 would each exceed those of 3, 4, 7, and 8; and dominance scores for patterns of consumer-​situation numbers 1, 3, 5, and 7 would each exceed those for CCs 2, 4, 6, and 8. Moreover, a behavioral index in the form of approach–​avoidance scores for patterns of consumer-​situation numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 each exceed those for 5, 6, 7, and 8, and approach–​avoidance scores for patterns of consumer-​situation numbers 1 and 3 would each exceed those for 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. These hypotheses were all supported. These patterns of emotion indicate the rewards and sanctions deriving from the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment that define the relevant pattern of consumer-​situation. The relationship, captured by the idea of operancy, which links reinforcement and reward and which is, therefore, implicit in these interactions between contingency and affect may be interpreted extensionally or intentionally. In the former,

A Suite of Models  79 the province of BPM-​E, the focus is simply on predicting and possibly influencing behavior by understanding the stimuli that control it. In this context, the affective reactions to the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment –​pleasure, arousal, and dominance –​are no more than verbal responses to questionnaire-​based stimuli presented to elicit respondents’ descriptions of the emotional context in which certain behaviors have taken place in the course of their learning history. There is no need to know what, if anything, the consumer may actually have felt as this history of consumption unfolded. However, the intentional interpretation of her activity allows the reconstruction of her affective experience as a means of making her actions more intelligible. This shift from theoretical minimalism to intentional interpretation is at the heart of intentional behaviorism. BPM-​N: The Neurophysiological Model The Neurophysiological Consumer-​Situation

The extensional model of consumer choice (BPM-​E) provides a mechanism for the establishment of the values of commodities as they are intersubjectively determined in the marketplace (V1). The intentional model (BPM-​I) is concerned with the establishment and operation of the subjective values of consumers and marketers that both guide and result from market transactions (V2). But BPM-​E and BPM-​I do not tell the whole story. We turn now to the way in which what we may understand as “objective” valuations are achieved during the neurophysiological events that precede and accompany the creation of V1 and V2. We will refer to this “neuronal valuation” as V3 and the model which encapsulates its formation and operation as the neurophysiological model of consumer choice, BPM-​N. We must now take into consideration the effects of dopamine (DA): its role in reinforcement of routine and extreme consumer behaviors and the rate of firing of dopaminergic neurons, interpreted as a measure of valuation of the rewards which occasion them (Figure 5.7). We interpret the action of DA as being implicated in the establishment of these relative values which take the form of V3s. This is how the stimulus field comes to set the occasion for reinforcement. The strength of the effect depends of course on the consumer’s learning history, which influences the rate of action potentials. The consumer behavior setting can, therefore, be understood as a means of establishing the relative values of reinforcers that compete for the consumer’s attention. The presentation of the reinforcer both physically and in thought, as well as the stimuli that predict its occurrence, is associated with the release of DA, which prepares the consumer for appetitive response. Not only are discriminative stimuli implicated in this increase in the rate of action potentials observed in dopaminergic neurons, but DA is also implicated in raising the salience of situational stimuli that have previously been associated with consumption and its expedition of excessive behaviors is thereby increased further (e.g., Berridge and Robinson, 2012). Salience is a property of whatever brings an item to the fore, causing it to stand out from others. The brain is said to “prefer” to process items that are highly

80  Levels of Exposition

Figure 5.7 The neurophysiological Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM-​N).

salient in terms, for example, of their color, orientation, size, pitch, and velocity (Horstmann, 2016). Note that the preparation of arousal is a function of both the stimulus field and the consumer-​situation. V3: Value at the Sub-​Personal Level

The reinforcers and rewards that regulate the frequency of behavioral responses are goals the attainment of which increases biological fitness. Midbrain DA neurons innervate neurons in the ventral striatum (VS) and prefrontal cortex (PFC) in response to reinforcers and stimuli that predict them. Phasic DA firing rates encode reinforcement predictions and establish reward prediction errors (RPEs) that relate not only to the acquisition of reinforcers and rewards locally but thereby to the enhancement of fitness. (RPEs are described more fully in Chapter 7.) Reinforcers are processed in the ventral striatum, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). OFC is also involved in the desirability of a reinforcer compared with its alternatives. Reinforcers and punishers and the rewards and sanctions that ensue from them represent what the individual consumer values to a greater or less extent. There is a close relationship between the rate of dopaminergic action potentials and the probability and magnitude of the predicted reinforcers and punishers and, therefore, rewards and sanctions. OFC neurons relate RPEs to the prevailing intra-​personal and extra-​personal contexts, motivation, and satiety in the first case, and to such factors as alternative reinforcers and the opportunity costs of acquiring them in the latter (Platt et al., 2017, p. 196). Hence, the valuation on which decision-​making rests is accomplished in OFC. DA-​related activity in ventral striatum, amygdala, and OFC form part of the network through which valuation takes place. These are areas known to intervene between sensation and action. The behavioral experiments carried out with this in mind compare consumers’ revealed preferences with dopaminergic action potentials. OFC transforms

A Suite of Models  81 RPs information into a common currency of valuation which experimenters interpret alongside behavioral data with respect to options chosen (ibid.) Neural Valuation

Having discussed the neuronal valuation of reinforcers, we can progress toward a more formal conception of neural valuation. Glimcher (2009, 2010) defines what he calls “subjective value” which approximates the orthodox economic notion of utility. It is operationalized as the number of action potentials per second, measured by the mean firing rates of designated neuronal populations. In order to avoid confusion with what I am referring to as subjective value (V2), I refer to this as neural value, V3. Both Glimcher’s idea and that of V3 are neuroeconomic notions of value. Empirical evidence, including that provided by fMRI, suggests that the neuronal value is encoded by the mean activity in the mPFC in the case of an action and the ventral striatum in the case of a good (see especially Glimcher, 2010, pp. 136–​139). In a nutshell, value in terms of BPM-​N, that is, neuronal value or V3, is an idea of valuation attributed by the neurophysiological observer as a metric of a physical event. The comparative valuation of alternative incentives rests on the degree of preparedness or arousal the dopaminergic reward system achieves in the form of action potentials. The incentive which occasions the greater rate of neuronal firing is said to be valued higher than another. This is interpreted as the reinforcer which will eventuate in the greatest level of utility for the organism, that which will increase its biological fitness the most. In BPM-​N, the consumer-​situation reflects the consumer’s behavioral history, especially her consumption history, as it has been occasioned by the neural computation of values, V3s, in connection with her evaluation of the worth of the ownership or use of the good in question. Now V3 differs conceptually from V1 and V2. Recall that V1 is an inter-​subjective notion of the price at which a commodity has been exchanged in a free market transaction. It is assumed to be identical for each of the parties to the transaction and to observers. The transaction and the value are described in extensional language. Recall also that, in considerable contrast, V2 is a subjective valuation of a commodity or action, for example, the consumer’s or the seller’s prospective and retrospective attribution of worth to a commodity or action. This is in each case a personal, private (unless voiced) estimation and differs from individual to individual and potentially within an individual over time. There is therefore no equation of the consumer’s estimation and that of the seller. The estimation and the recollected (past) or imagined (future) transaction are described in intentional language. In further contrast, V3 is a metaphorical attribution of valuing to a neural process. All that is observed is the number of action potentials per second; this is taken as a relative valuation of the stimulus that evoked it. V3 functions well as a means of explaining consumer choice, one which can enter into economic statements linking utility maximization with value.

82  Levels of Exposition (As stated in Chapter 2, if the neural events in question correlate with a behavioral index of value, then the hypothesis that consumer choice maximizes value can be empirically appraised.) V3 differs from V1 in that it is not the result of a transaction; from V2, in that it cannot be brought to the conscious attention of the individual consumer or seller. But, unlike them, it can be employed to account for the relationship between value and choice in extensional research which transcends the sub-​personal and super-​personal levels of exposition. Contingency-​Shaping and Rule-​Governance or Perceiving and Believing? A Comparison of the Paradigms

Intentional psychology, embracing both perception and cognition, neither of which finds a place in radical behaviorism, makes BPM-​I the appropriate vehicle to account for both perceptual knowledge by acquaintance and cognitive knowledge by description. It deals with both perceptually based consumer action which exhibits no obvious decision process for the choice in question, where responding to a stimulus is immediate, and cognitively based action, reflecting deliberative decision-​making based on comparative evaluation and conscious cognition-​based choice. As far as the first, perceptual action, is concerned, comprehending such a choice in perceptual terms may, however, require the appreciation that it may be based on prior intentional reasoning resulting in knowledge by description that reflects knowledge of the benefits of consumption and the consumer’s experience of doing so hitherto. While there is “unadorned” perception, for example, of novel natural phenomena leading to knowledge by acquaintance, there is also “guided” perception which is primed by knowledge by description. As far as the second, cognitive action, is concerned, comprehending consumer action in terms of cognition entails attributing more elaborate intentional mental processing which leads to considered action. Even if decisions are reached in this manner, however, such deliberation is essentially a preparation for subsequent responding in situations of purchase and consumption. Such responding is based on perceptual cues for which the cognitive decision-​making has primed the consumer’s consideration set and her understanding and evaluation of the settings in which she behaves. This determines her immediate response to the contingency-​representations evoked by such settings. Because both perception and cognition are contentful, the intentional psychologist understands them as mental phenomena, based on the reasoning developed in Chapter 3. The radical behaviorist, by contrast, conceptualizes the rapid responding extensionally as stimulus-​bound behavior that discriminates directly, based on the kind of the stimulation involved and the consumer’s learning history. They insist, further, that what cognitivists envisage as a matter of decision processes can be accommodated as what they call verbal behavior. This section argues that both of these may be construed as intentional in form if they necessarily involve the representation of the stimulus field and its potential consequences in language.6

A Suite of Models  83 The radical behaviorist argument is that their methodology can handle the so-​ called perception and cognition by recasting them as behaviors and making a distinction between contingency-​shaped behavior and rule-​governed behavior (Skinner, 1969). Perception is behavior that discriminates on the basis of its familiarity with the contingencies; such behavior is shaped by the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment that accompany it. This contingency-​shaped behavior is shaped and maintained by a single set of behavioral contingencies as described by the familiar three-​term formulation. The deliberative processes that lead to decisions, what intentional psychologists refer to as cognitive processing, are by contrast “rule-​governed behavior.” This verbal behavior is shaped and maintained not only by the set of contingencies just mentioned but also by a second set which inhere in a verbal rule (Skinner, 1974; see especially Hayes, 1989). Such behavior is, therefore, guided by the naturally occurring contingencies that mark out the physical and social characteristics of the consumer behavior setting and by those which specify how to behave in the form of verbal instructions, warnings, descriptions, and so on, in order to bring about certain forms of utilitarian and informational reinforcement. One behaves in the prescribed fashion not simply to obtain the naturally occurring reinforcer, but also to gain the admiration of the rule-​giver or to avoid her strictures for non-​compliance (Catania et al., 1982). The behaviorist conception of rule-​governed behavior is difficult to accept, however, since verbal rules, linguistically expressed, are inevitably intentional in their verbal formulation and syntactic structure. The two sets of contingencies to which Catania et al. (1982) draw attention are not independent but necessarily interactive. This formulation cannot easily be accommodated within the extensional paradigm to which radical behaviorism claims to adhere. The interaction of the sets of contingencies must surely consist in the representation of the naturally occurring contingencies within those specified by the verbal rule. This is clear from consideration of the three principal kinds of rule that have been proposed based on the functions they perform in influencing behavior (Zettle and Hayes, 1982; see also Hayes, 1989). The first, the track, is instructed behavior that comes under the control of the physical environment. So, a track is a rule that denotes how the physical environment is arranged. In answer to a query how to get to the General Hospital, one might be told, “Turn left at the next intersection, then left again at the bank, and finally make a right at the lights. The hospital will be in front of you.” As a result of “tracking” her physical surroundings as directed, the consumer arrives at her goal which consists in utilitarian reinforcement. The second kind of rule, the ply, is regulated by consequences that the speaker controls (or claims to control) which may reinforce or punish the follower’s behavior. In this case, the rule encapsulates the interpersonal consequences of compliance or noncompliance. As an example, a partygoer might be told that their partner will disapprove of overindulgence in alcohol, the spoken or understood instruction being “Don’t drink too much or no more parties!” An advertisement that portrays social approval as contingent on the consumption of a particular product, say, an expensive piece of jewelry, is making use of a ply such as “People

84  Levels of Exposition will approve of you if you wear this,” or “Don’t be seen without this!” The actor’s behavior is now directed toward the attainment of both utilitarian reinforcement and informational reinforcement. The third kind of rule is the augmental, a strongly motivating claim that vividly describes the reinforcing or punishing outcomes of an advocated behavior. A message informing a consumer that by booking “just one more trip” with an airline she has used in the past she will receive a free night in a luxury hotel is an augmental rule. As such, it is designed to enhance the relationship between the behavior and its reinforcer, and thereby resembles a motivating operation. The goal is utilitarian reinforcement but something has happened to the consumer’s stimulus field that increases its attractiveness and perhaps the valuation of its immediacy. If verbal behavior is to be understood within a strictly radical behaviorist paradigm as shaping and maintaining non-​verbal behavior, it can only be because the sounds and appearances of spoken and written words act as discriminative stimuli and MO which are indistinguishable from other physical components of the consumer’s stimulus field. In other words, verbal behavior must necessarily be subject to identical contingencies of reinforcement and punishment in order for it to belong to the radical behaviorist scheme of explanation. Nothing must be different on account of the behavior’s being designated verbal: it must be shown to be as much determined by the discriminative stimuli and MO that compose the behavior setting, accented by the consumer’s learning history, as is contingency-​ shaped behavior. If, however, the content of rules is judged to be representational or intentional, then their analysis cannot be accommodated with the radical behaviorist paradigm. It is difficult in view of this to understand why radical behaviorists have developed a separate category of behavior and dubbed it “verbal.” If it turns out that radical behaviorism cannot treat complex behaviors of this kind within its own methodology, then we need to turn to intentional interpretation in order to make the subject matter intelligible. Radical behaviorism remains highly relevant to the comprehension of consumer choice which is clearly under situational influence, that is, contingency-​shaped. Operant psychology confers advantages particularly in the form of predicting certain aspects of buyer behavior in relatively closed settings, for instance, and acts as a check on intentional interpretation that is in danger of straying too far from what can be demonstrated by experimental and statistical analyses of extensionally delineated components of the three-​term contingency. Beyond this, however, there may be reason to at least consider the influence of the consumer’s physical and social environment in terms of perception, either in addition to or in place of contingency-​shaping. There are two indications that this might be the case. First, there is no demonstrable means of overcoming the lack of a learning history when a new brand is introduced into an established product category and accepted by the consumer. Pointing to the “similarity” of the stimulus field surrounding the new brand and that which is characteristic of the brands already in the consumer’s consideration set is somewhat conjectural. There is no reason the learning history would be “transferable” –​it rarely happens that a new brand is even tried, let alone adopted. Only a small fraction of current product category users even try a new

A Suite of Models  85 brand, even though all are presented with the new stimulus field. Further, most new brands fail at the point of consumer acceptance, something which, if learning histories were readily adaptable from existing brands to new ones, would scarcely be the case. Second, when a new brand is tried by the consumer, it takes a long period of trial before it is adopted into her consideration set. This is a cognitive process of comparative evaluation, exactly as Padoa-​Schioppa defines economic choice. The behaviorist might argue that this is not a cognitive process but one of establishing a learning history based on the reinforcement and punishment the consumer’s behavior receives over the trial period. But the pattern of reinforcement and punishment is identical for each of the consumers who try the brand: they all receive the same marketing mix (discriminative stimuli and MO) and the same reinforcing and punishing consequences. And yet only a small fraction of triers adopt the brand as a member of their consideration set. Something else is going on. Both eventual adopters and non-​adopters are subject to precisely the same contingencies. The something else that is going on consists of, first, the cognitive and perceptual makeup of the individual consumers including their cognitive styles and, second, differential cognitive processing and appraisal in line with individual goals and resources. These intentional processes are responsible for what consumers require by way of utilitarian and informational reinforcement. Whatever the capacity of radical behaviorism to predict, this is a procedure apparently based on perceptual and cognitive evaluation. Dual Sources of Explanation

These points in favor of considering highly routinized consumer choice as perceptual rather than stimulus-​bound refer principally to consumer choice as everyday selection, but they may have parallels in the case of intermittent and even extreme consumer choice, especially where behavior change is at issue. However, a general case can be made for assuming the relevance of an intentional framework of analysis for routine consumer choice, while the extensional framework pertains more closely to behaviors approaching the extreme pole. This assertion is based on differences in the scope of consumer behavior settings at each pole, something that implies both the diversity of contingencies operating in each case and the consequent ease of identifying the stimuli to which control of consumer activity in each kind of situation may be attributed. Hence, the case for considering BPM-​I to be highly relevant to the routine pole of the Continuum is corroborated by the openness of consumer behavior settings in this context which renders consumer choice less predictable, certainly at the individual level but also in the aggregate. Accounting for the continuity and discontinuity of such action necessitates allusion to the personal level of individual phenomenology. Restraining the temptation in the course of behavioral interpretation to refer to stimulus fields and learning histories that are not in fact empirically available also promotes an intentional analysis. The increasingly closed range of consumer behavior settings encountered as one’s purview extends toward the

86  Levels of Exposition extreme pole of the Continuum is more congruent with explanation in terms of situational variables as opposed to cognitive deliberation. And, inasmuch as the behavior one meets in this progression is at least predictable in terms of operant analysis of such situational factors, BPM-​E is indicated as a source of explication. Consideration of compulsive and addictive behaviors as operant in so much of the literature on the neurophysiology of addiction bears witness to the capacity of behavior analysis to illumine the activities involved. However, more will be said later about the explanation of behavior change in those contexts where extensional explanation is generally feasible. This preliminary discussion of the division of labor between the extensional and intentional models is concerned with the problem of complementarity, of which much more will be said in Part III. The present concern, however, is with the necessity of being open to alternative sources of explanation as a requirement of implementing the sequential stages of the intentional behaviorist research strategy. The evidence suggests at the least a bifurcation of explanation between consumer activity that is amenable to a behaviorist analysis and that which requires consideration with an intentional paradigm. Summary and Conclusions BPM-​E and BPM-​I give rise to distinctive conceptions of consumer value and their accounts of consumer choice are incommensurable, motivating the quest to ascertain how, if at all, they may generate a unified explanation of consumer choice. While both remain indispensable to a complete understanding of consumer choice, they contribute sequentially. The procedure may be illustrated by reference to super-​personal and personal conceptions of informational reinforcement. Informational reinforcement, at the super-​personal level of exposition, depends on the actions of other people in the consumer’s milieu. At the personal level, it reflects also the actions and/​or perceptions of the consumer herself. In the former case, it takes the form of informational reinforcement which is traced to environmental stimuli such as another person’s expression of gratitude or appreciation. In the second case, however, when the individual whose actions are influenced by it is the instigator of the controlling consequences through her own evaluative thoughts and feelings, it takes the form of personal reward, which is affectively based and is felt as self-​esteem (high levels of pleasure, arousal, and dominance) or shame (low levels of these affects.) This stands in contrast to utilitarian reinforcement which is mediated by some aspect of the functional benefits directly provided by the acquisition, ownership, or consumption of a product or service. The receipt of utilitarian reinforcement may also lead to affective reactions, notably pleasure, and this constitutes utilitarian reward, but only personal reward –​that is, the self-​conferral of evaluative emotional feelings –​consists entirely in this consequence, even when it is mediated by the consumer’s thinking. Elements of the marketing mix other than the product or service, like advertising messages or price or availability, may influence utilitarian reinforcement by enhancing the functional benefits provided

A Suite of Models  87 by the good in question; they may also impinge on the consumer’s informational reinforcement by influencing the confidence she feels in choosing and using the item or the status she enjoys by doing so publicly. Although I shall speak of informational reinforcement to cover both the environmental consequences that influence response rate positively and the affective rewards to which these lead, the crucial explanatory difference between them is of significance to the intentional behaviorist research strategy. Informational reinforcement, in the strict sense, manifests as changes in behavior that are simply the result of inter-​personal feedback on performance: “You are doing well!” which results in increased responding; such impact on behavior may be imperceptible to the individual who performs the behavior; the reinforcer in this case is simply the behavior of the social other, be it verbal or physical. The relevant model here is BPM-​E since only physical stimuli are involved. Note, however, that although “informational reinforcement” and “social reinforcement” have hitherto been used synonymously, they will take on more precise delineations in the following chapter. Changes in the individual’s perception of her actions and their environmental effects, including her affective evaluations thereof, which lead to changes in her actions of which she is aware, are the domain of informational reward. The relevant model here is BPM-​I. The consumer may provide informational reinforcement to herself when her actions meet some personally or socially established norm; for example, a golfer whose score does not exceed the par for the course may congratulate herself, making further responding of this kind more likely when her performance is again so successful. Again, to avoid ambiguity, we can refer to this as personal reward. The import of this distinction will become apparent in Chapter 6. Notes 1 In tracing the foundations of radical behaviorism as a philosophy of behavioral science and a methodology for operant research, it is essential to consider the painstaking definition and delineation of the field by B. F. Skinner. Although not alone in this task (Skinner rather disarmingly pointed out on several occasions that he was not speaking as “the behaviorist”), his is a rigorous approach to an extensional science. Skinner (1938, 1945) sought to establish a natural science of behavior in which psychological terms refer to relations between the organism’s behavior and the controlling environment in which it occurs (Morris, 2012). This science was founded upon the observable datum of a response occurring in an equally observable context composed of discriminative and reinforcing stimuli (Skinner, 1950). Radical behaviorism, as the philosophy of the behavioral science he developed, eschews reference to intra-​personal psychic influences on behavior and seeks, not always successfully, to avoid intentional language. He was acutely aware of the implications of using intentional language for the adoption of intentional explanation. Even his last work was vitally concerned to delineate radical behaviorism from cognitivism on the basis of linguistic usage (Skinner, 1989). His assiduity in defining verbal expressions so as to eliminate intentional explanation is exemplified by his allusion to the meaning of “in order to” as in the description of a fisherman spreading nets “in order to

88  Levels of Exposition snare fish.” For Skinner, the “order” here denotes the temporal sequencing of spreading and ensnaring, rather than indicative of a purpose or plan for catching fish (Skinner, 1971.) 2 In presenting a basic view of the operant paradigm, especially one which will ultimately lead to its being criticized as less than universal in the range of explanation it offers, it is easy to give the impression that it is a machine-​like and unfeeling paradigm for behavioral research. However, I do not wish remotely to suggest that operant research is inflexible or mechanistic in its approach to investigation or that it fails to come to terms with alternative conceptual and methodological positions. To the contrary, the radical behaviorist tradition has, especially in recent years, embraced a number of philosophical perspectives that display a catholicity of viewpoints and stimulating intellectual debate. Hence, Zilio and Carrara (2021) are able to draw attention to Staddon’s “Theoretical behaviorism,” Rachlin’s “teleological behaviorism,” Baum’s “molar behaviorism,” Donahoe’s “biological behaviorism,” Hayes’s “contextual behaviorism,” and Ribes-​Iñesta’s “field-​theory behaviorism” as well as intentional behaviorism, which individually and collectively display a vibrant and progressive research program. Behavior analysis is also home to several stimulating and energetic programs of “pure” conceptual and empirical research which have transformed traditional behavioral psychology. Prominent examples are the analysis of verbal behavior (e.g., Hayes, 1989), equivalence relations (e.g., Arntzen, 2012; Arntzen and Nartey, 2018, and, in the realm of consumer behavior analysis, Arntzen, Fagerstrøm and Foxall, 2016) and operant behavioral economics (Foxall, 2016c; Foxall et al., in press). These empirical and conceptual developments are sufficient in themselves to establish behavior analysis as a progressive research program, of which the social and behavioral sciences in general, and the philosophy of social science in particular, should take serious note. It is apparently easier to rely on outdated notions of radical behaviorism and to ignore the dynamic work that has been undertaken especially during the last 35 years. Many of the insights gained through empirical research in these domains are leading directly into applied behavior analysis which exhibits exciting advances –​for example, in the fields of autism, addiction, organizational behavior, psychotherapy, and other areas of behavioral change. A prominent example is the adoption of process-​based therapies by some researchers and practitioners, for example, Hayes’ (Hayes et al., 2016) Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which employ but transcend the operant paradigm in order to consider previously unexplored mechanisms of action. Another is the study and treatment of autism based on behavior analysis (Leaf et al., 2022). Hence, far from being a lackluster research program, operant psychology is an active and stimulating field. 3 The theoretical framework is set out in Foxall (2010) and empirical research to which it has led is discussed in Foxall (2017b), Foxall et al. (2007), and Foxall et al. (in press). 4 The foundations of BPM-​I derive from two trends in psychological and philosophical work on the explanation of behavior. The first may be traced to behaviorists including Hull (e.g., Hull, 1935; Deutsch, 1960; see also Amsel and Rashotte, 1984) and Tolman (1948), Staats and Bandura both of whom employ intentional language and, thereby, intentional explanation. Despite what has been said about Skinner’s care in linguistic usage, he came to freely admit that he used cognitive language in order to make clear his expositions of behaviorist explanation (e.g., Skinner, 1971, 1974). Other staunch radical behaviorists have found it equally necessary to employ intentional language in order to express themselves (Baum, 2017; for a discussion of the implications of this, see Foxall, 2009). The problem with this is borne out by the second trend, an insistence by philosophers of the inevitability of intentional explanation when this apparently innocent attempt to communicate is employed. Among others, Chisholm (1957), Dennett (1969), and Taylor (1964/​ 2021) have argued persuasively that such use of intentional language (that expressed in

A Suite of Models  89 propositional attitudes containing “attitudes” such as believes and desires and a content or proposition like “that it is raining”) necessarily entails intentional explanation and so departs from the mode of explanation on which radical behaviorism is based. Bridging these sources of influence, philosophically inclined psychologists such as Kimble (1996) elaborated stimulus-​response behaviorism to embrace cognitive and other explanations. 5 Some of the philosophical implications of this reasoning are discussed by Schröder et al. (2014). 6 I have covered this fully in Foxall (2016b, especially Chapter 9), showing where the intentional behaviorist account of rule-​governed behavior differs from the radical behaviorist.

6 Coming to Terms with Intentionality

Abstract Intentional interpretation is inevitable, not to replace extensional explanation but to supplement it. This chapter draws particular attention to the complexities posed by a key explanatory variable in the intentional behaviorist research program, informational reinforcement, notably its implications for explanation at the super-​personal and personal levels. The explication of informational reinforcement may involve either the extensional or the intentional paradigm. This necessitates the precise definition of social reinforcement and introduction of novel concepts: symbolic reinforcement and symbolic reward. Four patterns of informational reinforcement may be delineated, based on their involving independent or interdependent utility functions and their unidirectionality or bidirectionality. Consumers’ activities that follow from these contingencies are discussed by reference to their utility functions and the bilateral contingencies on which they are based. Explanation of informational reinforcement based on independent and interdependent utility functions does not divide neatly into the use of the extensional and intentional paradigms, respectively. The bifurcation of the second stage of the intentional behaviorist research strategy into the formation of basic and advanced intentional interpretations has implications for the use of BPM-​E and BPM-​I which foreshadow the treatment of the problems of complementarity and incommensurability in Part III. Varieties of Informational Reinforcement Further Dimensions of Operancy

Studies of the benefits generated in the course of consumer activity have identified two components of utility. The first, utilitarian reinforcement, is mediated by the product or service owned and/​or used by the consumer, which consists in functional benefit; the second, inter-​personally mediated informational reinforcement, derives from the evaluative responses of others toward the consumer’s purchase and consumption behaviors. Buyers are assumed to maximize, within their budgetary constraint, a specific bundle of utilitarian and informational reinforcement denoted by{UR, IR}. It seems likely that these components of utility are synergistically DOI: 10.4324/9781003262510-8

Coming to Terms with Intentionality  91 related since an increase in social reinforcement and, possibly, resultant self-​esteem may enhance the subjective valuation of the utilitarian benefits provided. Understanding of the synergistic effects of informational reinforcement is extended in this section through the concepts of social reinforcement, symbolic reinforcement, and symbolic reward. In order to understand the relationship between consumer activity and the pattern of utilitarian and informational utilities to which it leads, it is necessary to appreciate the nature and role of the socio-​ psychological context as well as the functional benefits of consumption. In particular, the affective reward experienced by one consumer may derive in part from that which is gained by another: a parent’s pleasure in a vacation can be enhanced by the apparent enjoyment that their child is experiencing; a couple may derive additional pleasure from knowing that their enjoyment is mutual; the responsible marketer ought to derive a sense of achievement on witnessing the benefits their consumers have derived from the marketing mixes they have provided. The relevant concept here is that of an interdependent utility function which summarizes the rewarding outcomes of a bilateral contingency that links the behavior settings of two individuals.1 Terms such as “social reinforcement” and “symbolic reinforcement” are elaborated in the remainder of this section, but an initial guide to their usage may be beneficial at this stage. Informational reinforcement is used generically to refer to all instances of inter-​personal influence on the rate of responding but, where necessary, it is specifically applied to this phenomenon as it is treated extensionally by BPM-​E. Social reinforcement applies to the same phenomenon when it is conceptualized intentionally within BPM-​I where the basic intentional interpretation rests on the treatment of the consumer as an idealized first-​order intentional system. Symbolic reinforcement is a subset of social reinforcement, also employed within the context of BPM-​I, for the purposes of advanced intentional interpretation in which the consumer is treated as a second-​order intentional system in the case of the attribution to her of symbolic reinforcement, and as a third-​order intentional system when her action is further interpreted in terms of symbolic reward. Note that the term “symbolic” is employed in these instances to emphasize the representative role of metacognition and metaperception in the interpretation at this stage, and that the basic and advanced intentional interpretations will be delineated shortly. Extensional Informational Reinforcement

Informational reinforcement is defined as the effect of inter-​personal interaction on the frequency of behavior. It may be extensionally conceived –​in terms of empirically verifiable effects on the rate of behaving such as smiles, words of thanks, or indices relative to performance. All these are physically specifiable indicators of worth or social esteem, which are measurable and experimentally manipulable. Along with utilitarian reinforcement, such third-​personal, extensionally conceived informational reinforcement provides the basis of reinforcement in BPM-​E which deals with operational variables which can enter scientific analysis based on either

92  Levels of Exposition an experimental or a statistical research design. BPM-​E comprehends utilitarian and informational reinforcement equally in these extensional terms. Social Reinforcement

Informational reinforcement may also be intentionally conceived in first-​personal cognitive and perceptual terms in the course of generating an intentional account of the consumer who is idealized as a utility-​maximizer. The relevant model now is BPM-​I. The interpretation proceeds in familiar intentional terms of perception (including affect), cognition, and conation. This account of consumer choice initiates the process of intentional interpretation which provides the second stage of the intentional behaviorist research strategy. Hence, it takes the form of comprehension of consumer choice that has progressed beyond extensional explanation, since the latter has become exhausted as a source of understanding. It is based on what the consumer would be thinking and feeling, given her goals, history, opportunities, resources, and rationality; it embraces both utilitarian and informational reinforcement and seeks to establish the contingency-​representations that would constitute the intentional consumer-​situation that renders the consumer’s activity, conceptualized as action, intelligible. It is especially concerned to make available an account which overcomes the inability of radical behaviorism to explicate behavioral continuity/​discontinuity, to embrace when appropriate the personal level of consumer experience, and to delimit otherwise unconstrained behavioral interpretation. Its stock-​in-​trade is the cognition attributed to the consumer and the emotional feelings of pleasure, arousal, and dominance experienced by the recipient of these indicators of personal attainment. Understood in terms of operancy, these affects are, strictly speaking, the rewards of behavior but they are understood as having similar reinforcing and/​or punishing effects on the repetition of action as do utilitarian consequences of behavior. Belonging to BPM-​I, however, they stand alongside cognitions and conations in forming the basis of the intentional interpretation based on contingency-​representation (as has been covered in Chapter 5). In order to distinguish the dynamic of the intentional consumer-​situation from that of the extensional, this conception of informational reinforcement is designated as social reinforcement to emphasize its reliance on folk psychology and, therefore, its intentional nature. Social reinforcement is based on the phenomenal intentionality of the consumer whose actions optimize a particular bundle of utilitarian and informational reinforcement which is maximized within the confines of her budgetary constraint.2 The utility function of the consumer whose action is so interpreted is considered to be independent of those of other consumers. It follows that in the intentional interpretation a consumer’s utility function includes not only the functional utility that derives from the direct exploitation of economic goods but also the socio-​psychological utility that emerges from the inter-​personal relationships and personal self-​monitoring that both prescribe and acknowledge the worthiness of owning and using them. Although analysis based on the assumption of E-​rationality does not necessarily ignore the social, personal, and informational sources of satisfaction inherent in the informational

Coming to Terms with Intentionality  93 reinforcement, it often de-​emphasizes them in its formal theoretical analyses in favor of the more easily quantified components of utility that correspond to utilitarian reinforcement. Economic psychology cannot afford to make this simplifying move if it is to reflect both of its disciplinary foundations, even though its analysis of the effects on behavior of its achieved and promised social benefits, based therefore on the assumption of EP-​rationality, may lack some of the precision possible in the case of exclusive reliance on functional benefits. Basic Intentional Interpretation

Intentional interpretation takes two forms. The initial construction thereof assumes, as noted, an idealized consumer, one who maximizes utility in the form of the utilitarian and informational reinforcement she obtains within her budgetary constraint. The interpretation comprises the reconstruction of all of the elements of the extensional consumer-​situation in intentional terms. In the BPM-​E, these are portrayed as operational, physically based discriminative stimuli and motivating operations and, at least in principle, documentable learning histories. In the BPM-​I, however, they are interpreted as the consumer’s personal and subjective perspective on all of these. Having responded to the bounds of behaviorism by generating an account of the focal consumer activity that can deal with its continuity and discontinuity, deal adequately with considerations that arise at the personal level of exposition, and overcome the excesses of behavioral interpretation, the basic level of intentional interpretation has succeeded on its limited terms of showing that a viable alternative to the now-​depleted theoretical minimalism of radical behaviorism is available. The procedures involved in generating an advanced interpretation then form the rudimentary phase of evaluating the basic intentional interpretation. Symbolic Reinforcement

Intentional interpretation can be deepened, however, by understanding the utility functions involved where appropriate to be interdependent. This calls for the conceptions of symbolic reinforcement and reward on the understanding that a symbol is something that stands for or represents something else, in this case through metacognition and metaperception. Symbolic reinforcement is a special category of social reinforcement. It occurs when Other’s utility, as it is perceived by Ego, enters Ego’s utility function. (This is denoted by puE/​O and will be called the second’s perceived utility, pu, though it is Ego who does the perceiving.) The social reinforcement involved can be interactive social reinforcement, when only one participant’s action is so reinforced or reciprocal social reinforcement, when each participant’s actions are reinforced by the other’s perceived utility. More broadly, symbolic reinforcement depends on one person’s mental representation of the way in which another person views them or their behavior. Metacognition refers to what one person believes about another person’s apparent view of them or their situation, meaning their overt manifestation of enjoyment or other emotion (and possibly, though this is more elusive, their cognitive response).

94  Levels of Exposition As cognition, this symbolic reinforcement is the outcome of a deliberative and evaluative process which establishes knowledge by description. Metaperception is non-​propositional knowledge of another’s apparent view of them or their response to their situation, the perception of another’s (apparent) perceptual impression. Some aspects of metaperception are affective, consisting, for instance, in one’s own evaluative feelings about the feelings other people (apparently) hold about one. In summary, in the terminology adopted here, metacognition consists in Ego’s beliefs about Other’s apparent beliefs about Ego. In this instance, metaperception consists in Ego’s perception of what she takes Other’s perceptions of Ego to be. The import of this is that these metacognitions and metaperceptions are in themselves reinforcing and/​or punishing of Ego’s behavior toward Other. They may also function as discriminative stimuli and/​or motivating operations in promoting continuity or discontinuity of behavior. The reinforcement is a matter not of gaining a functional benefit (as in utilitarian reinforcement) or of receiving social approval or confirmation from another person (informational reinforcement). Rather, it is manifest in the enhancement of an individual’s informational reinforcement as a result of how they themselves construe what they understand to be another person’s evaluation of them. The construal is formulated cognitively as a belief or perceptually as an affective evaluation. These construals may eventuate in conation: the individual’s tendency to maintain or modify her actions toward the other person involved in the dyad. If I think that my partner approves my choice of a new shirt, as this is conveyed by, say, her words and facial expressions, then this may constitute sufficient informational reinforcement to encourage me to purchase similar items again. Over and above this –​and here is where metacognition and metaperception enter the picture –​if I value this person’s judgment and opinions, I may myself perceive my purchase as astute. This is an additional source of reinforcement of my purchase behavior, one based on its symbolic worth, as I perceive it, in the eyes of another. (Symbolic punishment would consist in reduction in the rate of responding as a result of what the consumer thought or perceived another’s negative reaction to their behavior to be.) We have in the course of considering symbolic reinforcement, naturally and significantly entered the realm of symbolic reward. Informational reinforcement has been defined as the effect of social interaction on the frequency of behavior (an extensional view) and/​or as enhancement of the self-​esteem that ensues from this (see, e.g., Foxall, 2016b). The latter view has hitherto been largely a reasonable conjecture; however, the concept of interdependent utility functions pursued here provides a more substantial link between the two, for symbolic reinforcement and reward are the heart of interdependent utility functions. Ego’s behavior is informationally reinforced by Ego’s perception of and cognition about Other’s receiving positive informational reinforcement. But it is the way in which Ego evaluates this perception, an affective metaperceptual event that supplies symbolic reward of Ego’s own behavior. Symbolic reinforcement goes further than informational reinforcement considered intentionally (as in the basic intentional interpretation). It requires not only a cognition and/​or perception of another’s behavioral response to one’s own behavior but also an evaluation thereof, perhaps an affective response based on pleasure, arousal, and dominance,

Coming to Terms with Intentionality  95 which reinforces one’s socially applauded behavior. This is the essence of symbolic reward. Advanced Intentional Interpretation

The intentional interpretation is extended and deepened by considering the nature of the utility functions involved. In the case of BPM-​E, the consumer’s utility function is independent. Even if there is mutual interaction, as in a bilateral contingency, the parties’ utility functions remain independent. Moreover, in the initial analysis within BPM-​I, the consumer’s utility function remains independent: even if there is mutual interaction, the parties’ utility functions maintain independence. But there is a clear difference in the nature of the analyses offered by BPM-​E and BPM-​I: the former relies on an external purview of the consumer’s inter-​personally available situation, while the latter seeks an empathic understanding (Verstehen) of her subjective intentionality. This is so even though the basic intentional interpretation pursued at this point deals with independent utilities. The conceptual distinction is vital, however; hence, the basic intentional interpretation ought to refer to functional reinforcement and social reinforcement, respectively, to distinguish them from utilitarian and informational reinforcement as they appear in the extensional model. Further analysis within the purview of the intentional model, the pursuit of advanced intentional interpretation based on the implications of interdependent utility functions, gives rise to the additional conceptions of symbolic reinforcement and symbolic reward. This further conceptual extension recognizes that the analysis of interdependent utility functions must consider not only the intentionality involved but, in particular, how the perceived utility of another consumer is incorporated into the observer’s utility function. It is a matter of recognizing the orders of intentionality that are required to cope with the complexities of the situation under interpretive review. Summary of the Role of BPM-​I

The construction of the intentional interpretation has two levels: basic and advanced. The basic intentional interpretation is the initial construction of an interpretation which shows how understanding the consumer as an idealized intentional system allows the behaviors which cannot be accommodated within an extensional purview to be analyzed. This basic intentional interpretation treats the consumer as a first-​order intentional system. (The investigator herself is a second-​order intention system, portraying beliefs about what the consumer in question is likely to believe and perceive.) It is this intentional interpretation that approximates Dennett’s (see, especially, Dennett, 1978, 1987) intentional systems theory account, though it has the advantage of being based on knowledge of the mainsprings of consumer choice acquired through an extensional research program. The advanced intentional interpretation makes use of additional orders of intentionality. It first treats the consumer as a second-​order intentional system, that is, it interprets the consumer’s action in terms of what she (Ego) believes about

96  Levels of Exposition what another consumer (Other) is experiencing. This is the essence of symbolic reinforcement. It subsequently casts the consumer as a third-​order intentional system that links the actions of Ego with those of Other, but also attributes to Ego an affective evaluation of the import of Other’s action. In this, Ego’s personal affective response of Other’s perception of or cognition about Ego provides Ego with an evaluation of this symbolic reinforcement. This is symbolic reward. Patterns of Informational Reinforcement In an interaction between Ego and Other there are four possible patterns of informational reinforcement. These depend, first, on whether only one or both participant(s) receive(s) informational reinforcement and, second, whether their utilities are independent or interdependent. These four patterns, shown in Table 6.1, are described below. Informational Reinforcement Simpliciter

Pattern (A), marked by unidirectional interaction and independence of participants’ utilities, defines informational reinforcement simpliciter. Ego’s behavior is reinforced by, say, Other’s praise, approval, recognition, co-​operation, etc. Other’s resultant social behavior provides reinforcement which is, independently, part of Ego’s utility function, as this is extensionally conceived and measured. Pattern (A) may be understood as a unidimensional operant situation, given that only Ego’s behavior is subject to informational contingencies. The bilateral contingency linking their behaviors is, in such a case, described as asymmetric with respect to informational reinforcement. Reciprocal Informational Reinforcement

Pattern (B), marked by bidirectional interaction and independence of participants’ utilities, defines reciprocal informational reinforcement. This is based on interlocking informational reinforcement within a symmetrical bilateral contingency: Ego and Other each provide informational reinforcement for the other’s behavior. The informational reinforcement each party receives becomes part of her utility function, but the actors’ utility functions remain autonomous of one another. Table 6.1 Patterns of informational reinforcement. The four patterns form a continuum of increasing inter-​connection: (A) → (B) → (C) → (D)

Unidirectional interaction Bidirectional interaction

Independent utility

Interdependent utility

(A) Informational reinforcement simpliciter. (B) Reciprocal informational reinforcement.

(C) Interactive social reinforcement. (D) Reciprocal social reinforcement.

Coming to Terms with Intentionality  97 Both parties provide informational reinforcement which a third-​personal analysis can identify in order to understand the subsequent behavior of the recipient. This informational reinforcement thus forms part of the other’s utility function. But neither party receives additional or enhanced reinforcement as a result of their awareness of the other’s enjoyment of utility. There is no perception of the other’s experience such that this observation leads to the observer’s enhanced utility. Summing up Patterns (A) and (B)

Both patterns (A) and (B) involve informational reinforcement as it is understood in consumer behavior analysis, the extensional and theoretically minimal investigation which forms the initial stage of intentional behaviorism. They are based, where appropriate, on independent utility functions, are viewed from a third-​personal viewpoint, and the informational reinforcements they incorporate are extensionally specifiable. It might be thought that both necessarily fall within the purview of BPM-​E. That this is not the case, however, will be shown in a later discussion. The fact that both (A) and (B) are amenable to an extensional analysis in terms of BPM-​E does not, however, preclude an intentional interpretation of the phenomena they capture once theoretical minimalism no longer suffices to identify –​ and so cannot provide explication of –​the functional relationships on which radical behaviorism banks. In these circumstances, the first requirement of BPM-​I is that it generate a basic intentional interpretation of those phenomena that no longer fall within the purview of predictive analysis based on a demonstrable extensionally conceived stimulus field. Interactive Social Reinforcement

Pattern (C), marked by unidirectional interaction and the interdependent utility of one of the participants, defines interactive social reinforcement. The source of Ego’s utility is, at least in part, her perception of Other’s utility. Ego’s behavior (which may at least in part produce Other’s utility, be it utilitarian and/​or informational reinforcement), is reinforced by this perception. The perception may be of Other’s gaining utilitarian reinforcement or informational reinforcement or both. Other’s utility function does not, however, include any perception of Ego’s utility. Hence, the bilateral contingency which links the parties is asymmetric. Reciprocal Social Reinforcement

Pattern (D), marked by bidirectional interaction and interdependent utilities, defines reciprocal social reinforcement. This involves reciprocal utility functions, that is, interlocking interdependent utility functions. Ego and Other both have utility functions that include the utility apparently gained by one another. Reciprocal utility functions may involve the perception of Other’s informational reinforcement or her utilitarian reinforcement or both. The resulting bilateral contingency is, therefore, symmetrical.

98  Levels of Exposition Summing up Patterns (C) and (D)

By contrast to the situations depicted in (A) and (B), the contingencies that delineate (C) and (D) rest upon the interdependence of the actors’ utility functions. The understanding of this interdependence is that the behavior of a participant in a behavioral dyad is enhanced by the perception of the other’s enjoyment of utility. In (C) the direction of informational reinforcement is unidimensional since Ego’s utility function includes Other’s perceived utility, but Other’s does not include Ego’s. In (D), however, each of the actors has a utility function that includes their perception of the other’s utility. Another way of understanding this is to say that the inter-​relationship involved in (C) is based on an asymmetrical bilateral contingency, whereas that involved in (D) is based on a symmetrical bilateral contingency. In both cases, the ensuing analysis attempts to reconstruct a first-​personal perspective, comprehending the action of the participants in terms of Weberian Verstehen. These patterns fall exclusively within the scope of BPM-​I. Utility Functions and Bilateral Contingencies Independent and Interdependent Utility Functions

Of the two pairs of contingencies, only (A) and (B) can be extensionally explained by the three-​term contingency, SD: R→Sir,

ir

(6.1)

where irSD is a discriminative stimulus setting the occasion on which informational reinforcement, Sir, is likely to follow the performance of response, R. (Motivating operations may also be involved, but for purposes of exposition the contingency relationship is presented as simply as possible.) Patterns (C) and (D) necessarily involve intentionality since Ego’s continuing to perform a response in the presence of Other is explained not only by the informational reinforcement that Other has provided for this response in the past but Ego’s perception that Other is gaining utility from Ego’s performance of R. The relationship entailed is that depicted formally in Equation (6.1) but its content lies in the intentionally specified terms of BPM-​I. Although patterns (A) and (B) may be treated within the terms of BPM-​I, their analysis is based on their being first-​order intentional systems and so does not draw upon the concepts of symbolic reinforcement and symbolic reward. Symbolic Reward and Sanction

At the risk of repetition, it may be useful at this point to take stock before further extending the analysis. We have seen that the treatment of the patterns of consumer choice involved in (A) and (B) has, unremarkably, involved utilitarian and informational reinforcement, conceived extensionally, and does not,

Coming to Terms with Intentionality  99 therefore, depart from standard consumer behavior analysis, the province of BPM-​ E. Furthermore, it is evident that with the consideration of interdependent utility functions, the discourse must move into the realm of social reinforcement and symbolic reward, which are undeniably within the scope of BPM-​I. It represents, moreover, a deepening of the concerns of that model. Symbolic reward is cognition and perception mediated by the consumer’s own cognition and perception. So, it is metacognitive and/​or metaperceptual. That is, it comprises mental representations, especially in the form of affective evaluations, of the consumer’s own thoughts and affects. These terms require further explication but, before that, it is necessary to remind ourselves that the metacognitive and metaperceptual analyses on which advanced intentional interpretation rests do not exhaust the contribution of BPM-​I to the post-​extensional investigation of consumer choice. Basic intentional interpretation is vitally concerned with the contingencies that define the patterns described as (A) and (B), yet it is of course the sphere of intentional analysis. The level of analysis it presents falls between the extensionality that undergirds theoretical minimalism and the kind of über-​interpretation that symbolic reinforcement and symbolic reward necessitate. We shall therefore have reason in delineating the four patterns of informational reinforcement in terms of utility functions and bilateral contingencies to make allowance for this easily overlooked, yet vital contribution of intentional analysis. In the meantime, we can continue to clarify the nature of metacognition and metaperception which play such a large role in advanced intentional interpretation. A metaperception of mine consists in my evaluative/​affective perception of how it appears to me (another perception) that someone else regards me. Let us consider what this means by analyzing the sequence of events involved. Initially, I see another’s frown from which it appears to me he disapproves of me (i.e., I receive a perception or form a cognition, possibly both, following the sequence of knowledge by acquaintance and ensuing knowledge by description). This is the very stuff of an intentional analysis of the interaction and would be appropriate, therefore, to BPM-​I. However, in addition to receiving this perception and forming this cognitive understanding, I subsequently form an evaluation based on this perception (i.e., a metaperception) or cognition (i.e., a metacognition) in terms of how much I like/​ dislike it. The metaperception is likely to take the form of an affective reaction such as pleasure, arousal, and dominance or, more likely, a combination. The metacognition is a reasoned belief about it. Along with any conation resulting from these elements and my learning history, they now enter the intentional consumer-​situation which shapes my subsequent decision-​making and action. Hence, my metacognition comprises my beliefs about how it appears to me (another cognition) that someone else regards me. Again analyzing the sequence of events involved, I first see (perceive) the frown from which I then deduce that the frowner dislikes me, and I form the further judgment that I am worthless (the metacognition). We are now in a better position to work out the implications of this “meta-​ analysis” for the specification of the independent and interdependent utility functions relevant to the four patterns of informational reinforcement we have considered.

100  Levels of Exposition Informational Reinforcement Simpliciter

In pattern (A), informational reinforcement simpliciter, assume that Other smiles at Ego. This amounts to informational reinforcement if and only if it is reliably followed by an increase in the rate of Ego’s behavior which occasioned it. This is an objectively observable sequence in which physical stimuli –​perhaps in the form of words, gestures, and facial expressions –​ come to act as reinforcers. It is not even necessary, in an extensional analysis, that Ego be aware (whatever this might mean in such a paradigm) of the process. The only utility function of interest is Ego’s which is independent of Other’s utility function. This is explicable in extensional terms since all the elements of the three-​term contingency are operationally present. For all we know, there may be an affective response on the part of Ego to the receipt of informational reinforcement but this is not necessary to predict and control Ego’s behavior and does not form part of the extensional analysis. For analytical purposes, there is no question of either party’s utility entering the utility function of the other. Hence, Ego’s utility function is, UEgo =​U({UR, IR}).

(6.2)

Figure 6.1 shows the nature of the bilateral contingency in the case of informational reinforcement simpliciter which is unidirectional. Both parties’ behavior is reinforced by {UR,IR} but only in Ego’s case does a portion of the informational reinforcement received emanate from Other’s behavior. From the point of view of the present analysis of informational reinforcement, the bilateral contingency is asymmetric. Reciprocal Informational Reinforcement

In pattern (B), reciprocal informational reinforcement, Ego’s and Other’s mutual behaviors are socially reinforced by one another’s behavior. The relationship involves a bilateral contingency based on the reinforcing nature of socially provided physical stimuli –​again, perhaps in the form of words, gestures, and facial expressions. There is no need for either party to be aware of what is happening. This is also explicable in extensional terms since all the elements of the three-​term contingency are operationally present. Once again, there may conceivably be an affective response on the part of Ego or Other to the receipt of informational reinforcement but this is not necessary to predict and control Ego’s or Other’s behavior and does not form part of the analysis. For analytical purposes, there is no question of either party’s utility entering into the utility function of the other. The shared social reinforcement that is the outcome is captured by Equations (6.2) and (6.3): UOther =​U({UR, IR}).

(6.3)

If we do take the possibility of one actor’s utility entering that of the other into consideration, however, we must admit a cognitive or perceptual (probably

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Coming to Terms with Intentionality  101

Figure 6.1 Informational reinforcement simpliciter as a bilateral contingency.

102  Levels of Exposition affective) awareness of the other’s utility function. The utility function of one of the actors has become interdependent with that of the other and this can be comprehended only in intentional terms. Figure 6.2 details reciprocal informational reinforcement in terms of bidirectional bilateral contingencies in which at least some of the informational reinforcement received by each party derives from the behavior of the other. The bilateral contingency is, on this basis, symmetric. In the case of an extensional portrayal of the relationship(s) involved, all forms of reinforcement are specifiable in physical terms (including the presence of another person) and form part of the basic three-​term contingency shown in Equation (6.1). In the case of an intentional portrayal, the components of {UR,IR} take the form of perceptions of and cognitions about the sources of utilitarian and informational reinforcement that are extensionally specified in the extensional portrayal. What links extensional and informational perspectives in the patterns (A) and (B) is the independence of the parties’ utility functions. Interactive Social Reinforcement

Pattern (C), interactive social reinforcement, presents a relationship that belongs to the realm of intentional interpretation since it is based on the phenomenology of one actor, who is aware of the utility gained by the other and whose own utility function is thereby enhanced. The enhancement consists in the addition of an affective response (some combination of pleasure, arousal, and dominance). The resulting bilateral contingency is said to be asymmetric because only one of the actors has an interdependent utility function. The utility observed may be either utilitarian or informational in nature. We assume that Other’s evident utility features in Ego’s utility function, where it interacts synergistically with Ego’s utilitarian and informational reinforcement. If Other’s utility, as perceived by Ego, {(UR, IR)Ego/​ Other}, =​ puE/​O, then interactive informational reinforcement is captured by Ego’s enhanced utility function: UEgo =​U({UR, IR}.puE/​O).

(6.4)

Figure 6.3 indicates interactive social reinforcement in which Ego’s utility function includes Ego’s awareness of the utility Other is receiving in this situation, but there is no such impact on Other’s utility from awareness of Ego’s receiving utilitarian and/​or informational reinforcement. The bilateral contingency is, therefore, asymmetric with respect to symbolic reinforcement. Reciprocal Social Reinforcement

Finally, in pattern (D), reciprocal social reinforcement, the utility function of each actor is enhanced by the observation of the other’s utility. The utility observed may be either utilitarian or informational in nature. The bilateral contingency in this case is symmetrical. If we now represent Ego’s utility as perceived by Other as

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Coming to Terms with Intentionality  103

Figure 6.2 Reciprocal informational reinforcement as a bilateral contingency.

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104  Levels of Exposition

Figure 6.3 Interactive social reinforcement as a bilateral contingency.

Coming to Terms with Intentionality  105 {(UR, IR)Other/​Ego} =​ puO/​E, then reciprocal informational reinforcement is captured by Equations (6.4) and (6.5): UOther =​U({UR, IR}.puO/​E).

(6.5)

Figure 6.4 depicts reciprocal social reinforcement in which the reinforcement received by each party derives in part from perceptions and cognitions occasioned by their awareness of the reinforcement received from their joint situation by the other. The bilateral contingency is symmetric with respect to symbolic reinforcement. In the case of the extensional portrayal of informational reinforcement and its effects, no intentionality is involved in the explanation of the behavior of either the original actor or the one who responds to it. Hence, no mention of intentionality is involved in the interpretation of the social behavior as depicted in patterns (A) and (B). Only simple operant behavior is involved and this may be fully comprehended within the confines of the three-​term contingency. This suffices for many purposes, especially by enhancing the predictability of the parties to the interaction. It is inadequate however when prediction loses its accuracy, as is inevitably the case for intimate social actions that are not amenable to laboratory analysis, but which depend on a multitude of vicissitudes derived from the actors’ social situations and emotional feelings, their behaving perhaps on the basis of A-​rationality rather than E-​, B-​, or EP-​rationality. When the prediction and control of the behaviors involved, the sole criterion of relevance to a radical behaviorism, which is exclusively concerned with behavior, is not possible, it is necessary to turn to an addition source of understanding. The key difference in the case of the intentional portrayal is that the person whose action occasions another’s approbation recognizes this, holding –​ in the form of intentional objects –​ not only an impression of the nature of the socially reinforcing act (nod, facial gesture, words of appreciation) –​ but also a personal judgment thereof (self-​worth and self-​esteem or, in the case of an aversive response from the other, shame and humiliation). Intentional interpretation, therefore, goes beyond the observation of the reinforcement provided by the other actor, as discerned by a third party, by including an account of how this intersubjectively observable reinforcement is received by the actor to whom it has been directed. It proceeds in terms of the subjective phenomenology of the recipient and its likely effect on her rate of responding in a similar fashion. The intentional interpretation of this behavior requires positing awareness, perceptual consciousness, of one party’s actions by the other. This may be simple visual recognition, sensationally based, of the other’s smile that has quickly succeeded one’s own behavior. One may need to propose further intentionality in order to comprehend the other’s action. Furthermore, one needs to recognize the smile as a positive gesture rather than a dismissive smirk or sneer, and this requires prior experience and cognitive processing (see Geertz, 1973). The initial perceptual sensation and the meaning attached to it on this basis lead to another perception, affective this time, registering pleasure, arousal, or dominance as a judgment on

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106  Levels of Exposition

Figure 6.4 Reciprocal social reinforcement as a bilateral contingency.

Coming to Terms with Intentionality  107 or evaluation of what has happened. It is this affect that is the reward for contemplating the other’s action. Figures 6.5 and 6.6 describe the bilateral contingencies governing symbolic reward and display, respectively, the asymmetric and symmetric relationships involved. Figure 6.5 shows the effect of adding symbolic reward to the utility gained by Ego. It is of course difficult to discern with confidence the order of the perceptual responses that has been suggested. Affect may well be the initial response, the exercise of cognitive judgment the second. What is of consequence is that the affective reward constitutes symbolic reward by virtue of being interpreted not as the outcome of an inter-​subjectively discernable set of contingencies of reinforcement and punishment but as an intrinsic judgment of such an outcome, a further evaluation of an intentional object that represents that inter-​subjectively available situation. It is reward that is derived from another purely intentional object that is embellished with an overlay of judgment to produce further perceptual evaluation in the form of an affect which informs further decision-​making and action. It is metaperceptual. Figure 6.6 shows the effect of adding symbolic reward to the utility gained by Ego and Other. It is difficult to imagine how the actions occasioned through interdependent utility functions could be explicated in the absence of reasoning of this kind about symbolic rewards and sanctions. An attempt could be made to account for the observed patterns of mutually interactive behavior by reference to extensionally conceived bilateral contingencies but this amounts only to the description that is the hallmark of Machian positivism. Such may illuminate the question of how something happens but does nothing to propose why it takes the form it does. Summary and Conclusions Several varieties of informational reinforcement and the explanations appropriate to them have been identified, in the course of which three distinct conceptualizations of informational reinforcement, which retains its generic application even though it may be specifically applied to inter-​personal influence in the context of extensional explanation, have become apparent (Table 6.2). Independent utility functions describe the (A) and (B) patterns of informational reinforcement, to which either extensional or intentional analysis may be applied. Extensional explanation is appropriate when operationally specified informational reinforcement is assumed. However, the same patterns of contingency apply to the basic intentional interpretation which treats the consumer as a first-​order intentional system. In a dyadic relationship, based on independent utility functions, the intentional interpretation seeks to make sense of each consumer’s actions in terms of her ascribed intentionality without suggesting that the intentionality of either consumer enters the utility function of the other. Advanced intentional interpretation is required when one or more of the utility functions involved is deemed to be interdependent. Patterns (C) and (D) therefore invoke symbolic reinforcement and symbolic reward.

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108  Levels of Exposition

Figure 6.5 Symbolic reward as an asymmetric bilateral contingency.

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Coming to Terms with Intentionality  109

Figure 6.6 Symbolic reward as a symmetric bilateral contingency.

110  Levels of Exposition Table 6.2 Explanations of informational reinforcement Pattern of informational reinforcement

Level of exposition

Mode of explanation

Explanatory construct

(A) and (B)

Extensional

Informational reinforcement

(A) and (B)

Intentional

(C) and (D)

Intentional

BPM-​E: contingency-​ shaped and rule-​governed behavior. Consumer is a contextual system BPM-​I: basic intentional interpretation. Consumer is a first-​ order intentional system BPM-​I: advanced intentional interpretation. Consumer is a second/​third-​order intentional system

Social reinforcement

Symbolic reinforcement, symbolic reward

This chapter has extended the conception of informational reinforcement by delineating social reinforcement, as a subset of informational reinforcement, and introducing symbolic rewards and sanctions as concepts which strengthen intentional interpretation. The questions remain: when should an intentional interpretation be undertaken and should it be basic or advanced? The initial requirements for each are those set down by the imperatives of extensionality and intentionality, namely, “how are we to account for the continuity and discontinuity of consumer activity?,” “what is the significance of the personal level of exposition?,” and “how is behavioral interpretation to be realistically circumscribed?” In the case of the first consideration, behavioral continuity and discontinuity, if Ego’s response is explicable solely in terms of the utilitarian and informational reinforcement provided by Other, then that response should extinguish if such reinforcement is no longer forthcoming as a consequence of similar responding. If, however, the response continues beyond an interval that can be attributed to learning, then it is necessary to seek an alternative source of reinforcement. This leads naturally onto the import of the second consideration, the need to posit a personal level of experientially based contingency. Hence, if no additional extensionally specified reinforcement can be detected, the answer is to seek for explanation in the realm of intentionality. If the possibility of Ego’s perceiving Other’s utility arises as an explicative function, then we are justified in exploring the personal level in terms of the intentional interpretation of interdependent utility functions. This leaves the case of the third consideration, delimiting behavioral interpretation. A behavioral interpretation might be based on Other’s ostensively modeling her satisfaction at Ego’s behavior –​whether by word or by gesture –​and the claim that these cues act

Coming to Terms with Intentionality  111 as discriminative stimuli for Ego’s maintaining this behavior. Ego might be said to be simply discriminating her behavior in the presence of Other. There is no need, in that case, for our intentional interpretation to ascribe inter-​personal utility to either actor. Indeed, we can posit all manners of external post-​behavioral stimuli that could be construed as consequences of Ego’s behavior and, therefore, allowed to function as reinforcers in a behavioral interpretation. Beyond the recognition of immediate stimulation, however, this smacks of over-​interpretation, suggesting factors of which the behavior might be a function in the absence of any possible means of testing this proposition experimentally. Turning to what Ego could possibly know of Other, that is, her subjectively experienced utility, provides a surer account: the possibility that Ego’s satisfaction in Other’s satisfaction is involved. This implies interdependent utility functions (C), and if we can posit a similar inclusion of Ego’s utility in Other’s utility function, then (D). This remains an intentional interpretation, of course, but we are justified in substituting it for the behaviorist’s operant interpretation on several grounds. Most importantly, it makes no pretense of relying on extensionally-​available knowledge. It stands only as a plausible reconstruction of what each actor could know and its aim is to make their actions intelligible in the light of the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment and the actor’s rationality. That there is no means of conducting a crucial experiment which might refute it is irrelevant because it purports to be only a reasonable reconstruction. All of this is mirrored in its being construed in the language of intentionality. The behaviorist’s interpretation, by contrast, cast in the language of the operant paradigm, portrays its pronouncements as potentially empirically verifiable or refutable. The fact that some patterns of contingency which explicate informational reinforcement are amenable to both extensional and intentional treatments should not surprise us. This is a finding which will be repeated throughout Part III which is vitally concerned with complementarity and incommensurability. Notes 1 The analysis in this section is confined, for simplicity of exposition, to the interactions of a dyad of consumers. However, more than two persons may be ultimately involved in relationships founded on interdependent utility functions, which are the foundation of collective intentionality (see, especially, Searle, 1995, 2010; and, for application in the context of intentional behaviorism, Foxall, 2020). For discussion of multi-​lateral bilateral contingency, see Foxall (2021). 2 The conceptions of informational reinforcement belonging severally to BPM-​E and BPM-​I are related. The physical informational reinforcement in which the extensional perspective inheres is the basis of the cognition and affect that provide the foundation of intentionally conceived informational reinforcement. Only if the accoutrements of the interpersonally available indicators of social esteem –​ the handshakes, the diplomas, the job titles, and so on –​are evident to the person receiving them can the appropriate emotional feelings manifest. The more closely an intentional interpretation can adhere to the actual appearance of these material objects, the more verifiable it will be, even though it can never enter into a rigorously defined experimental analysis as can an understanding based on extensionally available variables.

7 Neural Foundations of Valuation

Abstract This chapter presents an introduction to fundamental aspects of neurophysiology relevant to the development of the neurophysiological model. In the context of the neural basis of reinforcement, it describes neuronal structure and function, including an account of the central nervous system (, action potentials and neurotransmission, synaptic communication, long-​term potentiation, the mesolimbocortical system, and reward prediction errors. In the context of the neural basis of emotion and affect, it discusses the neurophysiology of pleasure, arousal, and dominance, and introduces the crucial distinction between “liking” and “wanting.” The neurophysiological conception of neural value provided by BPM-​N is an independent measure of valuation which makes it possible, first, to investigate consumer valuation scientifically and, second, to critically appraise the accounts of consumer behavior and action which the other BPM models present. The distinction between reinforcement and reward is emphasized and underpinned by the various neurophysiological substrates whose activity correlates with these behavioral outcomes. This is illustrated by reference to Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis. The chapter acts as a bridge between the presentation of the neurophysiological model of consumer choice and the consideration in neuroscientific terms of the conceptual dual process depiction based on BPM-​E and BPM-​I. The Central Nervous System The two parts into which the nervous system is usually separated –​ the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS) –​ are closely interconnected. The brain and the spinal cord compose the CNS, which comprises some 1011 to 1012 neurons, each of which communicates with many others; its major function appears to be the facilitation of movement. The remainder of the nervous system, including the neurons that produce movement by acting upon skeletal muscles, comprises the PNS. The close interaction of these parts of the system is exemplified by the fact that the motor neurons themselves are found DOI: 10.4324/9781003262510-9

Neural Foundations of Valuation  113 in the spine, part of the CNS, but network with the PNS to generate muscular movement. Afferent activity, which is directed toward the CNS (for instance, from sensory organs), is contrasted with efferent activity, such as the enervation of remote neurons, which is directed away from the CNS. The brains of vertebrates contain three major divisions: hindbrain, midbrain (the mesencephalon), and forebrain (Figure 7.1). A comparison of the human brain with those of fish, amphibians, reptiles, and most mammals including primates indicates that it is marked by a disproportionately expanded forebrain. We shall consider each of these in turn and then their interconnectedness, especially in the production of behavior. As a generalization, the hindbrain and midbrain subdivisions, which are known together as the brainstem, perform non-​cognitive functions such as regulating breathing and blood flow, and locomotion. The brainstem is a receptor for sensory information and acts to integrate motor output of super-​neck areas via the cranial nerves (not the spinal nerves). The midbrain is also involved in the initial processing of some sensory information. The forebrain is the seat of rational or executive functioning which, on the basis of the sensory inputs it receives from the midbrain, and stored information regarding past behavior and its outcomes, underpins the cognitive activities we designate coordination, evaluation, and decision-​making. It is worth noting even at this stage, since my later argument will make much of it, that we have shifted here from an account of the brain in purely neurophysiological terms to one that describes its functions using cognitive expressions. Of course, the forebrain is as much a physical structure as any part of the brain, one that contains cells that convey chemical signals to other cells. Yet most accounts of forebrain function at all levels of biological sophistication resort to the language of the mind in order to express the effects of this neurological functioning on behavior. This shift has important theoretical and philosophical implications.

Figure 7.1 The tripartite brain. The brain may be divided into the hindbrain (comprising the cerebellum, the pons, and the medulla), midbrain, and forebrain.

114  Levels of Exposition Even though the hindbrain, midbrain, and forebrain evolved in quite different time frames and play different roles in organizing the behavior of fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals (and, among the mammals, humans), all three regions contribute to the cognitive functioning of modern consumers. Information concerning vibration and orientation is transmitted from the ear and organs of balance to the hindbrain which is composed of the cerebellum, the pons, and the medulla. The cerebellum coordinates movement and the learning and enactment of motor capabilities. The pons, which connects the hindbrain and midbrain, is instrumental in communication of information from the cerebellum to the forebrain. The medulla, which is important for the control of automatic operations like digestion, swallowing, breathing, and heart rate, integrates the brain with the other major component of the nervous system, the spinal cord. The midbrain is especially concerned with the integration of sensory and motor functions. It controls response to visual and auditory information, receiving information from the eyes and translating it into appropriate motor responses. Hindbrain and midbrain are connected by the reticular formation, which also forms part of the medulla. Other components of the midbrain are the substantia nigra, the inferior colliculus, and the superior colliculus. The colliculi are concerned, respectively, with auditory and visual sensation –​that is, it is the superior colliculi that receive mainly visual stimuli and the inferior colliculi that receive mainly auditory stimuli. In addition, the superior colliculi receive nociceptive (related to tissue damaging) and tactile input and are involved in eye movement and orientation to external stimuli. Together the colliculi form the topmost part or “roof” of the midbrain. Because they collectively are concerned primarily with vision, the cell layers that compose them are known as the optic tecta. The “floor” is composed of the tegmentum which is implicated inter alia in motor function. The substantia nigra is also concerned with motor function, notably with voluntary movement. The forebrain comprises the telencephalon (the foremost part of the brain, containing the cerebral hemispheres; the cerebral cortex is the outmost part of the hemispheres, the large enfolded layer); and the diencephalon mediates the flow of information from the spinal cord to the telencephalon. The cerebral cortex (or “neocortex”) is involved in the control of both sensory and motor functions. Neuronal Structure and Functions Action Potentials and Neurotransmission

Neurons are central to the translation of inputs received through the senses into information that leads to bodily movement, emotions, and other forms of activity. The human brain contains about 100 billion neurons. Two types of projection emanate from opposing ends of the cell body. Dendrites input information from other neurons; they divide repeatedly into smaller fibers that link to the axons of other nerve cells. Each neuron has a single axon which carries electrical and chemical messages to the dendrites of receiving neurons.

Neural Foundations of Valuation  115

Figure 7.2 Stylized structure of a typical neuron.

The cell body contains the nucleus, the myelin sheath that covers the axon in order to increase the speed with which it conveys electrical currents, and the dendrites that are innervated by the axons of other neurons (Figure 7.2). Myelin is a thick, white fatty substance formed as a result of the cytoplasm in the oligodendrocyte membranes in the CNS and the Scwhann cells of the PNS. It provides a sheath around some vertebrate axons which insulates them electrically. Its function is to permit the rapid propagation of action potentials over long distances. An action potential is a sudden increase (“spike”) in the electrical activity of a neuron, usually engendered by a sensory input such as acute heat. The neuron is said to be “firing” when its action potentials increase in this way. Neurons communicate via chemicals (neurotransmitters) with large numbers of other neurons, influencing their tendency to “fire” or, more correctly, produce action potentials. Synaptic Communication

The point at which the dendrite of one neuron interacts with the axon of another is known as a synapse, and each neuron in the human brain is linked to others via some 1,000 synapses (Figure 7.3.) The small gap between the terminal buttons of the presynaptic cell and the receptors of the postsynaptic cell is the synaptic cleft. At this point, the action potential of the presynaptic cell releases a neurotransmitter which enters the synaptic cleft and comes into contact with appropriate receptors positioned on the postsynaptic cell. As a result of a neurotransmitter entering the second cell, information is transferred within the nervous system. (Neurons are categorized by the neurotransmitters they release: hence, dopaminergic, glutamatergic, and cholinergic neurons, respectively, release dopamine (DA), glutamate, and acetylcholine). Terminal buttons, located toward the end of the axon, contain synaptic vesicles. These contain the neurotransmitters, which communicate

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Figure 7.3 Transfer of neurotransmitter at a synapse.

with other neurons. An action potential in the presynaptic cell engenders the ejection of the neurotransmitter into the synaptic cleft. Communication between neurons is thus both an electrical and chemical process. A neurotransmitter may have either an excitatory or an inhibitory effect on the postsynaptic neuron, that is, it may facilitate or impede the normal functioning of the cell by increasing or decreasing the action potentials it produces. While a neurotransmitter acts on the receptors of a postsynaptic neuron by generating action potentials in that neuron, some neurotransmitters also act as neuromodulators which alter the efficacy of synapses. A neuromodulator influences the effectiveness of synaptic communication, augmenting the efficacy of other neurotransmitters. A neuromodulator is a chemical that enhances the excitatory or inhibitory reactions of receptors, thereby influencing the effectiveness of other neurotransmitters. Habituation, Sensitization, and Tolerance

Repeated stimulation may lead to a diminution in the rate of responding; a pause in stimulation may be sufficient for the response to increase again. These effects (habituation and spontaneous recovery) denote a situation known as short-​term habituation. However, with a longer sequence of stimulation, spontaneous recovery is less efficacious, leading to a situation of long-​term habituation. Sensitization refers to the increased effectiveness of a drug when it is repeatedly used. There are both quantitative and qualitative modes of sensitization: the increased effect may be a higher level of the subjective feeling associated with the substance (e.g., reported euphoria) or a novel kind of experience (such as hallucination). Sensitization suggests the increased positive reinforcement of behavior that leads to the ingestion of the drug. Sensitization is a relatively strong response to a relatively weak stimulus.

Neural Foundations of Valuation  117 The opposite of sensitization is toleration in which the effects of drug administration reduce over time so that increasing amounts are required to generate the same result. Toleration is especially apparent in withdrawal symptoms that accompany abstention. The cause of tolerance, which is much more common than sensitization, may be the degradation of the neurotransmitter receptors with which the drug combines in order to produce its effect or the reduction in their number. Some substances can result in both effects at once. Sustained cocaine use, for instance, is likely to induce qualitative changes in behavior such as loss of muscular control (sensitization) while the amount of the drug required to produce a “high” or “rush” becomes progressively greater. The contemporaneous generation of quite separate drug effects and their differential neuropsychological implications account for this combined experience. Sensitization suggests the increased positive reinforcement of behavior that leads to the ingestion of the drug. Toleration also involves behaviors the consequences of which lead to increased drug taking. Hence, these consequences remain positive reinforcers: the individual is taking the drug in order to obtain the highs associated with it. However, doing so means harder or more work. Long-​Term Potentiation (LTP)

The brain is not fixed but changes in response, first, to experience and, second, to the action of neuromodulators. A neuromodulator is a particular kind of neurotransmitter, which influences the release of neurotransmitters at synapses and the extent to which postsynaptic neurons respond to the chemical signals they present. The same chemical may act as a neurotransmitter at one synapse and as a neuromodulator at others, regulating the flow or reception of other neurotransmitters. The effect is to “fine-​tune” the brain’s response to environmental events, as well as to “rewire” the brain over time, perhaps thereby aiding the storing of memories (O’Shea et al., 2013). The environmental events include reinforcing and punishing stimuli, while memory embodies consumers’ learning histories. “Hebbian learning” refers to the strengthening of a synapse as a result of simultaneous activity in the presynaptic and postsynaptic areas (Hebb, 1949.) As long as both a synapse and a postsynaptic neuron are active simultaneously, the synapse will be strengthened in the sense that it is more likely to be the location of such activity in the future. Such an increase in the efficiency of synaptic transmission is known as LTP which may underlie learning. LTP may remain for days or weeks; Toates (2011) suggests that it may persist for a lifetime as the basis of encoded memory. Moreover, the discovery of the neural basis of LTP provides a mechanism for synaptic plasticity, that is, the capacity of neurons to modify the strength of their inter-​connections. Neurophysiology and Reinforcement The Mesolimbocortical System

A particularly important relationship between the midbrain and the forebrain is represented by the mesolimbocortical system which is responsive to the sensation

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Figure 7.4 The mesolimbocortical pathway. The figure shows brain structures relevant to the DA reward system. The dark lines indicate DA pathways, first, from the VTA to the nucleus accumbens (the mesolimbic pathway), and, second, from the VTA to prefrontal cortex (the mesocortical pathway). Together, these systems comprise the dopaminergic mesolimbocortical system or pathway.

of rewards (Figure 7.4). Dopaminergic cells are found within the mesencephalon (midbrain) in the pars compacta of the substantia nigra and the ventral tegmental area (VTA). Some of these cells project axons that innervate the stratum, the central nucleus of the amygdala and the dorsal nucleus accumbens which are parts of the forebrain (which consists of the diencephalon and the telencephalon). The structure of dopaminergic neurons that accomplishes this is known as the mesolimbic pathway (from the VTA to the nucleus accumbens, NAcc). Belonging to the evolutionarily old limbic system, the amygdala is primarily concerned in humans with the processing of emotion, the thalamus with the transmission of sensory information, while the hypothalamus aids in the maintenance of homeostasis by governing the internal economy of the body, and the hippocampus is concerned with memory. The hedonia thesis holds the neurotransmitter DA to be implicated in the hedonic evaluation of rewards, but more recent evidence suggests that it is more concerned with preparation for their receipt. The role of DA in motivation, arousal, and the prediction of the timing of rewards now seems more probable than its being the “pleasure chemical,” a position it has ceded to the opioids. DA influences the motivational value of rewards based on calculations of their being greater or less than, or the same as, they are expected to be. Dependence on drugs is a function of the interaction of drugs with the limbic brain areas which control the individual’s response to reinforcers. These natural circuits of reinforcement can be requisitioned by drugs of abuse that are often held to “hijack” the mesolimbocortical system with the result that the consumer craves the emotional highs induced by such chemical rewards (Bickel and Johnson, 2003; Nestler and Landsman, 2001; Robbins and Everett, 1999). What this means is that the drugs acquire their own incentive value and their capacity to act as reinforcers

Neural Foundations of Valuation  119 intensifies. Increased DA release is associated with greater craving since it is implicated in the salience of stimuli that have been associated with it in the past. Normally DA remaining in the synaptic cleft is broken into its constituents by enzymes so that its effect on the postsynaptic neuron diminishes. Alternatively, its effect on the postsynaptic neuron is reduced by its being reuptaken into the presynaptic neuron whence it came. Any chemical or behavioral means of reducing the analytical effect of the enzyme or otherwise prolonging the presence of DA, for example, by inhibiting reuptake, increases the rewarding effect of the neurotransmitter and promotes addiction. The drug itself and any places or artifacts with which it is associated acquire incentive salience and increase the likelihood that the drug user will seek out and obtain the substance having already sought out the situations and accoutrements associated with it by experience. The greater the effect of the drug or behavior in inhibiting the removal of DA, the greater the likelihood of both addiction as a direct consequence and the salience of the situational cues that promote it. Cocaine acts by preventing the reuptake of DA, an excitatory neurotransmitter, by the presynaptic cell. The postsynaptic cell is therefore stimulated by DA to a greater extent than is ordinarily the case. Nicotine by contrast has an indirect effect on DA retention: it binds to receptors on the DA neuron that normally bind the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (Ach) and thereby increases the release of DA (Subramaniyan and Dani, 2015). Nicotine also reduces the presence of an enzyme that breaks down DA, and hence increases its efficacy at the postsynaptic neuron. The opiate, heroin, which as its name suggests is chemically similar to the opioids naturally produced in the body, binds to opioid receptors which are located on gamma-​aminobutyric acid (GABA) neurons. GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter which works by impeding DA release. The binding of heroin to opioid receptors on the GABA neurons has the effect of obstructing the release of GABA with the result that the dopaminergic neuron is no longer restrained. Reward Prediction Errors (RPEs)

Neural valuation is in part a reflection of the significance of reward prediction errors. Most midbrain dopaminergic neurons respond to unpredicted food rewards with phasic activations. These are directly proportional to the magnitude of the reinforcer/​reward in question. The dopaminergic response codes a prediction error in that a better than predicted reward elicits an activation (positive prediction error), a fully predicted reward occasions no response, and a reward that is worse than predicted brings about a depression (negative error). (Schultz, 2010, summarizes research in this area and its implications.) The idea of a neural consumer-​situation, which assumes an important role in the development of the neurophysiological model (BPM-​N), is based on the finding that, while dopaminergic neurons emit action potentials at a steady, low (“tonic”) rate most of the time, certain stimuli can engender a much accelerated (“phasic”) rate of action potentials. Thus, there is a rise in the rate of action potentials in DA neurons in response to the sight of food, liquids, or other stimuli; moreover, the greater the reinforcer magnitude, the greater the response in terms of number of action potentials. However, what is interesting

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of learning by prediction error. Red: a prediction error exists when Figure 7.5 Scheme   the reward differs from its prediction. Blue: no error exists when the outcome matches the prediction, and the behavior remains unchanged. Source: Schultz, W. (2016). Dopamine reward prediction error coding, Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 18(1), 23–​32. Figure 1, page 24. Reproduced under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://​crea​tive​comm​ons.org/​licen​ses/​by-​nc-​nd/​3.0/​).

is that the phasic action potential rate occurs not only when the reinforcer itself is received but when a quite distinct visual or auditory stimulus such as a light or picture predicts the reinforcer (Schultz, 2016, p. 25). The dopaminergic neurons respond to both the reinforcer and the predictor in identical fashion. The predictors are valuable in decision-​making and planning, though we can reasonably suppose that the initiation of these cognitive processes may itself be cognitive. A prediction (which is a matter of sub-​personal neuronal activation) leads to operant behavior and receives reinforcing and/​or punishing consequences. To recap: if the reward is equal to the prediction, the latter does not change and is used again in the production of the identical behavioral response. If there is a discrepancy between the predicted and the actual reward, an RPE, the prediction is modified accordingly and used in the production of a corresponding behavioral response, the consequences of which are again subject to the test of how far they accord with the prediction. Learning takes place when the predicted outcome is not as expected; no learning eventuates if the prediction equals the reward (Schultz, 2016; see Figure 7.5). Neurophysiology and Reward Pleasure

The allocation of localized brain regions to the production of emotions is dangerous since the neuronal basis of any particular source of affect may be distributed (Uttal, 2001; Legrenzi and Umità, 2011; Lindquist et al., 2012). However, there is evidence that self-​reports of pleasure coincide with increased activity in the amygdala, orbito-​frontal cortex (OFC), and ventromedial pre-​frontal cortex

Neural Foundations of Valuation  121 (vmPFC) (Cardinal et al., 2002; Rolls et al., 2009). Increases in the activation of the VTA, the subcortical telencephalon areas NAcc, and parts of the ventral striatum (vStr), all well-​endowed with dopaminergic neurons, are associated with pleasant experiences; these correlate too with hypothalamus (Hy), vmPFC, and right OFC activation (Alexander, 2021; Wager et al., 2008). The NAcc is closely related to reinforcement and pleasure. Winkielman et al. (2005, p. 346) note that “The nucleus accumbens, which lies at the front of the subcortical forebrain and is rich in dopamine and opioid neurotransmitters, is as famous for positive affective states as the amygdala is for fearful ones.” While defending the role of NAcc in positive affect, Berridge and Robinson (1998) maintain that the NAcc is implicated in “wanting” a stimulus (known as its incentive salience) rather than “liking” it or “pleasure” in obtaining or consuming it. Moreover, brain areas closely associated with pleasure-​displeasure comprise a region “that is involved in establishing the threat or reward value of a stimulus” (Barrett et al., 2007, p. 382; see also Sander and Nummenmaa, 2021). Continuing this theme, Lindquist et al. (2012, p. 124) employ core affect to refer to “the mental representations of bodily changes that are sometimes experienced as pleasure and displeasure with some degree of arousal,” and argue that it is related to the identification of and response to motivationally salient environmental stimuli. Representations of bodily states rely on previous experience which we may presume to rely, at least in part, on the outcome of the consequences of operant responding. Further, Lindquist et al. (2012) concur with Panksepp (1998) that emotions fulfill a homeostatic function that indicates the value of approach/​avoidance with respect to environmental stimuli. Unpleasant experience is associated with activation in amygdala, anteria insula, periaqueductal grey, left OFC and more posterior portions of the vStr and ventral globus pallidus. “The results provide a promising indication that different gross anatomical areas may be differentially sensitive to pleasant and unpleasant stimuli, although they do not imply that activation in any of these regions is uniquely associated with either category” (Wageret al., 2008, p. 259). These areas, associated closely with pleasure-​displeasure, form a brain region “that is involved in establishing the threat or reward value of a stimulus” (Barrett et al., 2007, p. 382). This is related to representations of core affect that has been the consequence of prior behavior with respect to the stimulus in question (i.e., it is a representation of learning history). Arousal

Barrett et al. (2007) observe that experienced emotion correlates with activation of medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). These and other results confirm the case for the attribution of content to experienced emotion based on neurophysiological reasoning (see also Coull, 1998; Lewiset al., 2007; Paulet al., 2006; Rauchet al., 1999). They also draw attention to the operation of the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) in generating selection and inhibition of responses and WM. Reduced functioning of CNS serotonin underlies

122  Levels of Exposition impaired impulse control and is further implicated in violence, impatience, and the assumption of risks of punishment or injury (Higley et al., 1996). The administration of serotonin, in contrast, as in selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) medication, modulates antisocial tendencies (Knutson et al., 1998). These are behaviors closely connected with feelings of arousal and, although they are too extreme to find a place in most consumption activities and research, they are indicative of a role for arousal at all points along the consumer continuum. Arousal and impulsivity are clearly seen in everyday consumer behaviors such as innovativeness, novelty-​seeking, and unplanned purchasing; compulsiveness is at the root of unregulated consumption and addiction (Foxall, 2016a). The neurophysiological bases of arousal are distributed through cortical areas and the thalamic regions whose neurons innervate cortical areas sensitized over a period of arousing experience (LeDoux, 1998, 2003). LeDoux (1998, pp. 287–​291) notes that four systems found in the brain stem are involved in arousal, each of which generates a different neurotransmitter: ACh, noradrenaline, DA, and serotonin. The amygdala, which is implicated in the production of danger signals, and the nucleus basalis, the latter a repository of ACh, are particularly relevant. Lesioning of either reduces the capacity of fear stimuli to engender arousal; stimulation of either generates cortical arousal (LeDoux, 1998, p. 289). In response to arousing stimuli, the amygdala induces the nucleus basilis to release ACh throughout the cortex. Emotional stimuli in particular produce substantial arousal (as compared with the limited arousal engendered by any novel stimulus), an observation that LeDoux ascribes to the involvement of the amygdala. The hormones oxytocin and testosterone also play a part in regulating fear and aggression as well as nurturance and affiliation. The neurotransmitter serotonin contributes to the reduction of anxiety so that the reduction of CNS serotonin impairs impulse control and is implicated in violence, impatience, and the assumption of risks of punishment or injury (Higley et al., 1996). The administration of serotonin by means of selective SSRI medication modulates antisocial tendencies (Knutson et al., 1998). While DA has a general role in the anticipation of rewarded behavior, it may have a particular affinity with behavior that eventuates in (reported) arousal since it is associated with excitement, engagement, and the involved pursuit of primary reinforcers. It is, moreover, involved in energizing higher motor cortex areas on which SEEKING relies (Panksepp, 1998). Linking Pleasure and Arousal

Key to the difference between “wanting” and “liking” and their import for the roles of pleasure and arousal in consumer decision-​making and activity is the concept of incentive salience which consists in the motivational value acquired by reinforcers and the stimuli that predict them, that is, “wanting.” (DA-​fueled incentive salience may thus be considered the neurophysiological basis of motivating operations.) As Watts et al. (2022) point out, simply learning that a behavior that leads to reinforcement, with all its consummatory benefits –​ that is, operant learning –​ does not of itself determine that the behavior will subsequently be performed. Rather, the

Neural Foundations of Valuation  123 outcomes of alternative courses of action and how those outcomes are valued are integral to the way in which action–​outcome associations direct behavior. This is a crucial point for establishing the need to consider valuation at the sub-​personal level, that is, V3, since comparisons between alternative courses of action cannot be made without a common currency in which each is accorded value (i.e., used to gauge future net reinforcement from each). Cognitive processing may not always be sufficiently prompt for this, especially in contexts where rapid responding is called for. Watts et al. (2022, p. 669) note that “Food-​directed motivated responses are not only determined by learned action-​outcome associations, but also by the animal’s current evaluation of the affective properties of a specific food reinforcer, i.e., its incentive salience.” In the context of human consumption, if the consumer’s learning history on its own is not sufficient to engender new responses, it must be supplemented by her immediate evaluation of the affective consequences of obtaining and consuming socio-​ economic goods. The consumer is operating in an intentional consumer-​situation which entails calculation of the affective consequences of current and future behavior in terms of the feelings of pleasure, arousal, and dominance they are likely to engender. Such an evaluation is carried out in light of the consumer’s learning history of consuming this kind of item and the affective consequences it yielded. V3 is central to the consumer’s decision processing and action as the rate of dopaminergic action potentials (sub-​personal) is transformed into affect (personal). The affect felt at the personal level is the evaluation of consumer activity either previously performed or being currently performed or to be performed in the future. Insofar as this affective evaluation is, then, a representation of value at the personal level that is inaugurated by the rate of dopaminergic action potentials, the affect may be understood as an intentional object that represents the sub-​personal valuation.1 To put this into economic terminology, the opportunity costs of each member of an array of possible actions must be taken into account. This could be accomplished cognitively, were all the relevant information available and computable, something unlikely in view of humans’ bounded rationality. There is, therefore, a need for a rapidly acting guide to behavior in a specific context that can draw upon the consumer’s learning history, even if this has to be truncated and codified. The evolution of a nervous system able to achieve this has given rise to an alternative view of how valuing and choosing actions occurs, especially when there is advantage in acting with immediacy. Neither BPM-​E nor BPM-​I encompasses this; though, once a behavior pattern has been learned, such responding is comprehensible in terms of perception. Whether the mechanism is taken to be operant learning or perceptual responding, however, an additional paradigm is necessary to explicate the process: hence, BPM-​N and neural valuation. Such rapid response may get out of hand, however, if it promotes the supersession of liking and results not just in wanting but in craving. In their analyses of the role of DA release in learning, Berridge and Robinson (1998, 2012) refer to both a hedonic or affective outcome (denoting “liking” or pleasure) and a motivational element (suggestive of “wanting” or incentive

124  Levels of Exposition salience). Liking is associated with opioid transmission onto GABAergic neurons in the NAcc (Winkielman et al., 2005). “Wanting” is a separate process, more likely associated with DA release and retention. Hence, far from being the so-​called pleasure chemical, DA turns out to be neither necessary nor sufficient for “liking.” Manipulation of the DA system does, however, modify motivated behavior by increasing instrumental responses and the consumption of rewards; incentive salience is a motivational rather than an affective component of reward that transforms neutral stimuli into compelling incentives (Robinson and Berridge, 2003; Berridge, 2004). In accordance with Berridge’s (2000) argument that “liking” should be separated from “wanting,” Toronchuk and Ellis (2013) contrast PLEASURE which is relevant to consummatory behaviors and associated with opioid and GABA release, and Panksepp’s (1998) SEEKING which is associated with DA release and which marks appetitive responses. Hence, we draw a conceptual distinction based on the understanding that the wanting inherent in SEEKING is a matter of arousal rather than pleasure. The import of liking vs. wanting will become further apparent in Chapter 8. Dominance

Dominance is an emotional response that varies with the tendency of the consumer behavior setting to permit autonomy or induce conformity as indexed by the number of behavioral alternatives it offers. Hence, increasing dominance relates to autonomy and agency, and contrasts with submissiveness and harmoniousness (Barrett et al., 2007). Prosocial behavior and affiliation are associated with DA, as is sociability with opioids, while the neuropeptide oxytocin increases feelings of trust (Panksepp, 2007). Both the neurotransmitter serotonin and the hormone testosterone are associated with feelings of dominance, while challenges to status and increased stress are associated with higher cortisol levels (Buss, 2004, 2005; Cummins, 2005). The relationship between dominance and the BPM resides in a tendency of consumers to report high levels of this emotional response as well as higher levels of pleasure in relation to more open settings. These are settings which offer a larger number of behavioral outcomes, and which are usually under the control of the consumer rather than an external agent like a marketer or government office. Dominance is also likely to be felt to an increased extent in situations that permit autonomous and multifaceted activity. In a paper that positively reviews the evidence for a model of emotionality that includes dominance as well as pleasure and arousal, Demaree et al. (2005, p. 3) propose that “relative left-​ and right-​frontal activation may be associated with feelings of dominance and submissiveness, respectively.” Jerram et al. (2014) argue on the basis of an fMRI investigation that dominance should be included in dimensional models of emotion. In a study that they claim as the first to report neural correlates of dominance as an emotion, 17 males viewed pictures showing high and low dominance situations. Their findings indicated that paralimbic regions were activated during the viewing of these images: the bilateral anterior insula (AI) was activated in the case of high dominance, the right precuneus

Neural Foundations of Valuation  125 in that of low dominance. Their clearest result occurred in the AI between high and low dominance conditions, and they observe that this area features as one of the most frequently activated regions in the analysis of emotion, as indicated by Kober et al.’s (2008) meta-​analysis. Importantly, AI figures in the “salience network” which is predominant in the determination of the significance of stimuli that comprise the context of behavior. Jerram et al. (2014) link this with the somatic marker hypothesis by pointing out that AI is crucial to the re-​enactment of somatic states that retrieve episodic memories that play a role in the emotional basis of decision-​ making. Moreover, the feeling of dominance plays a strategic role in decision-​ making, entailing as it does the actor’s appraisal of her personal resources, internal states, and the extra-​personal environment, all of which play an essential role in the prediction of behavioral outcomes. These procedures activate AI as do stimuli that both promote approach and avoidance responses (Jerram et al., 2014). A Potential Integrative Framework The usual “Summary and Conclusions” do not fit this rather technical chapter as they do others. It concludes, therefore, with a short view of a framework which alludes to all three levels of exposition with which the intentional behaviorist research strategy is concerned. Its potential to integrate them is not accepted uncritically but simply as one model of how the issues with which one level is concerned impinge on the other levels. The argument that is presented is relevant to the quest for integration especially as pursued in Chapters 9 and 10. Linking Reinforcement and Reward: Somatic Markers

Damasio’s semantic marker hypothesis (SMH) is summarized here as a system of thought that brings together the super-​personal, personal, and the sub-​personal elements of a comprehensive explanation of behavior and action. These are based, respectively, on operant behavior and its reinforcing/​punishing consequences, the affective, that is, rewarding or sanctioning consequences of action, and the neurophysiological, including emotional, outcomes of activity. The aim is not to endorse this particular theory in its entirety, still less to accept or advocate it uncritically,2 but to have available a template that embraces the three levels of exposition as they might be thought to promote the continuity of behavior. The process of rational decision-​making is typically epitomized as entailing the establishment of a goal, followed by a review of the available actions which could be undertaken to achieve it, and a comparative evaluation of these alternatives in light of their probable consequences vis-​à-​vis achievement of the goal (Bermúdez, 2009). Such problem-​solving sometimes entails a detailed cost–​benefit analysis, for example, when an individual has to make a momentous decision like emigrating to another country or when a business organization is making investment plans. However, there are decision situations that call for a more rapid response than this if the individual is to survive: a police marksman may have to decide whether to pull the trigger without the luxury of such detailed contemplation of the alternative

126  Levels of Exposition courses of action and their likely outcomes. Many of the choice points reached by animals also demand rapid fight or flight reactions in the face of life-​threatening danger. The SMH) is a theory of how these more imminent decisions are made. At its heart is the idea that “When the bad outcome connected with a given response comes into mind, however fleetingly, you experience an unpleasant gut feeling” (Damasio, 1994, p. 173). Damasio (1995) resolutely rejects the notion that there is opposition between reason and emotion, as Descartes maintained. Rather, he argues, “work from my laboratory has shown that emotion is integral to the process of reasoning and decision making” (Damasio, 1999, p. 41). This research indicates that individuals who had suffered damage to the ventral and medial areas, and especially to the right parietal area, of the prefrontal region of the brain not only lost a class of emotions but also the ability to make reasoned decisions. While still able to make use of their knowledge of the world, they exhibit an increased tendency to make personal and social decisions on an irrational basis, yielding outcomes that are disadvantageous to themselves and others more often than not. The SMH draws on the finding that when an individual encounters pleasant, reinforcing or aversive, punishing stimuli, she responds with an increase in heart rate or visceral changes (Damasio, 1995, 1999; see also Bechara and Damasio, 2005). The SMH begins then with operant behavior: responses defined by discriminative learning generate reinforcers as a result of which the amygdala triggers emotional/​bodily states. While the amygdala is assumed to instigate an emotional reaction in the case of primary induction, it is the vmPFC that inaugurates the mentation that triggers the affective feelings that compose secondary induction. The SMH distinguishes a “body loop” that comprises somatic activity from an “as-​if loop” which relies on neurophysiological representations of prior behavior and its consequences and of projected behaviors and their consequences. This is pertinent to the contingency-​representations that compose the intentional consumer-​situation and the neural firing that represents value at the personal level, whether its origins are at the personal, super-​personal, or sub-​personal level. These somatic-​marker states are then associated, during further learning processes, with the behaviors that brought them about through mental representations. As each alternative course of action is deliberated in the process of decision-​making, the somatic state corresponding to that action is re-​enacted in the vmPFC by the activation of an as-​if loop. This is the procedure in which somatic markers are formed and come to influence both decision-​making and patterns of operant choice. After being brought to mind during decision-​making the somatic states are represented in the brain by sensory processes in two ways. First, emotional states are related to cortical activation (e.g. insular cortex) in the form of conscious “gut feelings” of desire or aversion that are mentally attributed to the behavioral options as they are considered. Second, there is an unconscious mapping of the somatic states at the subcortical level –​ for example in the mesolimbic dopaminergic system; in this case, individuals choose the more beneficial option without knowingly feeling the desire for it or the aversiveness of a less beneficial alternative (Ross et al., 2008; Di Chiara, 2002; Robbins and Everitt, 2002; Tobler and Kobayashi, 2009).

Neural Foundations of Valuation  127 Origins

Damasio’s (1994) hypothesis is the outcome of brain lesion studies in which damage to the vmPFC was found to be associated with behaving in ways that were personally harmful, especially insofar as they contributed to injuring the social and financial status of the individual and their social relationships. Although many aspects of these patients’ intellectual functioning such as long-​term memory were unimpaired, they were notably disadvantaged with respect to learning from experience and responding appropriately to emotional situations. Moreover, their general emotional level was described as “flat.” Damasio’s observation of these findings was that “the primary dysfunction of patients with vmPFC damage was an inability to use emotions in decision making, particularly decision making in the personal, financial and moral realms” (Naqvi et al., 2006, p. 261). The behavioral tendencies, notably the assumption of high-​risk activities, observed in patients suffering impairment to the OFC, from Gage onwards, represent emotional rather than cognitive deficits. They stem from an inability to elicit appropriate emotional signals, somatic markers, rather than dysfunctional intellectual capacities (Damasio, 1994). In this inheres the central point of the title and theme of Damasio’s book, Descartes’ Error. While the Cartesian assertion of a conflict between higher-​order cognition and emotion would support an interpretation that identified deficits in the former as the causal element in these patients’ new behavior pattern, the SMH adverts to the possibility that emotional deficits actually account for it. From studies such as these was born the central assumption of the somatic marker hypothesis that “emotions play a role in guiding decisions, especially in situations in which the outcomes of one’s choices, in terms of reward and punishment, are uncertain” (Naqvi et al., 2006, p. 261; Bechara, 2011). Of relevance here is the finding that the vmPFC may be implicated in activity of the parasympathetic nervous system, which in contrast to the sympathetic nervous system is involved in the explorative monitoring of the environment, the discovery of novelty, and social functioning broadly conceived (Eisenberger and Cole, 2012; Goldberg, 2002). This is corroborative of Damasio’s hypothesis which is discussed below. The starting point is operant behavior, particularly the mechanisms of reinforcement learning (Daw, 2013; Daw and Tobler, 2013). Specific behaviors eventuate in rewards as a result of which the amygdala triggers emotional/​bodily states. These states are then associated via a learning process to the behaviors that brought them about by means of mental representations. As each behavioral alternative is subsequently deliberated upon over a decision sequence, the somatic state corresponding to it is re-​enacted by the vmPFC. Emotions and Feelings

The essence of Damasio’s (1994, 1999) work on emotion is his critique of Descartes’s notion that reason and emotion are distinct regions of the mind and that emotion must be controlled by reason. The empirical findings of neuropsychology indicate otherwise. That an excess of emotion may confound rational decision-​ making is a commonplace observation but Damasio has concentrated on clinical

128  Levels of Exposition evidence of particular emotional shortfalls resulting from particular brain lesions and affecting the efficacy of problem-​solving. He bases his conclusions on experience with patients who were entirely capable of making rational decisions until they suffered neurological injury to their prefrontal regions, notably in ventral and medial areas and to the right parietal area. The causes of such damage might be, for instance, a stroke, a tumor, or an accidental injury. The consequential deficits these patients suffered were primarily emotional and these losses reduced their capacity to decide rationally. The emotional deficits were selective but the result was always “a disturbance of the ability to decide advantageously in situations involving risk and conflict and a selective reduction of the ability to resonate emotionally in precisely those same situations while preserving the remainder of their emotional abilities” (Damasio, 1999, p. 41). Damasio distinguishes feeling, which is a personal and subjective experience, from emotion, which is a set of responses including those that are private, neurophysiological events and those that are publicly observable. Feelings arise from emotions. Emotions are biological phenomena, the outcome of evolution by natural selection, and as such they are centrally involved in the survival of individuals and their biological fitness. (They therefore belong to the sub-​personal level.) By providing initial and immediate reactions to particular situations emotions help prepare the individual to respond appropriately. As such, emotions are intricately bound up with the events and behaviors that have previously resulted in reinforcing and punishing outcomes, pleasure and displeasure, approach and escape/​ avoidance, gain and loss (Damasio, 1999, pp. 54–​55). Feelings (which belong to the personal level) are crucially important in learning the upshots of situational encounters and responses and employing them in the process of decision-​making for further responding in similar situations. These considerations are fundamental to the somatic marker hypothesis. Feelings of this kind are the result of previous operant behavior, the punishing (in this example) consequence of which was accompanied by an emotional reaction which is now represented in PFC and available to initiate this gut feeling which influences the current decision. Specifically, reinforcing and punishing stimuli eventuate in a related physiological–​affective state, somatic markers, which is represented in vmPFC. (We encountered this capacity of reinforcing and punishing outcomes of operant behavior to be registered in PFC in the account of the neurophysiological basis of executive functions advanced by Miller and Wallis, 2009.) The recurrence of these emotional feelings during decision-​making may well influence cognitive appraisal and problem-​solving. This does not mean that decision-​ making is entirely emotional: it does mean that there are limits to the cognitive control of decision processes, especially as a result of intellectual overload if too many potential future situations have to be compared and evaluated. It also means that the cognitive component of decision-​making is amenable to modification and bias as a result of emotional feelings. A net somatic state is the result of the computation of positive and negative somatic markers, and it is this that is the immediate precursor of decision-​making and behavior. The complexities of decision-​making are thus reduced as the potentially most beneficial course of behavior becomes

Neural Foundations of Valuation  129 apparent, not as a result of intellectual processes alone but also through the operation of an emotional learning history and its neurophysiological traces. Damasio’s hypothesis is derived, as we have noted, from observations of patients who have suffered damage to the relevant brain regions: the well-​known case of Phineas Gage highlighted the fact that damage to the relevant areas of PFC could result in impairment in the ability to envision and evaluate future behavioral consequences, plan ahead, take the outcomes of previous behavior into consideration, or act responsibly in a social context where subtle cues normally guided behavior. Hence, impairment of PFC functioning may result in novel associations with people the patient would previously have avoided, and deficits in the operation of executive functions. It may also manifest to a degree in the lack of empathy that is described as mild psychopathy or sociopathy. Such damage does not, however, affect normal sensory or intellectual functioning which relies on WM, paying attention, or linguistic usage and comprehension. Somatic markers may be activated to influence emotional responding, decision-​ making, and behavior in two ways: via direct experience of an appetitive or threatening stimulus –​seeing a fresh cream gateau on the table or a vicious dog on the street –​ or via vicarious experience –​ just imagining the gateau or the animal. Similar approach behavior would accompany both the direct perception and the imagined food in the first example, while similar fight or flight reactions would be motivated in the second. Damasio (1994) terms these routes to the reactivation of somatic markers the “body-​loop” and the “as-​if body-​loop,” respectively. The responses inaugurated by the as-​if loop are usually less strong than those that result from direct contact with the stimuli that originally instigated the somatic marker. All in all, somatic markers simplify decision procedures, obviating the need for comprehensive cost–​benefit analysis by resolving behavioral consequences into the common currency of pleasure-​displeasure (Cabanac, 2010). A Basis of Hyperbolic Discounting?

A realistic conclusion from the discussion of the SMH is that deficits in the functioning of PFC may result in a tendency to discount the future hyperbolically, and to do so steeply, showing a large preference for SSRs over LLRs. The pursuit of short-​term gain may take precedence over consciousness (through experience) of the deleterious consequences of, say, drug use. The emotional feelings, somatic markers, that would in most people bring about vividly unpleasant reactions to the idea of enacting a behavior pattern likely to bring about such outcomes may, therefore, be absent in addicts. These negative somatic markers are the “alarm bells” that sound warnings to the contemplation of behaviors that have previously engendered aversive consequences. Their absence may be accompanied by accentuated influence of positive somatic markers so that they perform as “beacons of incentive” for behaviors with short-​term pleasurable outcomes (Damasio, 1994, p. 174; see also Damasio, 2009). Damage to vmPFC has been shown to reduce the efficiency of decision-​making. Individuals who are dependent on substances such as drugs and alcohol show a

130  Levels of Exposition heightened tendency to take decisions leading to SSRs over LLRs. The advantage of somatic markers is that they enable rapid decision-​making via a swift appraisal of alternative courses of behavior but this does not guarantee the rationality or advisability of the hastily acquired response. Such utility is a function of the reinforcing and punishing consequences of past behavior being qualitatively similar to those currently obtaining and thus likely to determine the wisdom or unwisdom of the selected behavior. The unconscious, unreflective mode of decision-​making that the SMH implies may involve unawareness of the true consequences of behavior, a situation that can be partially or wholly overcome by the provision of information in the form of instructions. The capacity to receive, process, and act on such information requires, however, the cognitive abilities which we have described as executive functions. SMH presents a model of decision-​making systems that emphasizes the role of emotion and feelings, downplaying economic considerations. Decision-​making reflects the marker signals laid down in bioregulatory systems by conscious and non-​conscious emotion and feeling; hence, Bechara and Damasio (2005; Bechara et al., 2000) argue that in dealing with decision-​making economic theory ignores emotion. Economics is exclusively concerned with “rational Bayesian maximization of expected utility, as if humans were equipped with unlimited knowledge, time, and information processing power.” They point, by contrast, to neural evidence which shows that “sound and rational” decision-​making requires antecedent and accurate emotional processing (Bechara and Damasio, 2005, p. 336; Phelps and Sokol-​Hessner, 2012). Notes 1 Just as Foxall (2020) argued that V2 may be an intentional object representing super-​ personal valuation (V1) at the personal level, we may now recognize V2 also as an intentional object that represents neural valuation. This has an explanatory significance which will be explored further in Chapters 8 and 9. 2 For a critique which combines philosophical and empirical approaches, the style of which is sympathetic to that pursued here, see Lo Dico (2016).

Part III

Confronting Conceptual Duality

8 Responsive Behavior and Considered Action

Abstract Dual process theories posit antithetical, interrelated tendencies: rapid behavioral responding to short-​range situations and considered action leading to longer-​ range outcomes. There is a propensity for such theories to conflate extensional and intentional levels of exposition, employing incompatible modes of discourse in their explanations. They mix concepts from incommensurable levels of exposition, indiscriminately using behavioral, cognitive, and neurophysiological terms to describe decision processes, combining terms from separate methodologies. By contrast, the chapter raises the possibility of a dual process depiction based on the provision of extensional and intentional conceptualizations which maintain the separateness of their explanations. The vehicle is the BPM’s discrete extensional and intentional approaches to the explanation of consumer choice. To facilitate a dual process conception, it is necessary to augment these components with the neurophysiological model to account for biological substrates of the responsive behavior and considered action for which the extensional and intentional models are responsible. The chapter, therefore, examines the proposition that the extensional and intentional models, BPM-​E and BPM-​I, respectively, form poles of a conceptual dual process depiction, employing BPM-​N to critique the antipodality thereby posited. Dual Process Thinking Types/​Systems 1 and 2

Dual process theories (DPTs) are founded on the competing tendencies toward, first, immediate reward which may have limited or deleterious consequences in the longer term, and, second, later reward which, despite the drawback of its being delayed, confers larger or better outcomes on the consumer. The foci of such theories are the cognitive underpinnings of the behaviors involved in obtaining and consuming these temporally separate rewards and, their neurophysiological bases. A fast-​acting, impulsive, affect-​laden and stimulus-​bound process is posited alongside a slower, deliberative, and considered process. The essential components of DOI: 10.4324/9781003262510-11

134  Confronting Conceptual Duality each subsystem can be summarized, therefore, as behavioral, cognitive, affective, and neurophysiological. The separate propensities of these subsystems and, especially, their interactions in the production of behavior and its consequences, provide the theories’ content and concern. Underlying the theories is the argument that human cognition is characterized by two categorial styles of processing (Frankish and Evans, 2009). Type 1 processing is autonomous: its execution is rapid and mandatory, economizes on central processing capacity and higher-​level control systems, and uses parallel processing so that it avoids interfering with other cognitive operations. These characteristics illustrate the computational ease that makes Type 1 processing the default processing mode: unless it is overridden, it will automatically generate a category of responses to environmental conditions. Type 1 processing includes the regulation of behavior by emotions, encapsulated modules that solve adaptive problems, implicit learning processes, and the automatic firing of overlearned associations. By comparison with Type 1 thinking that characterizes the autonomous mind (Stanovich, 2009), the second category of processing, Type 2, is slow and makes heavy computational demands. It requires attention, which is costly, and is involved in conscious problem-​solving, eventuating in behavior that is directed toward achieving long-​ range consequences.1 Although there are many dual process depictions of social and economic behavior, three are particularly instructive in the context of the intentional behaviorist research program (Foxall, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c): Bickel’s competing neuro-​ behavioral decisions system model (Bickel and Yi, 2008, 2010), Stanovich’s tri-​process model (Stanovich, 2009), and Ainslie’s picoeconomics (Ainslie, 1992). My purpose here is not to criticize dual process theories in general or these in particular but to point up their tendency to employ different types of theoretical language and to mix the levels of exposition at which their explanatory statements are located. While this need not be a serious deficiency of such models, which must be treated on their merits and judged in terms of their peculiar objectives, my objective is to make a case for an approach to dual process thinking in which the levels of exposition and their proper modes of explanation are kept conceptually separate. Again, this is within the restricted domain of pointing up the modes of explanation –​ extensional and intentional –​ that are appropriate to the styles of consumer activity characteristic of these impulsive and executive poles as well as those that are apposite to the explanation of intermediate patterns of behavior or action. The following section describes key components of these three theories and, where appropriate, points out how they have shaped the development of a BPM-​based portrayal of conceptual dual processes. It also displays the thinking which led to the working hypothesis which is examined later in this chapter. Competing Neuro-​Behavioral Decision Systems (CNDS)

In formulating the competing CNDS model, Bickel and his colleagues distinguish an impulsive and an executive system, which exhibit antipodal styles of processing and two opposing tendencies toward behavioral outcomes (Bickel and Yi, 2008).

Responsive Behavior and Considered Action  135 The interaction of these conflicting propensities suggests that behavioral imbalance will result from the hyperactivity of one system contemporaneously with the hypoactivity of the other, a possibility which Bickel et al. (2012b) have investigated in detail. More specifically, the CNDS model (Bickel and Yi, 2008; Bickel et al., 2020) envisages the individual’s temporal discounting rate as the balance between her cognitive, neurophysiological, and behavioral tendencies. The authors of this model have strenuously developed, tested, and applied these separate decision systems and they are reflected in the components of the BPM dual process theory as a responsive-​impulsive process strongly influenced by the limbic and paralimbic systems, and a reflective-​executive process, strongly influenced by PFC. The responsive-​impulsive process stimulates immediate gratification and emphasizes behavioral outcomes that are reward-​sensitive. The ensuing behavior is relatively uninhibited by longer-​term consequences, utilitarian or informational. Behavioral consequences that fail to reflect non-​immediate concerns are likely ignored. Impulsive choice is, therefore, emphasized and the future is steeply discounted. The reflective-​executive process, by contrast, attends to the longer-​term implications of action. It relies on the cognitive and metacognitive operations which promote flexible behaviors, inhibiting those likely to produce deleterious consequences; it relies on WM and cognitive rehearsal to promote forward planning and the consequences of action that reflect forward planning and responsibility for behavioral outcomes. It thus constrains the impulsivity of immediate and unconsidered response. Interaction of these processes determines the consumer’s potential temporal discounting rate. Routine and extreme patterns of consumer choice result from peculiar concatenations of her consumption history and cognitive and affective appraisals of prior activity and that prefigured by the current consumer behavior setting. Routine consumer choice displays a rationality (defined cognitively or behaviorally) marked by measured and predictable activity and expected results. The suboptimal (extreme) consumer activity reflects subjective overstatement of the rewards of consummatory behavior and preference for immediate satisfaction, the basis of reinforcer pathology theory. Reinforcer pathology is the result the augmentation of two kinds of consumer valuation to the point where they are out of proportion to normal economic and social functioning. The first takes the form of excessive preference for the immediate acquisition or consumption of a reinforcer even though the consumer may be fully aware that this is likely to have deleterious longer-​term effects on her well-​being. This is a failure of temporal horizon. The second is excessive over-​ valuation of the commodity whether it is a physical product or a service or a specific behavioral experience such as gambling, sex, or compulsive shopping (Bickel et al., 2011). In terms of behavioral economics, this disproportionate valuation of the commodity defines the consumer’s personal elasticity of demand for the reinforcer in which her discounting of future rewards is reflected in her impulsive behavior. The link between the two is to be found in the neurophysiological effects of the reinforcer, or perhaps of the mere thought of owning and using it, which may be signaled by elements of the consumer behavior setting as the stimulus field it

136  Confronting Conceptual Duality provides acquires increased incentive salience. While these behaviors are inconsistent with rational choice theory, they are consistent with the behavioral economics of demand and discounting (Bickel et al., 2012a,b, 2016, 2020). The Tri-​Process Model

The Type 1/​Type 2 dichotomy of which the CNDS’s distinction between an impulsive and an executive system is a meticulously researched enlargement is further elaborated by Stanovich’s (2009) tri-​process model. He proposes (Stanovich, 2009, p. 56) “a set of [Type 1] systems in the brain that operate autonomously in response to their own triggering stimuli and are not under the control of the analytic processing system [i.e., Type 2].” This heterogeneous set, the Autonomous Set of Systems (TASS), contains several systems that are related by their style of functioning rather than by modularity. Type 2 processing is bifurcated into two operational modes or “minds” which together comprise “analytic mind” as opposed to the Automatic Mind populated by TASS. The first component of analytic mind, the Algorithmic Mind, encompasses individual differences in fluid intelligence (that measured by IQ tests), while the second, the Reflective Mind, is concerned with individual differences in rational thinking. Rationality, broader than intelligence, requires precisely defined desires (or goals), highly discriminated beliefs, plus a capacity to appropriately achieve the goals. Reflective Mind, then, is akin to the executive system of Bickel et al. (2012b). Reflective Mind inaugurates hypothetical reasoning, the cognitive simulation of possible courses of action and their consequences, while the Algorithmic Mind accomplishes the decoupling from general mental activity that this requires. Such decoupling is cognitively costly, necessitating linguistic skills to create and uphold a representational arena. Hypothetical thought requires, among other things, the representation of assumptions, and such linguistic forms as conditionals which facilitate this. Decoupling makes it possible for the decision-​maker to distance herself from these representations so that they can be treated analytically and modified in accordance with progress-​to-​date and goals. As the key function of the Algorithmic Mind, decoupling is evidently a System 2 operation since its operations occur serially and incur high levels of computational input required for effective cognitive simulation. Several styles of cognitive control are implicit in the tri-​process model. TASS functions on a short-​range basis, responding to external stimulation, unless the Algorithmic System overrides this by according precedence to the long-​range goals of the analytical system. Such goals reflect the individual’s cognitive style, their “epistemic thinking dispositions.” However, these goals and dispositions emerge from a level beyond the Algorithmic System, that is, within the Reflective System in which are found control states that achieve top-​down behavioral regulation (Stanovich, 2009, p. 57). Hence, the model embodies a tripartite system of cognitive processing in which Algorithmic Mind and Reflective Mind share properties (e.g., capacity-​limited serial processing) that differentiate them fundamentally from Automatic Mind.

Responsive Behavior and Considered Action  137 Stanovich’s impressive theorizing is reflected in the BPM-​based dual conceptual portrayal, albeit on the basis of two rather than three kinds of mind, and much of the details of the tri-​process model has been discussed at length in the development of the conceptual theory (see especially Foxall, 2016a, 2016b, 2017a, in press.) Picoeconomics

The problem of preferences that change with time was encountered earlier, especially in Chapter 4. What seems entirely reasonable at the beginning of a venture (t1 in Figure 4.2) comes to appear absurd when another option, even though it is patently less valuable than the longer-​term objective, becomes immediately accessible (e.g., Rachlin, 2000). This short-​term option now assumes an often-​irresistible attraction, the result of which may be excessive consumption. Akrasia also occurs in more serious contexts of substance abuse and problem gambling, even when the individuals concerned know from experience the deleterious outcomes of their behavior and intend to change it. Many commentators have noted the apparently “divided self” or “multiple selves” that this implies (Elster, 1987; Ainslie, 2001; Ross et al., 2008). Picoeconomics is an economic psychology of the personal level, the domain of BPM-​I. Ainslie (1992), its originator, models preference reversal economically in terms of the strategic interactions of conflicting intra-​personal interests which operate on different temporal horizons. One interest is concerned with short-​term pleasures like undemanding amusement, the other with gaining long-​term welfare through, for instance, engaging in productive work. The first strategic tendency, the short-​range interest (SRI), seeks rapid satisfaction leading to behavior that exhibits steep discounting of the future. The long-​range interest (LRI), tending toward deferment of gratification to enhance the individual’s extended well-​being, discounts less steeply. The conflict of the SRI and LRI may be modeled as an intra-​personal bilateral contingency that binds the interests one to the another (Figure 8.1; see also Foxall, 2020). The behavior of each and the consequences thereof act as discriminative stimuli and motivating operations for the behavior of the other. Each interest is an agent whose behavior is enmeshed in a three-​term contingency that intertwines with that of the opposing interest or agent. “Intertwines” emphasizes

Figure 8.1 Bilateral contingency analysis of short-​and long-​range picoeconomic interests.

138  Confronting Conceptual Duality the twin nature of the contingencies that dovetail to form a single unit of analysis, a collective intentionality of competing interests. The main sources of utilitarian reinforcement for the SRI are the payoff itself: albeit diminished in size, it is high in value by virtue of its immediacy. Sources of informational reinforcement for the SRI include the subjective experience of immediacy: self-​esteem stemming from the ability to have one’s own way even if the longer-​term outcomes are less than satisfactory. There is, therefore, a strong tendency toward A-​rationality. Waiting for the LRI leads to utilitarian reinforcement in the form of a greater amount of the commodity and the informational reinforcement of enhanced pride and lasting self-​ esteem. The main sources of utilitarian punishment incurred in opting for the LRI inhere in the subjective displeasure incurred by having to wait for the commodity while the informational punishment may be apparent in the social opprobrium of not being able to enjoy what others have. The picoeconomic analysis of short-​and long-​range interests provides a personal level account of the temporally based conflict that is the experienced reality that derives from the bilateral interaction of diametrically opposed consumer behavior settings and the antagonistic contingencies of reinforcement and punishment they comprise. A BPM-​Based Dual Process Depiction The Need for a Conceptual Portrayal

Reflecting the considerations raised by these three dual process models, the conceptual portrayal based on the BPM proposes –​ at least at the level of a working hypothesis –​ how the extensional and intentional models might be applied to the spectrum of behaviors and their cognitive and affective correlates of the impulsive and executive forces that underlie all three. The bifurcation of explanation inherent in the distinct but complementary accounts provided by the BPM-​E and BPM-​I models suggests a conceptual dual process theory which allocates and exploits the explanatory mechanisms necessary to accommodate, respectively, the extensional and intentional bases of behavior and action. On the one hand, routine consumer choice is portrayed as (predominantly) governed by executive functions, controlled and predictable, non-​impulsive; on the other hand, extreme consumer choice is understood as impulsive and exciting, especially if overconsumption occurs. It seems reasonable, therefore, to assume that BPM-​I/​BPM-​E correspond to the routine/​extreme poles of the Continuum of Consumer Choice and to the executive/​impulsive alternatives posed by dual process theories. The sources of activity described by BPM-​N underly both. We have also noted that these generalizations accommodate considerable bodies of empirical evidence on patterns of consumption, discounting, affect, and cognition. Their support by evidence on neural valuation indicates the usefulness of BPM-​N as an addition to the BPM suite of models. Before the styles of consumer activity this suggests can be elaborated and critically examined, however, it is necessary to discuss why such a depiction is necessary and how it differs from the models that have been considered.

Responsive Behavior and Considered Action  139 The overriding problem is that dual process theories typically fail to distinguish the levels of exposition to which their various conceptualizations belong (Foxall, 2014a). This is not a specific criticism of the three DPTs discussed above; rather, it is a general observation on the inherent nature of dual process modeling which is unlikely to be completely eliminated by any such theory that attempts the multi-​disciplinary explanatory task that such a methodology inevitably imposes. Understandably, therefore, such theories mix behavioral, cognitive, and neurophysiological constructs and variables as though these belonged to a single mode of discourse, a unified manner of explanation. For instance, extensional behavioral explanations appear alongside intentional cognitive accounts without recognition of their incommensurability. Both are seamlessly linked with neurophysiological conceptualizations in the absence of any recognition of the methodological implications this entails. All three models considered above provide masterful conceptualizations of the behavioral tendencies inherent in both everyday consumption and compulsions and addictions. The sole aim of this discussion is to point up the incompatible explanatory approaches which DPTs unavoidably incorporate and to raise the question whether a conceptual portrayal might be constructed which maintains the integrity of extensional and intentional explanations. What form might such a portrayal take and how might it contribute? Making the case first requires a short recapitulation of the argument made in earlier chapters. The suitability of the BPM of consumer choice as the vehicle for this exploration is suggested by its twin portrayals of the consumer-​situation, the immediate precursor of socio-​economic behavior. Of particular interest is the availability of an extensional model, which deals with the relationship between behavior and its environmental (reinforcing and punishing) consequences, and an intentional model which accounts for action and its accompanying desires, beliefs, affects, and other perceptions. Again, as has been said, these depictions of consumer choice were developed for a well-​defined methodological purpose: to investigate, and if necessary, justify cognitive explanation by ascertaining the points at which a purely behavioral mode of explanation (represented by BPM-​E) became incapable of elucidating observed conduct and at which a cognitive explanation became inevitable, as well as the form it should take (the domain of BPM-​I). The pursuit of this methodology comprises the intentional behaviorist research program, the background and course of this which will not be rehearsed except in its essentials. While BPM-​ E defines value as based on intersubjective exchange, BPM-​I understands it as a subjective intra-​personal concept of the worth of economic and social goods. As the bases of a conceptual dual process theory, these models require the addition of a third model of the consumer-​situation and its relation to consumption activity, a neurophysiological depiction which was described earlier as the BPM-​N. The necessity of a neurophysiological conception of value, separate from those of the earlier models, stems from its being based on neural valuation conceived as the rate of dopaminergic action potentials in response to stimuli that embody goods and the contexts in which they are or have been available. It is, moreover, an objective conception of value which can properly enter economic analysis. BPM-​N, therefore, provides a standpoint from which the hypothesized variations in consumption

140  Confronting Conceptual Duality style, discounting tendency, affect, and cognition posited as characteristics of the range of styles of consumer activity suggested by the routine consumer choice → extreme consumer choice spectrum that forms the Continuum of Consumer Choice can be evaluated, and the validity of the conjecture that BPM-​I is differentially apposite to the explanation of the former, BPM-​E to that of the latter. This working hypothesis should now be formally set out and its rationale set forth. Contrasting Styles of Consumer Activity

The provisional suggestion for this research exercise is the following working hypothesis: That BPM-​E encapsulates responsive-​impulsive behavior, while BPM-​I captures reflective-​executive action, and that this conjecture may be examined by considering the contribution of BPM-​N to the resulting dual processual conceptualization. The rationale for this conjecture rests on the following generalized account of the styles of consumer activity posited by the Continuum of Consumer Choice as it was outlined above. While BPM-​E is concerned with behavior that is responsive to a stimulus field and which is explicable without resort to cognitive and other intentional idioms, BPM-​I deals with action that arises from consideration of its probable long-​ as well as short-​term consequences. This resonates with the numerous dual process models that capture the two broadly defined styles of reaction to the threats and opportunities presented by an organism’s environment. The alternatives are generally envisaged as (a) a rapid response that meets the immediate demands of the situation, a response attuned to the maximization of the organism’s welfare fairly instantly and in line with its proximate circumstances, and (b) a measured reaction that takes more distal outcomes into account. The possibility arises, therefore, of treating these two models as depicting the competing tendencies of a dual process conception of consumer choice. As far as consumer activity is concerned, the extensional and intentional models thus approximate the polar opposites assumed by dual process modeling. Responsive behavior, the domain of BPM-​E, is the result of operant conditioning or innate action tendencies and is under the control of environmental stimuli operating in the context of a learning history. Learning history is the sum of the consumer’s past behavior and its reinforcing and punishing consequences. The environmental stimuli are of two kinds, SDs and MOs: together they form the stimulus field which, as it is primed by the consumer’s learning history, forms the consumer-​situation, the immediate precursor of consumer behavior. Responsive behavior is marked by its speed of operation, being the result of automatic mental processing, minimal use of WM, consisting of operations that occur in parallel, require little by way of cognitive level, and operating in specific (concrete) contexts (Stanovich, 2009). We can see this behavior as the immediate response

Responsive Behavior and Considered Action  141 to a situation of passing opportunity or inevitable threat. The system that produces responsive behavior is sometimes called the impulsive system and is responsible for sensation seeking, reward sensitivity, behavioral disinhibition, attention deficit, reflection deficit, and impulsive choice. In this case, the stimulus field, primed and activated by the learning history and emotional reactions, is responsible for the release of DA, arousal and the preparation of response. There being little or no reflection or inhibiting thought, the result is rapid response. The underlying behavioral mechanism can also be depicted in terms of operant conditioning. These mark out the activity that results as behavior in the sense of its being the result of what is happening and has happened previously to the consumer, that is, responding to stimuli that occur in the current environment and the consumer’s learning history. If there can be said to be an agential mainspring of this activity, it is apparently located in the environment. Considered action, by contrast, is what the consumer does, outcomes of her conative, cognitive, and affective predispositions. The system responsible for considered action, the reflective-​executive system, is based on attention, behavioral flexibility, behavioral inhibition, planning, and the evaluation of future events and draws upon WM. The emotions enacted by the consumer behavior setting are subject to self-​regulation by the consumer and thereby tempered by reflection and experience. Metacognition, leading to further consideration of past behavior and its outcomes, enables consideration of probable consequences of current responding. These mark the activity of the consumer as action in the sense that it derives from her intentionality, reflecting active consideration of past behavior and its consequences and ability to project imaginatively the outcomes of current action. Guided by these executive functions, the consumer herself is the agential source of activity. An extreme behavioral response may result from steep temporal discounting of rewards and therefore be impulsive. A relatively hyperactive impulsive system and a relatively hypoactive executive system occasion a pathologically impulsive response in which an inferior reward that becomes available earlier is preferred to a superior reward that is delayed. Considered action, the result of relatively shallow temporal discounting, reflects –​ again at the extreme –​ a hyperactive executive system and a hypoactive impulsive system resulting in pathological response inhibition. In most instances, the interaction of individual differences in psychological and behavioral traits which are approximately normally distributed brings about an array of consumer choices, ranging from everyday consumption to addictive compulsion. Consistent with the CNDS model’s explication of impulsive and executive-​controlled behaviors as outcomes of the individual’s rate of temporal discounting, the emergent pattern of activity encompassed by the Continuum of Consumer Choice reveals the actualized rate of temporal discounting achieved by the consumer (Figure 8.2.) The actualized rate (that at which the consumer has in fact devalued a future reinforcer) can be operationally specified by observation of a consumer’s behavior; the potential rate is a theoretical abstraction designed to indicate the effect of the responsive-​impulsive and reflective-​executive processes on the selection of responsive behavior or considered action. The first belongs to

142  Confronting Conceptual Duality

Figure 8.2 Determination of temporal discounting rate. The responsive-​impulsive process typically includes sensation-​seeking, sensitivity to immediate reward, tendency toward disinhibited behavior, attention deficit, deliberation deficit, self-​preoccupation, and impetuosity. The reflective-​executive process typically displays attention, flexibility, inhibition, foresight and planning, evaluation and appraisal of behavioral consequences, deployment of working memory, emotional control, metacognition, and empathy (see, for instance, Bickel and Yi, 2008).

the extensional portrayal of consumer choice and the second belongs to its intentional interpretation. If the BPM-​I–​BPM-​E dichotomy corresponds to the impulsive–​executive spectrum that is the basis of DPTs, as is suggested by this portrayal of the predominant styles of consumer activity as ranging from routine to extreme consumer choice, we should expect differences in rate of temporal discounting (from shallow to steep), affect (from liking to wanting), and level of cognitive processing (from top-​down to bottom-​up) along the course of this Continuum. This leads to the proposal of three sub-​continua which are open to examination on the basis of the neurophysiological evidence. This is admittedly a rough-​and-​ready exercise but it is expected to lead only to a provisional view. Whatever the status of the working hypothesis when the sub-​continua have been scrutinized, the outcome must be further refined in light of the findings on the nature of consumer activity made available in the detailed analysis by marketing science. Dimensions of Neural Valuation Sub-​Continua of Consumer Choice

A dual process approach ought to accommodate the three key dimensions of the interaction of the responsive-​impulsive and the reflective-​executive systems shown in Figure 8.3: degree of discounting, affective tone, and cognitive procedures. A plausible case has been made, through consideration of the posited styles of consumer activity, that this may well be the case. But in order to present a more nuanced and rigorous examination, we concentrate here on their neurophysiological bases. This is expected to establish whether there are fundamental bases for

Responsive Behavior and Considered Action  143

Figure 8.3 Styles of consumer activity: discounting, affect, and cognition sub-​continua.

the posited differences in the variables proposed by the sub-​continua which can be reliably related to differences in neural valuation. Discounting

If patterns of temporal discounting depend on neurophysiological events, then brain regions differentially associated with decisions distinguished by their time horizons should be apparent. McClure et al. (2004) identify a brain region based on visual cortex, premotor area, supplementary motor area, intraparietal cortex, right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), right ventrolateral prefrontal (vlPFC) and right lateral OFC, that is activated for decisions concerned with either immediate or delayed rewards. However, a second region based on ventral striatum (VS), medial OFC (mOFC), and medial PFC (mPFC) exhibited enhanced activity in the case of delayed reward. McClure et al. (2004) reported that the VS, subgenual cingulate cortex, mOFC, posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and precuneus exhibited greater activity when immediate rewards were involved rather than delayed rewards alone. There emerge two sets of brain regions, one associated with presence of immediate gains and the other associated with presence of gains even in the absence of immediate options. Both involve brain regions associated with goal pursuit (prefrontal structures). However, the brain regions linked to presence of immediate gains also involve structures related to valuations (striatum) and cognitive control (cingulate and precuneus). (Frost and McNaughton, 2017, p. 56) The responsive-​impulsive system incorporates the amygdala and VS, a midbrain region involved, through enhanced dispersal of DA during reinforcement learning, in valuation of behavior. This is so for routine as well as extreme behavior: receipt

144  Confronting Conceptual Duality of all kinds of positive reinforcers stimulates DA release in the NAcc. However, this midbrain region is inclined toward hyperactivity via “exaggerated processing of the incentive value of substance-​related cues” (Bechara, 2005, p. 1459). In extreme consumption, drug-​stimulated responses follow enhanced activity in the reward and valuation systems, the amygdala evincing especially amplified sensitivity to reward (London et al., 2000; Bickel and Yi, 2008). The process is engendered by either utilitarian reinforcers, in the form of drugs of abuse, food, and opportunities to gamble, or informational reinforcers such as social reward or self-​esteem. Acquisition of money, which embodies both utilitarian and informational qualities, has the same effect. In drug abuse, such brain reward is acute: such substances occasion LTP at specific hippocampal synapses while the amygdala is concerned with the engraining of a learned (conditioned) response to the setting stimuli that accompany the use of the drug, notably social reinforcers and physical discriminative stimuli. Bickel et al. (2012a,b) note that both trait impulsivity and state impulsivities are found within the impulsive system. The former comprises behavioral regularities showing cross-​situational resilience (DeYoung, 2013) and includes sensation-​ seeking (venturesomeness), related to optimum stimulation level (Zuckerman, 1994) and associated with sensitivity to reinforcement (Bickel et al., 2012). Substrates of trait impulsivity include mesolimbic OFC, mPFC, pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and vlPFC; sensation-​seeking correlates with activity in right lateral OFC, subgenual ACC, and left caudate nucleus activations. State impulsivities include behavioral disinhibition, attentional deficit impulsivity, reflection impulsivity, and impulsive choice, of which behavioral disinhibition is associated with deficiencies in ACC and PFC, attentional deficit impulsivity with impairments of caudate nuclei, ACC and parietal cortical structures, as well as with strong activity in insular cortex; reflection impulsivity follows impaired frontal lobe function; and impulsive choice accompanies increased activation in limbic and paralimbic regions during selection of immediate over delayed reinforcers. Processing relative reward values of alternative courses of action in midbrain and prefrontal areas occurs predominantly through a feed-​forward circuit which links the ventral tegmental area via the VS to the OFC (Ross, 2011). However, changes in tonic DA concentration in the striatum affect general alertness of and receptiveness to chances of consuming rewards. However, phasic changes in the uptake of DA in the NAcc of the VS integrate components of reward functions including relative valuation, maintenance of attention, and preparation of motor response. DA relates the contingencies that predict reward with expected values thereof and this may present a severe problem: approximately half of 1% of populations that have been assessed possess dopaminergic reward systems that respond to frequent gambling by increasing tonic DA production on an ongoing basis (Ross, 2011, p. 57; Ross et al., 2008). Such outcomes are not inevitable: they are mitigated by executive functions which promote anticipation of behavioral after-​effects, reflecting pre-​behavioral planning, foresight, and evaluation of reinforcing and punishing consequences of responding. The reflective-​executive system, based in PFC, becomes hypoactive in

Responsive Behavior and Considered Action  145 extreme consumer choice. OFC may play a dominant role in temporal cognition by integrating reward magnitude and delay (Sosa et al., 2012). In the absence of such moderating effects, the impact of a hyperactive dopaminergic reward system is exacerbated, resulting in dysfunctional behavior (Bickel et al., 2013). An impetus to such extreme behavior is provided by the augmented incentive value placed on such reinforcers as drugs, alcohol, food and gambling, and the social and physical setting stimuli that predict them, as a consequence of amygdala-​based processing of reinforcers, combined with impaired ability to inhibit behavior, the outcome of dysfunction of the frontal cortex (Bickel and Yi, 2008; Bickel et al., 2020; Rolls, 2019). Such imbalance marks extreme consumption. Considerable evidence implicates PFC in top-​down self-​regulation of brain regions such as the striatum which plays a role in reward processing and the amygdala which is similarly concerned with emotion (Kelley et al., 2019, p. 10.) Interaction of PFC and the reward circuit determines the degree of self-​regulation achieved (Heatherton and Wagner, 2011; Kelley et al., 2015). Self-​awareness necessitates the operations of mPFC, damage to which presages impaired self-​ reflection and introspection. Prefrontal areas are essential to cognitively based executive functions that promote self-​regulation, notably vmPFC, OFC, lateral PFC, and ACC (Heatherton, 2011, pp. 368, 373–​374). Of particular relevance is the inability of those suffering damage to vmPFC to control social and emotional activities (Damasio, 1994), and whose insensitivity to social feedback and social norms leads to their continuing in asocial activity despite their awareness of this (Heatherton, 2011, p. 374); this reduces their sensitivity to receiving and providing informational reinforcement. ACC is involved in consciousness of the need to exhibit cognitive control necessary for self-​regulation; damage to ACC is implicated in reduced awareness of conflicts and the need to exercise cognitive judgment to de-​escalate them (Ibid.) An important source of control over immediate responding in the face of environmental stimuli is cognitive processing to inhibit or alter emotional reactions. Affective reaction of the responsive-​impulsive system, if unchecked by-​PFC-​based cognitive regulation, influences rapid behavioral response. The inter-​relationships of the amygdala-​PFC circuit in rapid generation of emotionally based impulses and the probability of their subsequent inhibition through cognitively founded self-​ regulation are, therefore, central to conflict between choice of SSR or LLR. The mesolimbic DA system, essential to preparation of arousal, motivates immediacy of response; the proficiency of cognitive processes in overcoming this determines whether the corresponding consummatory responses occur. There is no need for direct contact with reinforcers or stimuli predictive of them for this to happen: pictorial depiction of these stimuli or just thinking about them suffices. Affect

Chapter 6 noted the widespread assumption that “liking” and “wanting” are coterminous, though they are in fact dissociable, both conceptually and in terms of the neurophysiological substrates that mediate them. Wanting, or incentive salience,

146  Confronting Conceptual Duality results from “large and robust neural systems that include mesolimbic dopamine,” while liking, or hedonic impact, “is mediated by smaller and fragile neural systems, and is not dependent on dopamine” (Berridge and Robinson, 2016, p. 676). We also noted in that chapter that, contra the notion that DA mediates pleasure, it is unnecessary for hedonic experience. DA, rather, mediates desire or craving. Note that Berridge and Robinson employ wanting, without quotation marks, and “wanting” in distinct senses. The first refers to the ordinary usage, cognitive desire, which has a declarative goal, that is, an intentional state such as “I desire that… .” “Wanting” (in quotes) denotes desire or craving “mediated largely by brain mesocorticolimbic systems involving midbrain dopamine projections to forebrain targets, such as the nucleus accumbens and other parts of striatum.” “Wanting” is less connected with cognitively based objectives than cues for reward, which renders them especially conspicuous and appealing. The strength of the appeal depends on the individual’s learning history and the structure of her neurophysiological response mechanism: “The intensity of the triggered urge depends both on the cue’s reward association and on the current state of dopamine-​related brain systems in an individual” (Berridge and Robinson, 2016, pp. 671–​672).2 The hedonic hotspots responsible for “liking”3 contrast with the large, robust “wanting” system by being smaller and displaying a functional fragility. The interrelated pleasure hotspots that comprise the hedonic system mediate not only biogenic pleasures such as those obtained from normal eating but also the socio-​genic pleasures of social and cultural intercourse. Both utilitarian and informational reinforcement, therefore, derive from this source. The hotspots are, moreover, located within much larger limbic structures: tiny, highly circumscribed in the neurochemistry they are responsible for, and easily disturbed, properties that lead Berridge and Robinson to suggest that intense pleasures are rare in animal and human experience compared with intense desires. Principal locations of hedonic hotspots are limbic PFC, orbitofrontal and insula regions, which in humans may code sensory and higher pleasures, along with other deep subcortical brain areas. They function when stimulated by opioid or endocannabinoid neurotransmitters to exacerbate “liking,” making sweetness, for instance, more pleasurable. Yet DA-​based stimulation of hedonic hotspots fails to enhance “liking,” its role confined to “wanting” (Berridge and Kringelbach, 2015; Smith et al., 2011; Berridge and Robinson, 2016). Berridge and Robinson (2016) draw especial attention to a hedonic hotspot found in the ventral palladium (at the base of the subcortical forebrain), which intensifies “liking” for high levels of pleasure and which also, when minimally lesioned, eradicates normal pleasure and overturns the hedonic experience of sweetness from “liking” to “disgusting” (Berridge and Kringelbach, 2015; Ho and Berridge, 2014; Peciña et al., 2006; Robinson et al., 2013). “Wanting,” then, is mediated mostly by the mesocorticolimbic system in which DA produced in midbrain VTA is delivered to the forebrain, notably the striatum including the NAcc. Berridge and Robinson (1998) point out that the intensity of the stimulus to behavior that is thereby generated is a function of (i) the

Responsive Behavior and Considered Action  147 cue’s association with reward (the consumer’s learning history as “recorded” in its neurophysiology) and (ii) the state of the individual’s dopaminergic neurons. They further note that “This interaction allows ‘wanting’ peaks to be amplified by brain states that heighten dopamine reactivity, such as stress, emotional excitement, relevant appetites or intoxication.” As a result of this amplification, addicts struggle to limit consumption. Berridge and Robinson conclude that addiction is less a matter of satisfaction, pleasure, need or withdrawal than one of “wanting” (see also Volkow et al., 2019). This amplification of incentive salience leads to addicts’ continuing to consume: initial use of drugs/​behavioral rewards inspires increased DA production which in turn elicits craving. The consumer’s learning history may, therefore, engender propensity to addiction such that cognitive desire to quit drugs cannot diminish their incentive salience. Progressing from routine to extreme consumption, liking diminishes while wanting increases. Routine consumption manifests cognitive and emotional control; extreme consumer choice manifests immediate gratification, automatic response to stimuli that precludes cognitive intervention. Consumers may, however, be conscious of the way in which their behavior is governed by environmental rewards and yet allow this. The dual interactive systems are, then, responsive-​impulsive behavior, with or without awareness, and executively controlled action. Through sensitization –​ a disproportionately strong response to a stimulus, in which the consequences of consumption result in an enhanced or exaggerated effect –​ the “wanting” system becomes hyper-​reactive not only to stimuli such as drugs or other substances, like food, that have acquired intense incentive salience, but also to stimuli that predict them; hence, contextual stimuli acquire incentive salience in themselves, making consummatory behavior more probable, more intensely rewarding and more strongly reinforced. Moreover, while “wanting” is exacerbated by sensitization, “liking” is not and may actually decline as “wanting” surges. Such wanting is, moreover, persistent (see Berridge and Robinson, 1998, 2016). The upshot is that consumer behavior settings become more desirable and more determinative of behavior. Their increased value reflects the enhanced value (incentive salience) of the reinforcer with which they have been paired. Moreover, the stimulus field that comprises the consumer behavior setting becomes a source of reinforcement in its own right while the discriminative stimuli and motivating operations that compose it have become surer precursors of consumption. To the behaviorist qua behaviorist, it is sufficient to point out that this is the case, since behaviorism is interested only in the behavior itself and its extra-​personal context, the super-​personal level of exposition. To the cognitivist qua cognitivist, however, personal level intentionality must be accorded consideration since even the private (mental) perusal of the contexts in which reinforcement has previously occurred is enough to stimulate further appetitive and consummatory behavior. Interpretation of these processes is the business of BPM-​I, but full comprehension requires understanding of the sub-​personal level, neurophysiology of reinforcement, affect and conation, that is, BPM-​N.

148  Confronting Conceptual Duality Cognition and Decision-​Making Cognitive Valuation

Valuation is the allocation of worth to activities and their outcomes given the consumer’s goals. The presence of DA in midbrain and initial prefrontal areas indicates “basic relative reward value computation” (Ross, 2011, p. 57). The principal circuit involved links VTA, VS, and OFC. Tonic changes in DA levels in the striatum promote alertness to any opportunity to consume a reinforcer presented by the external environment. The appearance of a stimulus the consumption of which has been associated with reinforcement in the organism’s learning history engenders phasic reception of DA in the NAcc, a component of the VS responsible for integrating properties of reinforcers such as their relative values, and for maintaining attention on the reinforcer and the opportunity to consume it as well as the initiation of the appropriate motor responses to accomplish this. The dopaminergic reward system thus links environmental stimuli previously associated with reinforcement and expected values of the available rewards (Ibid.; see also Laviolette, 2007.) Cognitive processing –​ for example, maintaining attention, retaining information in WM, and hypothesis testing in disengaged imagination –​ entails mental labor. There is, therefore, pressure toward economizing these processes through attending to, memorizing, choosing, and learning only what is most valuable. Encountering a new consumer behavior setting, the consumer attends to its salient features, scanning the environment for potential reinforcement and reward and weighing costs of attempting to secure them. The attention that must be maintained throughout the entire decision process is costly. The responsive-​impulsive system, pursuing SRI, provides the less expensive alternative since its bottom-​up functioning makes it fast, stimulus-​sensitive and automatic, a response to the proximal situation. By contrast, using the top-​down LRI-​sensitive executive system is effortful, slow, and takes goals constantly into consideration. Either way, attention is allocated to the most salient stimuli and situations, those that have the greatest potential values (encouraging approach) as well as those that are least valuable (prompting avoidance). Top-​down processing is the sphere of BPM-​I; bottom-​up processing is the sphere of BPM-​E; in the process of learning, the values of actions and states are ascertained via reward processing: in the case of learning from prior transactions, consumers process V1s which eventuates in the formation of V2s. Hélie et al. (2017) note that subjective valuations over a sequence of decisions are coded by the lateral intraparietal cortex (LIP). In monkeys, LIP is strongly allied with identification of and attention toward locations, their values, and conceivably the building of “priority maps” –​ which we may understand as a hierarchy of V2s –​ that use these values to regulate top-​down attention. The source of values employed in bottom-​up processing is predominantly the species’ phylogenetic history, focusing on places and stimuli (discriminative stimuli and motivating operations) that enhance survival and biological fitness. Insofar as they are hardwired, they remain relatively untouched by reward processing during

Responsive Behavior and Considered Action  149 ontogenetic development. Values that impinge on bottom-​up processing may be represented in the superior colliculus, important for eye movements and associated with LIP. Memory Processes

WM competence (keeping information in mind for a short time) relies for its workability on attentive capacity. Neurophysiological correlates of WM are found in lateral PFC, thalamus, striatum, and ACC. Reinforcement learning based on dopaminergic neurons is a key determinant of learning what is salient and, therefore, of the contents of WM. Hence, the contribution of WM to the process of valuation reflects reward maximization and reward processing. More particularly, what we know of reward prediction errors is that in the case of phasic DA the rate of action potentials is reduced if an expected reward fails to occur and increases when an unexpected reward is received. Reward processing leads to revaluation of the elements contained in WM through the alteration of neural plasticity. WM is cognitive and therefore intentional: its contents are intentional objects relating to events and behaviors, though they may have neurophysiological correlates. WM is not a neural processor of information, however: it retains the most highly valued and salient items and eliminates the rest. But its capacity is insufficient to cope with the cognitive demands of information processing concerned with value-​related reinforcer choice. LTM, an enduring store of retrievable information that this context calls for, is costly of both cognitive effort and neurophysiological energy. Only if retrieval of memory leads to greater reward is it rewarded, and vice versa. The cost–​benefit analysis involved must calculate the value of memory use, that is, size of the potential gain from retrieved information, and the likelihood of effectively using what it retrieved. LTM encoding of information involves the hippocampus, dlPFC, and PPC; retrieval, dlPFC, and OFC. Valuation is clearly key to what is encoded in and retrieved from LTM. Cognitive Decision-​Making

Decision-​making is enhanced by a common currency enabling the values of commodities or courses of action to be compared. Valuation not only enables decision-​ making and choice selection but also the post-​consumption assessment of the outcomes of consumer activity. Hélie et al. (2017) distinguish valuation (occurring prior to action) and reward processing (occurring afterward), both of which are fundamental cognitive functions. The value of an action or its consequences inheres in the reinforcement and reward in which they have led to. Such valuation therefore is reflected in the immediacy and magnitude of these aftermaths of action and anything that reduces them is disvalued. Hence, central to valuation is temporal discounting, identified earlier as the hallmark of consumer choice. Valuations is subjective, indicating the consumer’s perceptions of the current behavior setting in light of her learning history. Although it is objectively obvious, post-​behaviorally,

150  Confronting Conceptual Duality at what rate the consumer devalued the future, of concern pre-​decision is subjective valuation (cognitive) and individual valuation (neurophysiological): vmPFC, VS, posterior parietal cortex and, less so, the amygdala, insula, and PPC may be locations of common-​currency calculations (Hélie et al., 2017, p. 34). Choice selection stems from information handling involved in the comparison of alternatives and picking out one which is most likely to optimize. If the capacity of each option to optimize reward has been subjectively calculated (both neurophysiologically and cognitively), the consumer’s utility function encapsulates the consumer-​situation which is the immediate precursor of behavior or action. These valuation processes are the essence of decision-​making, the outcomes of neurophysiological valuation in mPFC, VS, PCC, amygdala, insula, and PPC. Learning is a necessary component of the pre-​behavioral estimation of the values of states and actions so that overall utility can be maximized. Operant conditioning is central at the behavioral level, and the appropriate framework of conceptualization and analysis is BPM-​E; where cognitive learning is emphasized, the relevant conceptual frame is provided by BPM-​I; the establishment and implications of synaptic strength as a guide to learning at the neurophysiological level require that of BPM-​N. Flexibility required during evaluation and choice inheres in ability to switch from task to task, inhibit certain responses, and maintain information through WM. Also required is a cognitive arena in which mental rehearsal of future courses of action can occur without its speculative nature being mistaken for reality; ability to perform such appraisals of multiple hypotheses “off-​line” reflects the sagacity to distinguish different kinds of propositional attitude, notably the discrimination of reality-​tested beliefs-​proper from neurotic beliefs, suppositions, and fantasies (Stanovich, 2009; see Brakel, 2009; Foxall, 2017b). Such metacognitive rationality underlies executive consideration and action-​control. This intellectual activity –​ expensive cognitive procedures involving reasoned evaluation, planning, problem-​ solving, and decision-​making –​depends on anterior and lateral areas of PFC. The principal areas are anterior cortex and dlPFC, with lesser roles for ACC, PCC, temporo-​parietal junction, and PPC (Serra, 2021). Reward processing contributes to the effectiveness of a sequence of decisions by enabling the subjective value of each chosen option to be learned and its realized utility to be determined and lodged in LTM as a reference and guide to future choice processing. Summary and Conclusions Our working hypothesis has been that BPM-​E is a model of the stimulus-​bound impulsive system displaying automaticity in the quest to satisfy short-​range interests, while BPM-​I deals with executive control, analytical deliberation pursued to attain a long-​range interest. The analysis indicates evidence for this insofar as patterns of activity, discounting rates, affective reaction, and cognition portray routine consumer choice as behavior that is impulsive, short-​term, stimulus-​bound, automatic, and thoughtless –​traits well captured by radical behaviorism –​and extreme consumer choice as action that is considered longer-​term and intellectually based.

Responsive Behavior and Considered Action  151 These descriptions emerge from the contemplation of the kinds of pre-​behavioral and behavioral spontaneity, even impetuousness, implied by a behavioristic model like BPM-​E and the reflective and ruminative action, guided by its likely long-​term consequences, implied by a model based on cognition and rumination like BPM-​I. They are fully consistent with the theoretical principles devised by the authors of these and other DPTs, which rest in their turn on large volumes of empirical research in psychology, neurophysiology, and economics. This work, comprehended by the intentional behaviorist research program (Foxall, 2016a,c,b, 2020), is underpinned by the empirical findings of neurophysiological research which are the province of BPM-​N. This is generally consonant with the working hypothesis: the case for the DPTs of behavior/​action made by a variety of authors seems justified. However, it is clear that the pattern these authors describe proceeds at a rather comprehensive level of interpretation. The next task is to ascertain whether this generalized picture might be fine-​tuned in the specific context of the economic psychology of consumer choice. In particular, does this general conclusion oversimplify? Are there subtleties to the general pattern suggested by the working hypothesis? Is BPM-​E just about responsiveness-​impulsivity, and BPM-​I just about reflection-​executive control? Are the conceptual and explicatory properties of these models exhausted by their application to a single mechanism of behavior/​action? These questions are addressed in Chapter 9 which discusses the implications of the neurophysiological findings described above for the complementarity of the extensional and intentional depictions of consumer choice with which BPM-​E and BPM-​I are, respectively, concerned. Chapter 9 also discusses the incommensurability of the explanations that belong to the three levels of exposition. Notes 1 For a detailed critique of dual process modeling, see De Neys (2023) and the commentary thereon. 2 Berridge and Robinson speak of wanting at two levels of exposition: ordinary, cognitive desire, is a matter of the personal level, while “wanting” belongs to the sub-​personal level, and takes the form of neurophysiological urgings. It may, however, correlate with verbal expressions of desire or craving or by other behavioral indices such as approach. Both forms of wanting imply strong valuation of the reinforcer. They ground the conception of value in considerations arising at the super-​personal level (which is determined by the consumer’s learning history), the personal level (which reflects her individual preference structure), and the sub-​personal level (which is determined by the physiological urges to which the presentation of the reward or stimuli that predict it gives rise. 3 This is always a matter of what is generally understood by liking, that is, the experience of pleasure, and therefore belongs to the personal level of exposition.

9 Complementarity and Incommensurability

Abstract This chapter seeks to understand the roles of the extensional and intentional models in the explanation of consumer choice over the Continuum in light of neurophysiological evidence and the findings of research on aggregate patterns of buyer behavior. The working hypothesis which guided the discussion of these findings –​that BPM-​ E is principally a model of impulsive, stimulus-​bound responsive behavior while BPM-​I is appropriate to routine, considered and executive-​controlled action –​ is examined in terms of the applicability of each perspective to the styles of activity arrayed on the Continuum. The working hypothesis is generally supported, but there are important instances of dual applicability of the models to aspects of these consumption styles, so that it is not possible to unequivocally apportion BPM-​E and BPM-​I to specific poles. Another concern is uniting the extensional and intentional accounts: indeed, the complementarity of the extensional and intentional explanations gives fresh poignancy to their incommensurability. The necessity of showing how events occurring at one level of exposition (super-​personal or sub-​ personal) may be accommodated at the personal level is, therefore, still evident. The inter-​connections among the levels are explored through the assumption that events at the extensional levels can be portrayed intentionally at the personal level. Complementarity: Dual Processes Review of the Working Hypothesis

Dual processes imply dual explanations. The question is whether they are in conflict or complementary. The working hypothesis has been that BPM-​E is a model of the impulsive system of Bickel, the TASS of Stanovich, the SRI of Ainslie, while BPM-​I encompasses such considerations as Bickel’s executive system, Stanovich’s Analytical Mind, and Ainslie’s LRI. The conjecture that BPM-​I is relevant to the explanation of routine consumer choice while BPM-​E is relevant to that of extreme consumer choice is broadly supported by the analysis based on BPM-​N of the sub-​continua proposed in Figure 8.3 relating to rates of temporal discounting, affective style, and level of DOI: 10.4324/9781003262510-12

Complementarity and Incommensurability  153 cognitive processing. The findings of the review undertaken in Chapter 8 indicate, first, that either no or only very shallow discounting is predictable in the case of routine consumer choice, while moderate to steep discounting is probable for extreme consumer choice. This overall finding indicates that BPM-​I and BPM-​E are conceptually amenable to the poles of the Continuum to which they are hypothetically allocated. This global conclusion is buttressed by the finding that “liking” is consistent with routine consumer choice, while “wanting” or craving is consistent with extreme consumer choice. Again, the indication is that BPM-​I and BPM-​E should occupy their respective poles of the Continuum. In addition, it emerges from the analyses undertaken in Chapter 8 that top-​down cognitive processing is consistent with routine consumer choice, while bottom-​up cognitive processing is germane to extreme consumer choice. The former is the domain of BPM-​I which deals with goal-​directed appraisal of socio-​economic alternatives and the selection of that which most closely approximates the consumer’s short-​and long-​term welfare; the latter is the domain of BPM-​E, whose sphere of applicability is responsive reaction to threats and opportunities offered by the external environment, the formation of appropriate habits which maximize local reinforcement.1 These patterns of behavior and action, not only based on general reasoning with respect to the imports of the intentional and extensional models but also strongly undergirded by extensive neurophysiological findings, offer confirmative evidence for the working hypothesis. As a conceptual portrayal of the most appropriate source of explanation for at least the polar extremes of the Continuum, the BPM-​I/​BPM-​E dichotomy is, therefore, supported. The hypothesis can be substantially accepted. However, in light of the evidence of aggregate patterns of buyer behavior,2 this picture invites subtle refinement based on a nuanced understanding of the behaviors and actions appropriate to the styles of consumer choice arrayed on the Continuum. Routine Consumer Choice

It might well be argued that the most routinized consumer choice –​ namely, everyday brand, product, and store selection –​ is fully accommodated by theoretical minimalism: at least as far as its prediction is concerned, it surely depends only on the automatic response to the stimulus field presented in the form of a marketing mix. Such a behavior is well modeled by BPM-​E (Foxall, 2017a, Foxall et al., in press). The behaviors in question can certainly be understood and predicted as stimulus-​bound responses, though they are not necessarily impulsive. Hence, we may conclude that BPM-​E is not confined to the responsive-​impulsive system: it is clearly appropriate precisely where the reflective-​executive system is expected to hold sway. However, this requires further comment. We might, on further reflection, see routine consumer choice as the outcome not simply of a stimulus-​bound sequence of events but as a behavior pattern resulting from a deliberative procedure which brands must go through before they find a place in the consumer’s consideration set. Consumer choice may at its simplest be portrayed as comprising awareness → trial → repeat-​buying (Ehrenberg, 1988). The intensive advertising necessary to establish a new brand in an existing product

154  Confronting Conceptual Duality category has the limited function of providing brand awareness and stimulating trial among a subset of purchasers of that category. An element of this can be seen solely in terms of response-​to-​stimulus given that the composition of the new brand may well be similar to that of existing brands. It is easy for the consumer simply to try the new brand which is already half-​familiar. However, we may also see this as an instance of deliberation being also at work since perception and evaluation of the stimuli presented by the new marketing mix and the judgment that they represent an acceptable member of the product class are required. The radical behaviorist who is concerned only with observed patterns of behavior will naturally not be impressed by this argument since she is not interested in explanation that goes beyond the description of behavior; cognitive psychologists, however, who understand behavior to be the outcome of mental processing of information, will be inclined to see this accommodation of a new commodity in terms of its being the outcome of a deliberative process. This interpretation is supported, however, by consideration of the trial and repeat stages. While only a relatively small sample of product-​category users try a new brand –​ perhaps those who are heavy consumers of the product category –​ only a small subset of trialists become repeat-​purchasers: those who deem the new item to be a satisfactory future member of their consideration set, a brand that can be relied upon to deliver the standard characteristics that must be evinced by a member of the product category. This is definitely a matter of deliberation and judgment which entails all of the cognitive procedures that have been discussed. Intentional explanation is also indicated insofar as the novelty-​seeking that is entailed in the incorporation of a new brand into the consumer’s consideration set is explicable in terms of her personality traits –​venturesomeness and sensation-​seeking (Foxall, 1995). We are fully justified, therefore, in viewing the routinized buyer behavior that we have labeled everyday brand choice as a proper focus of reflective-​executive theorizing. This in no way removes BPM-​E from its prediction but marginalizes it in terms of explanation. More importantly, it suggests a valuable symbiotic relationship between the extensional and intentional models which would be overlooked by a DPT that was insensitive to the empirical detail of consumer choice. Perhaps a (sequential) combination of BPM-​E and BPM-​I is appropriate here: first, in dealing with the routine influence of a consideration set on patterns of choice, BPM-​E is invaluable with respect to aggregate forecasting, but accounting for that set’s composition entails cognitive considerations; second, while elements of both BPM-​ E and BPM-​I are required to account for the initiation of trial, the decision to repeat-​buy, to incorporate the trialed brand into one’s continuing consideration set, is something that depends on judgment and therefore BPM-​I.3 The more the new item deviates from the stimuli that define the prevailing product category, the less able is the BPM-​E to cope with the explanation of the discontinuity involved, and BPM-​I becomes more relevant. Discontinuous innovations are by definition not routine as they are maximally disruptive of patterns of consumer behavior. Adopting them requires consideration, as does even trialing them in view of their expensiveness and embodiment of risk. The only way

Complementarity and Incommensurability  155 by which such behavioral discontinuities can be accommodated within a radical behaviorist framework is by appeal to far-​reaching assumptions about stimulus discrimination and generalization that are beyond the realm of empirical testing. Appealing to generalization and discrimination can become, on the grounds that behaviorism is only about behavior and needs no explanatory devices besides observed patterns of response, is incapable of telling us why behavior has changed. Nostrums such as these rely heavily on explanatory fictions that attempt to hide the insensitivity of behavior to the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment (Foxall and Oliveira-​Castro, 2009) and with it the conclusion that there are many aspects of behavioral continuity and discontinuity with which radical behaviorism cannot deal. Extreme Consumer Choice

Extreme consumer choice, which entails steep temporal discounting, invites explanation in terms of BPM-​E: it is stimulus-​bound and predictable on the basis of a learning history and the current consumer behavior setting. But addiction is not necessarily the final resting place of the compulsive consumer, for whom recovery is a perfectly feasible option. Recovery, however, is likely to require cognitive intervention, requiring understanding in terms of BPM-​I. All of the strategies for changing extreme consumer behavior proposed by Ainslie (1992) for forestalling the deleterious effects of addictive behavior require intentional explanation. (The discussions of preference reversal and bundling in Chapters 4 and 6 are sufficient to establish this principle.) As noted, Ainslie (1992) speaks of conflicting interests which are concerned, respectively, with securing long-​term benefit and short-​term pleasures. The preference reversal which eventuates is characteristic not only of addiction but everyday switches of preference that mark less extreme behavior. We have seen that all of these require comparison of the cumulative benefits of a series of later-​appearing rewards with the sum of immediate benefits of an immediate inferior choice; as a result the temptation to sub-​optimize may be overcome (through “will-​power” or “self-​control”). The strategy of bundling, especially, involves metacognition: not simply the cognitive effort involved in imagining future behavioral consequences, but the conjectured amalgamation, at a time when none of these consequences has been delivered or experienced, of the sum totalities of SSRs and LLRs, and their comparison. This necessitates comprehending how the first subsequent choice relates to the sequence of further choices, perceiving that the initial choice predicts later choices, and that the realization that making a choice either to take SSR or defer gratification entails precommitment to a future course of behavior. BPM-​E captures a portion of this behavior by rendering it to a degree predictable but does not tell the whole story of how the modification of choice comes about. The perceptual and cognitive processes implicated require an intentional account. Once again, we must conclude that behavior change requires more than an extensional account can offer.

156  Confronting Conceptual Duality Intermediate Styles of Consumer Choice

The styles of consumer choice that lie between routine and extreme on the Continuum involve degrees of temporal discounting, albeit not of the steepest variety. Intermittent consumption such as the purchase of consumer durables has many characteristics of the discontinuous behavior entailed in the consideration and adoption of a new brand. Its description in operant terms is possible but it remains a discontinuity that may be fully comprehended only by reference to premeditation, the weighing of costs against benefits, and comparison of alternatives. BPM-​I is likely to predominate in rendering this behavior intelligible. Obtaining credit may also be understood to a degree in operant terms but, again, calls for considerations of cognitive calculation, the comparison of alternatives and selection of a workable option on the basis of its conjectured rather than experienced benefits. Cognitive decision-​making is implicated, though its beginnings may lie in perception. The provision of credit is after all a marketing device aimed precisely at offering consumers temporal utility. Its very availability must tend toward steeper discounting. Environmental despoliation often arises from the expediency of managing waste cheaply and rapidly, which gives rise to its consideration as a form of operant behavior. Increasing numbers of consumers are, however, concerned about the longer-​term outcomes of such behavior and such environmental concern must be considered the result of cognitive consideration rather than first-​hand experience of the negative results of failure to protect natural resources. Environmental concern may, of course, be prompted by acquaintance with stimuli but it is largely a cognitive matter. This is a midway pattern of behavior which may be prompted by the apparently cost-​free nature of acquiring some goods that require non-​renewable resources to be consumed or of divesting oneself of goods no longer required. BPM-​E is highly relevant, therefore. However, the inauguration of an environmentally friendly style of consumption is likely to be preceded by prior cognitive deliberation which brings BPM-​I to the fore. Finally, overconsumption, which may be connected closely with environmental despoliation, is a matter of behavior coming under stimulus control as the availability of reinforcers both utilitarian and informational expands and the means of satisfying cravings keeps pace. This is clearly behavior under the control of fairly steep discounting and this tendency is more marked as we move from, say, over-​indulgence in foods, alcohol and move into compulsive purchasing. BPM-​E is indicated as a means of explaining this behavior, though attempts to modify it may need to rely on perceptual and cognitive considerations and BPM-​I. Such mixed susceptibility to extensional explanation and intentional interpretation is entirely expected for the intermediate styles of consumption and consistent with the working hypothesis. This conclusion is corroborated in that the intermediate styles of consumption closest to the routine pole are susceptible of comprehension in more perceptual and cognitive terms –​ those approaching the extreme pole, more in terms of stimulus control. Before considering the significance of this analysis for complementarity, a brief review of the major findings may be useful.

Complementarity and Incommensurability  157 Summary of Key Conclusions

While some aspects of the repeat buying behavior designated “everyday selection” can be predicted if it is treated as operant responding to environmental stimuli, this description is limited as an explanation, necessitating our turning to an understanding of this consumer activity as governed by perceptual reactions if we desire a more detailed account but the fact remains that an operant portrayal has its place. When the pattern of behavior is disrupted, of course, an understanding in terms of perception is at least as plausible as an operant interpretation which takes stimulus and response generalization for granted. The cognitivist who cannot accept this non-​empirically grounded assertion may prefer to see the entire procedure of selecting brands within a consideration set as perceptual. Moreover, since an appeal must be made to cognition in order to explain how a new brand is incorporated into the consumer’s consideration set, it is consistent to explain further selection of this item as a perceptual process. Both the cognition and the perception are the domain of BPM-​I. That disruption to the consideration set by the introduction of novelty can be dealt with only in the intentional terms of BPM-​I supports the view that the formation and maintenance of the set can be understood only by reference to cognition and perception and that its effect on the consumer’s actions must be similarly dealt with. The explanation of intermittent selection largely in terms of cognitive processing is expected given the reliance of this style of consumption on deliberation of the likely financial outcomes as well as perception of immediate advantage. The adoption of a credit arrangement must be largely cognitive as it requires –​one must assume given the law of contract –​that the consumer weighs pros and cons of purchasing in this way and that she therefore has a shrewd idea of the costs involved as well as the benefits. Given that purchasing on credit is likely a concomitant of intermittent purchasing, the likelihood is that the whole procedure is, for the most part, cognitively based. This does not, of course, rule out a consumer’s taking on a credit agreement as an impulsive move in which case the behavior is likely to be amenable to some understanding in terms of its being stimulus-​bound. By contrast, over-​consumption is less cognitively based and more stimulus-​ bound than any of the styles of consumer choice considered thus far. The discarding of waste that tends toward being indiscriminate and the exploitation of limited resources that suggests profligacy, for instance, are generally stimulus-​ bound behavioral expediencies rather than deliberated strategies, though they may involve some deliberate “forgetting” of the rules and convenient rationalization, depending on the consumer’s cognitive style. Over-​eating and drinking are again predictable on the basis of the stimulus field and learning history that contextualize them, though again there is room to include in their explanation elements of “cognitive forgetting” and rationalization. Finally, the more compulsive the extreme consumer choice, the greater is the element of at least predictability on the basis of learning history and stimulus field; this indicates the relevance of extensional explanation. But the modification of compulsive and addictive behaviors relies on cognitive understanding of

158  Confronting Conceptual Duality the processes of change. Merely to cast this behavior change in terms of “rule-​ governed behavior” invites the criticism that verbal rules are necessarily intentional and that elements of cognitive explanation are, therefore, relevant. Significance for Complementarity

It now becomes possible to draw conclusions based on how the working hypothesis has fared –​the proposition, that is, that BPM-​E is a model of the impulsive system displaying automaticity in the quest to satisfy short-​range interests, while BPM-​I deals with executive control, analytical deliberation pursued to attain a long-​range interest –​for the problem of complementarity. The analysis indicates evidence for this insofar as patterns of activity, discounting rates, affective reaction, and cognition portray routine consumer choice as behavior that is impulsive and extreme consumer choice as action that is considered longer term and intellectually based. These descriptions emerge from the contemplation of the kinds of pre-​behavioral and behavioral spontaneity, even impetuousness, implied by a behavioristic model like BPM-​E and the reflective and ruminative action, guided by its likely long-​ term consequences, implied by a model based on cognition and rumination like BPM-​I. They are fully consistent with the theoretical principles devised by the authors of DPTs, which rest in their turn on large volumes of empirical research in psychology, neurophysiology, and economics. This work, comprehended by the intentional behaviorist research program (Foxall, 2016a, 2016c, 2016b, 2020), is underpinned by the empirical findings of neurophysiological research which are the province of BPM-​N. This is generally consonant with the working hypothesis: the case for the DPTs of behavior/​action made by a variety of authors seems justified. However, it is clear that the pattern these authors describe proceeds at a rather comprehensive level of interpretation. The next task is to ascertain whether this generalized picture might be fine-​tuned in the specific context of the economic psychology of consumer choice. In particular, does this general conclusion oversimplify? Are there subtleties to the generalized pattern suggested by acceptance of the working hypothesis which requires attention? Is BPM-​E just about responsiveness-​ impulsivity, and BPM-​I just about reflection-​executive control? Are the conceptual and explicatory properties of these models exhausted by their application to a single mechanism of behavior/​action? BPM-​E does not inevitably imply automaticity: while not embracing cognitive contemplation, it comprehends verbal behavior insofar as language consists in discriminative stimuli and motivating operations. While it remains entirely an extensional, behaviorist explanation, its relevance may extend beyond the automaton-​like and uncontextualized reaction of an organism to a set of passing circumstances. Operant behavior relies on the consumer’s learning history and state variables, and it accommodates deleterious outcomes of unconsidered behavior. This argues not only for its responsiveness to the passing reward of instant gratification but also, through protracted learning, to the avoidance of outcomes which encourage irresponsible behavior. So, while BPM-​E deals with stimulus-​bound impulsive responding, it is not narrowly confined thereto, a response mechanism governed

Complementarity and Incommensurability  159 by automaticity, spontaneity, and unconstrained impulsivity reflecting the contingencies of the moment. It is not a matter of “fixed action patterns” and “innate releasing mechanisms.” Nor, while its explanations remain extensional, contextual, and circumstantial, is it exclusively relevant to activities that steeply discount the future. Radical behaviorism does not deny the existence of thinking and deliberation; without being specific about what they are, and without using them other than peripherally in its accounts of behavior, it acknowledges them as behaviors under operant control (Skinner, 1974). And there are some radical behaviorists who have no difficulty in seeing these private events as discriminative stimuli and possibly even reinforcers. BPM-​I is similarly complex in the range of action to which it is relevant. To be sure, it provides understanding of the structure and operation of deliberated action highly reliant on executive functions. Yet, while BPM-​I is largely a source of explanation of the reflective-​executive system, it is not confined thereto. The reflective-​executive system is instrumental in shaping a form of behavior that is intermediate between responsive behavior and considered action, that which is essentially impulsive but which occurs with the individual’s full awareness. While fully cognizant of the consequences of her actions, the compulsive consumer may engage in it regardless: we may think of this as “impulsivity with awareness” or “conscious impulsivity.” While the form of the behavior enacted falls within the realm of BPM-​E, which considers it as a function of the stimulus field that comprises the consumer’s behavior setting, its interpretation requires the understanding supplied by BPM-​I. These considerations identify why a conceptual portrayal is required rather than one based naively on multi-​componential units that seek to integrate behavioral, cognitive, and neurophysiological operations as though these did not rely on antithetical modes of explanation. They also indicate the necessity of any DPT to rely less on generalities about the spheres of activity to which they are applied. Rather, they should be tempered by and responsive to what is known about the particular domains of conduct to whose explication they are expected to contribute. In particular, what should be the “conceptual spread” of our efforts to explicate the range of consumer activities described by the continuum of routine and extreme consumer choice? That is, which models are actually relevant to the elucidation of routine and extreme consumption? Familiarity with the observed patterns of consumer choice suggests that while the hypothesized allocation of explanatory resources proposed in the working hypothesis are generally accurate, important aspects of consumer activity over the Continuum require both BPM-​E and BPM-​I for their full comprehension. The Contribution of BPM-​N

The aim of introducing a neurophysiological model to the BPM suite has been to elucidate further the extensional and intentional explanations of consumer choice, especially in terms of the contrasting conceptions of value they present.4 The portrayals of consumer choice provided by the extensional and intentional

160  Confronting Conceptual Duality models differ in their neurophysiological implications: the neural foundations of the discounting styles they suggest, and the roles of affect and cognition in accounting for decision-​making and activity. This in turn supports the possibility that BPM-​E and BPM-​I form the explanatory axes of a conceptual portrayal of cognitive structure and function. Most DPTs are concerned with interpreting automatic and controlled mentation as distinct, albeit interrelated, kinds of cognition or metacognition. The proposed BPM-​based dual processual portrayal is, by contrast, concerned with the kinds of explanation appropriate to responsive behavior and considered action without portraying either of these styles of consumer activity uniquely in extensional or intentional terms. Rather, it points to the need to deploy both models to explain routine and extreme styles of consumer choice. Although the former is predominantly accounted for by BPM-​I, the latter predominantly by BPM-​E, there is scope for reversing this convention when the subject matter requires it. The incorporation of a neurophysiological model, BPM-​N, allows the differences in consumer activity assumed by the Continuum to be ascertained by reference to an independent measure of value, one which can be subjected to empirical appraisal. (This conception of value is “objective”: in contradistinction to behaviorally derived super-​personal intersubjective value and the subjective value of personal level, it is based on intersubjective criteria that are reliably open to scrutiny and do not involve circular reasoning.) Value established at the super-​ personal level through interpersonal market exchange is ascertained via the very behavior it is employed to explain. Value interpreted at the personal level is necessarily subjective value and not directly available for empirical analysis –​ at best we rely on self-​reports. Values established at the sub-​personal level through neurophysiological measurement of dopaminergic action potentials in response to environmental stimuli or neurophysiological measures of emotions that correlate with verbal and other behavioral indices are objective in the sense that they manifest in reliable indices; they provide confirmation or disconfirmation of verbal and other behavioral reports. This conceptual delineation, concentrating on the explanatory mechanisms that underpin responsive behavior and considered action, differs in several respects from those DPTs that take a more rigid view of the explicatory needs of different styles of consumer choice. First, the intended flexibility allows the appropriate mode of explanation, extensional or intentional, to be employed to elucidate an observed pattern of consumer choice free of the assumption that it must be either stimulus-​bound/​impulsive or governed by executive functions/​considered. Second, while some DPTs comprise decision-​making units that uncritically span the levels of exposition of their behavioral, cognitive, and neurophysiological components, often switching between them in mid-​explanation or using concepts at levels of exposition to which they are not appropriate, the conceptual approach makes explicit the conceptualization in use and the level of exposition at which it is being deployed. Third, it avoids a rigidly bipolar treatment of the automatic and controlled aspects of behavior based on system1/​system2 or function1/​function2 dichotomies, each of which is supposedly uniquely determinative of a style of activity. Fourth,

Complementarity and Incommensurability  161 it reveals the explanatory subtleties inherent in accounting for both responsive behavior and considered action. Our working hypothesis assumed the former to result entirely from impulsivity or automaticity based on momentary unreflecting responses to stimuli and therefore the domain of BPM-​E. It assumed also that the latter was exclusively the domain of executive functioning or self-​control based on cognitive consideration and reflection and thus the realm of BPM-​I. The analysis suggests, however, that both kinds of activity require both kinds of explanation in varying measures. Both BPM-​E and BPM-​I are relevant to both but in tandem rather than independently. Their efficacy is enhanced, however, by the contributions of BPM-​N. On the other hand, while, as Chapter 8 demonstrated, BPM-​N is invaluable in aiding comprehending the Continuum of Consumer Choice, extensional and intentional explanation is also required to supplement its generalizations. The three models work well together to synthesize the analysis and their incorporation in a “suite” of models is, therefore, appropriate. This discussion has clarified the problem of complementarity by allowing the generalized conclusion in favor of the working hypothesis, based on the analyses of the sub-​continua, to be tempered by considerations arising from the empirical and interpretive research generated by the extensional and intentional models, and by the findings of the aggregate analysis of buyer behavior carried out by marketing scientists. Nevertheless, the problem of complementarity cannot reach a resting place, let alone be fully resolved, within its own confines. It requires further analysis of the problem of incommensurability to which the remainder of Chapter 9 and much of Chapter 10 are devoted. Incommensurability: Dual Explanations Assuaging Incommensurability: Six Propositions on Inter-​Level Relationships

A level of exposition reflects what is going on in the realms of operant behavior or intra-​personal cognition and affect or neuronal processing. It does not, however, simply describe these events but serves as a route to the explanation of consumers’ behaviors and actions in each case. Hence, “level of exposition” is an intellectual construct which has the aim of clarifying how to explain what is observed to be going on in terms of operancy, intentionality, or neurophysiology. Its deployment may result in the judgment that either an extensional or an intentional mode of explanation is appropriate to the events in question. It thereby determines the apposite conceptualization and language for each kind of event or activity to be accounted for. These modes of conceptualization, analysis, and explanation are distinctive in their appeal to either an extensional or an intentional form of reasoning and the locutions based thereon. This reasoning builds on what was said about the incompatibility of extensional and intentional expressions in Chapter 3, which concluded that sentences based on these modes of discourse have a need of distinct criteria for the establishment of their truth value. We are dealing here with three incommensurable levels of exposition and the modes of explanation appropriate to each. Table 9.1 summarizes this. Using the same

newgenrtpdf

Level of exposition

Description

Mode of explanation

Super-​ personal (BPM-​E)

The level of behavior, Extensional, supra-​ as determined by personal: explanation of its environmental consumer behavior: the consequences establishment of V1 (reinforcers and punishers)

Personal (BPM-​I)

The level of action, as accounted for conatively, cognitively, and affectively

Sub-​ personal (BPM-​N)

The neuronal Extensional, intra-​ level, behavior personal: understanding related to its of consumer choice: the neurophysiological observation of V3 substrates

Intentional, organismic: interpretation of consumer action: the formulation of V2

Conception of value As an intersubjective agreement based on the price at which an exchange has taken place (V1). V1 is intersubjective value as established in the marketplace. This is a socially constructed index based on collective intentionality: the understanding that the market is an institution that delineates the agreed worth of an item, that at which it is reasonable for it to be exchanged for a given sum of money or another commodity. This level of valuation can be established intersubjectively and is the socially agreed worth of the item based on exchange value. Insofar as obtaining this level of value in an exchange relationship acts as an incentive to participation in a market exchange, goods or money of this value constitute a reinforcer for this behavior. As a subjective valuation which exists only in the mind of the individual consumer or marketer (V2). V2 is what the individual personally rates the commodity at. It may be expressed in terms of a notional amount of money or goods –​that quantity for which she would be willing to exchange it. It may be more ineffable than this: the personal worth it has even though the individual would never wish to exchange it. It might be measured as the amount of work the individual has performed in making or acquiring the item, something not necessarily related to its exchange value. This is a valuation that exists only in the mind of the individual. It is an intentional object. As an objective accounting based on the rate of action potentials of dopaminergic neurons (V3). V3 is an idea of valuation attributed as a metric of a physical event. The comparative valuation of alternative incentives rests on the degree of preparedness or arousal the dopaminergic reward system achieves in the form of action potentials. The incentive which occasions the greater rate of neuronal firing is said to be valued higher than another. This is interpreted as the reinforcer which will eventuate in the greatest level of utility for the organism, that which will increase its biological fitness the most.

162  Confronting Conceptual Duality

Table 9.1 Levels of exposition and modes of explanation

Complementarity and Incommensurability  163 word for concepts that belong to different levels of exposition, each of which has its own unique mode of explanation, is potentially problematic. The BPM suite of models of consumer choice explicitly uses the word “value” in three ways. The questions now arise: What do these three meanings of value have in common? Do they mean the same thing by “value”? How are they different? And, how are they related? In particular, a problem arises from neuroscientists’ attribution to brains and neurons, such actions as “thinking,” “desiring,” “planning,” and, of course, “valuing.” The question is how the use of “value” and “valuation” in the case of agential persons, the explanation of whose activity requires intentional discourse, corresponds to their use in the cases of extra-​personal market exchanges and intra-​personal neuronal firings. But, even if we can establish the conceptual independence of these three ideas of value, can we determine their relationships and the similarity/​dissimilarity of their definitions? Many would argue that valuing is something that is done by the person. It is not an action of neurotransmitters or other parts of the nervous system. When we say that the number of action potentials of dopaminergic neurons is a measure of value, we are saying only that it is a proxy variable for valuation. Valuing is a personal level event. To say that action potentials value a behavior is to commit the mereological fallacy (Bennett and Hacker, 2003). At best the expression is a façon de parler, a metaphor. That is how it is used here. V2, which belongs to the personal level of exposition, is an attribute of the individual person. The super-​ personal V1 is also an individual phenomenon since it measures the monetary value that was acceptable to buyer and seller in effecting a transaction. V3, however, is simply a description of the rate at which action potentials are emitted by a neuron. This is not valuation in the sense that V1 and V2 capture it. Its being spoken of as a value is a convention, a figure of expression. This is not to say that the action of neurotransmitters does not influence the person and their behavior. In seeking to understand the meanings of V1, V2, and V3, we have to distinguish valuing as a personal level judgment (V2) made by an intentional system5 and proxy variables for this such as intersubjective agreements on exchange achieved through market transactions (V1) and objective covariations of dopaminergic action potentials (V3) with subsequent responses. Although, for neatness of exposition, I shall refer to all three as “values” and “valuations,” only V2, subjective worth, is valuation in the sense of an intentional idiom that properly belongs only to the personal level of exposition. There seems no obvious possibility of reconciling these three conceptions of value in a single framework of conceptualization and analysis. The personal level is that of the individual actor and is described in the intentional terminology of action resulting from desires and beliefs. The sub-​personal level is that of neurophysiology. Both derive from Dennett’s (1969) usage. The super-​personal level of exposition is that of the regulation of behavior by means of its prior reinforcing and punishing consequences, leading to the emotional reactions that directly influence the rate of subsequent activity. These reactions, which occur at the personal level, are rewards, in the case of subsequent approach, and sanctions, in the case of subsequent avoidance. although his initial presentation of the personal and sub-​personal levels appears to set an unbridgeable gulf between them as levels of explanation, a

164  Confronting Conceptual Duality major thrust of his subsequent work has been to blur this distinction and to justify the deployment of intentional language to give an account of neurophysiological and other entities that would normally be seen as falling exclusively within the purview of the physical stance. Even within his first book, Content and Consciousness (Dennett, 1969), blurring tendencies can be identified. In the context of intentional behaviorism, however, it is axiomatic that the three levels of exposition, each characterized by its peculiar mode of explanation, be kept separate. That is, the mind–​body problem cannot be explained away by the notion that intentional explanation is no more than an additional layer of linguistic description imposed upon physical reality.6 McGinn (2004) argues not only that the difference between knowledge-​by-​acquaintance and knowledge-​by-​description is itself sufficient to make clear that there is a mind–​body problem but that humans currently lack the concepts necessary to bridge the explanatory gap between the brain and mind that this problem highlights (see also McGinn, 1991). Merely to characterize events that exist at one level of exposition in terms that belong to another is sleight of hand and may commit the mereological fallacy (Bennett and Hacker, 2003). The intentional behaviorist program proposes, however, that a bridging concept is available in the form of “Janus-​variables” which link the personal level of intentional exposition with the super-​personal and sub-​personal levels (Foxall, 2020). The resultant strategy involves the demonstration that the levels of exposition are at least interconnected even though the biconditional constructs necessary to unify them are elusive and likely to remain so (Figure 9.1). Figure 9.2 adds detail to the posited inter-​level relationships among the conceptions of value.

Figure 9.1 Inter-​level relationships. Note that in addition to the potential relationships between super-​personal, personal, and sub-​personal levels of exposition, the figure suggests that these interactions relate to the ensuing pattern of consumer activity (Relationship “D”).

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Complementarity and Incommensurability  165

Figure 9.2 Links among the sources of valuation. V1 are established intersubjectively at the super-​personal level through operant behavior/​ action, a procedure captured by BPM-​E. V2 are private subjective evaluations reflecting the personal worth of socio-​economic goods. They are the subject of BPM-​I. V3 are neural valuations of environmental stimuli, objectively available to researchers in the form of dopaminergic action potentials. They are the province of BPM-​N.

166  Confronting Conceptual Duality The following six propositions relate to inter-​level (super-​personal–​personal–​ sub-​personal) connections, seeking to capture the relationship within each pair of levels in terms of the kinds of value they embody. The “A” Route: Personal and Super-​Personal Links

PA1: in the case of A1, the super-​personal to personal link, values (V1s) achieved through transacting at the super-​personal level are accommodated in the intentional consumer-​situation at the personal level in the form of intentional objects (V2s). In this way, they can be taken into consideration in the formulation of further purchasing plans and their execution. Hence, the personal level provides a mechanism for the outcomes of previous transacting to influence current decisions. V1 is represented as intentional objects at the personal level; as such, it is a contingency-​representation that guides subsequent decision-​making and behavior. The intentional object has associated with it an affective valance (in terms of PAD, pleasure, arousal, and dominance) which reflects whether the exchange was favorably or unfavorably received by the individual (a personal level response). This super-​personal → personal interaction may be mediated by emotional activity, conceived of in Damasio’s terms as a physiologically based event. However, the important point is that an emotional-​affective reaction occurs that gives rise to the intentional object as a perceptual contingency-​representation. Whatever the intervening processes that may be involved, however, the cohesiveness of the super-​personal and personal levels inheres in the consumer’s capacity to hold mental representations of entities encountered in the external environment, including abstractions such as the market prices which form the basis of V1. Key to this is the concept of intentional object, a mental construct held in consciousness which represents either an object found in the external environment or another mentally conceived entity. One can think of a tree, holding its representation in mind and one can similarly represent one’s anger or attitudes, themselves products of mentation or emotionality, as items one thinks about or otherwise considers. Hence, in summary, V1 is represented at the personal level in the form of an intentional object that encapsulates an objective valuation achieved through the extra-​personal price mechanism. Generalizing from this, the contingency representations which comprise the intentional consumer-​situation are beliefs, desires, and perceptions about events occurring at the super-​personal level. The phenomenon of intentionality permits the super-​personal level to be incorporated into the personal level: the resulting contingency representations comprise desires formed at the personal level on the basis of the individual’s monitoring what is happening at the super-​personal level, what is feasible there in terms of goals that can be met through the performance of social and economic behavior, and the likely costs of interacting at that level;

Complementarity and Incommensurability  167 beliefs resulting from past behavior or action and consequent contemplation and evaluation of how the world works in terms of relationships among buyers, sellers and other agents cooperating in the super-​personal marketplace; and perceptions resulting from the monitoring of the super-​personal environment. These perceptions may, moreover, be affective. Each of these classes of contingency-​representation elicits emotional reactions of pleasure (particularly associated with utilitarian reinforcement), arousal (informational reinforcement), and dominance (the relative openness of the behavior setting). PA2: in the case of A2, the personal to super-​personal link, the contingency representations that form the intentional consumer-​situation provide the learning history which coheres with the consumer behavior setting (comprising stimuli that prefigure purchase and exchange). The V2s that are held as intentional objects at the personal level also refer to commodities that exist in the external world of market exchange, whether they are held by a buyer or a seller. In the case of the A2 route, from the personal to the super-​personal level, such V2s form the basis of bargaining to establish an intersubjective V1 through interpersonal interaction at the super-​personal level. In transactive bargaining of this kind, the behavior of the parties, both verbal and nonverbal, is prefigured by an array of mental representations that are the result of previous interactions at the super-​personal level and intrapersonal deliberations and assessments. Two factors may influence the course of these relationships. First, the actualization of causal factors at the super-​personal level, inspired by influences arising at the personal level, can override the tendency toward performing a behavior at the super-​personal level while it is still at the pre-​execution stage. That is, influences that arise from executive functions such as behavioral inhibition, pursuit of long-​term interests, and so on, may hinder the automatic learned operant response to environmental stimuli if it would impede the achievement of a greater goal in the future. The satisfaction of the goal established by operant conditioning reduces the impact on behavior of desires felt at the personal level, reinforced by other contingency representations and intentional objects arising from past behavior and its outcomes. Operant behavior may also be impeded insofar as behavior at the super-​personal level satisfies the demands of impulses at the sub-​personal level. The “B” Route: Sub-​Personal and Super-​Personal Links

Links between the super-​personal and sub-​personal levels are less problematic than either of the other relationships since both levels are domains of extensional explanation. They, therefore, avoid the problem that arises when the levels for which we seek integration have different (nay, incommensurable) modes of explanation.

168  Confronting Conceptual Duality PB1: in the case of B1, sub-​personal to super-​personal links, neural readiness, arousal, which derives from neural valuation of an environmental stimulus (V3), leads to operant behavior in (a) the marketplace (which achieves V1) and (b) consumption settings (which achieves V2). PB2: in the case of B2, super-​personal to sub-​personal links, the encounter of stimuli at the super-​personal level –​ i.e., stimuli that form the various elements of the marketing mix and interpersonal stimuli derived from observation of other consumers’ experience, engender neural valuation of what is on offer, i.e., V3s leading to reward predictions. The “C” Route: Personal and Sub-​Personal Links

PC1: in the case of C1, personal to sub-​personal links, personal level events, such as the mental consideration of contingencies of past, present and potential reinforcement and punishment (which are encapsulated in V2s) lead to arousal, neural preparation, at the sub-​personal level, the outcome of corresponding V3s. The mental rehearsal of past and envisaged situations evokes neurophysiological responses, for example, in the form of emotional markers which in turn and in collaboration with other intentional objects relating to consumption opportunities and their likely outcomes potentiate further action. More generally, we may expect emotional reactions to situations encountered at the super-​personal level to manifest in physiological responses that have impact on feelings encountered at the personal level; these promote or inhibit specific behavioral responses. Contingency representations formed at the personal level on the basis of perceptions of the events occurring at the super-​personal level may, therefore, influence sub-​personal functioning. PC2: in the case of C2, sub-​personal to the personal level links, sub-​personal events such as the rate of dopaminergic action potentials lead to emotional reactions. The dopaminergic firing rate represents V3; the emotional outcomes –​ pleasure, arousal and dominance –​form the basis of V2s. The process of sub-​personal valuation leads therefore to the evocation of affective reactions that encapsulate both prior purchasing and consumption behaviors and the potential offered by the new situation which is engendered by the appearance of the stimulus/​I that engender the process of neural valuation. A Triadic Relationship

Affect is a reward in the form of felt emotion occurring at the personal level. Its significance unites all three levels of exposition, however, as the following instance of gambling illustrates. The receipt of affect as a result of gambling has an effect on neural functioning inasmuch as the rate of dopaminergic action potentials is increased, especially in the presence of setting variables (discriminative stimuli

Complementarity and Incommensurability  169 and motivating operations) that increase the salience of reinforcers. This means that the affect must be part of the process of making such neural functioning more probable. It is this that hijacks the dopamine system to generate high levels of arousal and preparation for further action. Ross (2011, pp. 59–​60) puts this graphically in the context of gambling addiction: in those human populations that have been surveyed, 0.5% of reward systems “learn that if the organism whose consumption they guide gambles extremely frequently, this permanently elevates tonic dopamine, disables GABAergic inhibitory signals, and thereby turns the slot machine or home computer into an easily self-​operated phasic dopamine pump” (Ross et al., 2008). The frequent gambling mode of consumption to which Ross refers is ultimately reinforced through affective reward; this in turn encourages the increased activity of the dopamine system, now unimpeded by GABAergic countervailing pressure, to lose control. The inter-​level relationships involved are, initially, from the super-​personal to the sub-​personal (B2 in Figure 9.2), engendering a vivid increase in dopaminergic action potentials and, thence, from the sub-​personal to the personal level (the C2 route) which inspires affective experience. The key to this inter-​level activity is the capacity of consumer behavior at the super-​personal level to generate –​via the sub-​personal reward system –​highly influential affective reactions which, in turn, provide the stimulus to more sustained behaving at the super-​personal level. By contrast, in normal (i.e., non-​addictive) consumption, the amygdala may inhibit reward system response, through the generation of feelings of fear. At other times amygdala signals excite dopamine release in midbrain areas. Finally, frontal and prefrontal areas appear to exercise a generally inhibitory role in limiting the reward system’s influence on immediate behavior. Serotonin and GABA are the principal neurotransmitters known to be associated with such inhibition. All these systems, separately and in their interrelations, exhibit learning of relationships between stimulus cues (as predictors) and behavioral outcomes. The “D” Relationship: Responsive Behavior and Considered Action

Figure 9.1 shows an additional relationship to those covered by these propositions, namely, the output from the interactions of the levels of exposition. Depending on whether the explanation is primarily extensional or intentional, the kind of consumer activity predicted is, respectively, depicted as responsive behavior and considered action. These outcomes were treated in detail in the discussion of the conceptual dual process theory in Chapter 8. Further Pointers to Integration This chapter has pursued integration among the three levels of exposition which is not amenable to the usual summative drawing of conclusions. It ends, therefore, with a discussion of two highly pertinent sources of integration which, first, allow the contents of the chapter to be evaluated and, second, pave the way for the concerns of the concluding chapter.

170  Confronting Conceptual Duality The Significance of Reward Prediction Errors

Recall that reward prediction errors (RPEs) are a matter of the prediction of reinforcement and punishment (as behavioral consequences that correlate with rate of responding), though it might also be argued that they concern rewards and sanctions (in our terms, the affective feelings evoked by reinforcers and punishers). More specifically, RPEs relate the valuation a consumer attaches to a reinforcer, her learning history and her future behavior. Defined as the difference between a reinforcer actually obtained and that which was predicted or expected, an RPE may be negative (when the reward is predicted but not obtained) or positive (when a reward is not expected but is nevertheless obtained) (Schultz, 2006, 2010, 2016; Schultz et al., 1997). The assumption that RPEs are reflected in dopaminergic neurons’ firing rates is fundamental to neuroeconomics, as is the finding that whether an environmental stimulus engenders learning is not simply a matter of its presentation but its being unpredicted, novel, or surprising (DiChiara, 2002). The extent to which a stimulus is unpredicted is described in terms of a prediction error term (λ –​ ΣV), where λ is the strength of association with the reinforcer that predicts fully the occurrence of the reinforcer, and ΣV is the combined associative strength of all signals present on the learning episode in question. The prediction error (λ –​ ΣV) indicates the extent to which the appearance of the reinforcer is novel, surprising, unpredicted, or unexpected (Schultz and Dickinson, 2000). Two conclusions follow. The first concerns the evocation of emotions by the reinforcers and punishers resulting from operant learning (Rolls, 2005). For Schultz and Dickinson (2000, p. 476), learning is the acquisition of predictions of outcomes which may be environmentally based (in our terms, reinforcers or punishers) or internal states (emotional rewards or sanctions). The reinforcing stimuli that evoke emotion feelings may also predict them. The second is Schultz and Dickinson’s proposal of a homeostatic principle by which behavioral outcomes that produce a mismatch (prediction error) between expected and actual reinforcers alter subsequent behavior so as to reduce the gap between outcome and prediction. This explanation of the modification of behavior, as modified in light of experience, suggests a mechanism for reinforcement. The process of behavior modification continues until the prediction error is zero, that is, the discrepancy between expected and actual reinforcement is eliminated. Figure 9.3 employs the concept of reward prediction errors to elaborate the B pathway by highlighting interactions between the super-​personal and sub-​personal systems. An environmental stimulus (V1) generates an expected reward of some kind (V3), suggesting a B2 linkage which supports PB2. Insofar as a neurally based prediction (V3) leads to operant behavior (which achieves V1), however, the relevant pathway is from the sub-​personal to the super-​personal level (B1), supportive of PB1. Although the A and C links shown in this figure are not explicitly components of RPE theory, they are proposed here as plausible conclusions based upon it which support the scheme of interactions among the three concepts of values that have been addressed.

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Complementarity and Incommensurability  171

Figure 9.3 Valuation in light of reward prediction errors. Note that this figure is not in itself an exposition of RPEs (for which, see text and original sources); rather, it is an interpretation of the links among the sources of value described in Figure 9.2 in light of RPEs, with the intention of evaluating the six propositions.

172  Confronting Conceptual Duality Hence, in the case of A1 (linking the super-​personal to the personal), the reinforcing and punishing stimuli contingent upon operant behavior at the super-​personal level, which form V1, impinge on the personal level as emotional reactions (pleasure, arousal, and dominance) that encompass subjective and private valuations (V2). (Note that this relationship is mediated by neurophysiological-​emotional activity at the sub-​personal level). And, in the case of A2 (linking the personal to the super-​ personal), emotional feelings experienced at the personal level (V2) provide a learning history of operant behavior which primes current environmental stimuli (V1) necessary to engender neuronal valuation (V3). These proposed associations are consistent, respectively, with PA1 and PA2. In the case of the “C” route: mental deliberations and the reviewing of past and present contingencies of reinforcement and punishment at the personal level activate stimuli at the sub-​personal level which encapsulate the consumer’s learning history, much as do somatic markers in Damasio’s theory, and which participate in the formation of the V3s that result from the detection of an environmental stimulus. These are C1 linkages, from the personal to the sub-​personal level. Neural valuations arrived at the sub-​personal level (V3) represent neurophysiological responses to environmental stimuli that release neurotransmitters such as DA and serotonin (5-​HT) as well as opioids: these are C2 linkages (sub-​personal to personal) between valuations at different levels of exposition. The C1 and C2 linkages posited here on the basis of the necessary generation of RPEs and resultant operant behavior are supportive of PC1 and PC2, respectively. The Significance of Somatic Markers

An emotion in Damasio’s (1994, 1999) terms is a nonconscious reaction to an intra-​personal or external stimulus which occasions neural changes. This is close to the idea of operancy since the external stimulus is part of the process of operant conditioning. It also fits well with the idea that emotions are states elicited by reinforcers and punishers, that is, by the instrumental consequences of behavior (Rolls, 2018). Indeed, we have seen that, for Damasio (1999, p. 55), “emotions are inseparable from the idea of reward and punishment, of pleasure or pain, of approach or withdrawal, of personal advantage and disadvantage.” Feeling is “the private, mental experience of an emotion,” while emotion refers to a concatenation of responses, which may be publicly observable (Damasio, 1999, pp. 37–​42). The function of feeling is to make the individual conscious of a problem and provide an incentive to take care of whatever the difficulty is (Damasio, 1999, p. 284). We have noted Damasio’s repudiation of any notion that reason and emotion are antithetical in their influence on the quality of decision-​making. To the contrary, the SMH is based on evidence that emotion and feeling are central to effective problem-​solving. This suggests a link between the sub-​personal and personal levels (C2) which supports PC2. While they remain able to make use of their knowledge of the world, they exhibit an increased tendency to make personal and social decisions on an irrational basis, yielding outcomes that are disadvantageous to themselves and

Complementarity and Incommensurability  173 others more often than not. “These findings suggest that selective reduction of emotion is at least as prejudicial for rationality as excessive emotion” (Damasio, 1999, p. 284.) These observations and conclusions provide the basis of the somatic marker hypothesis (SMH). The relevance of the somatic marker hypothesis to the current discussion is depicted in Figure 9.4. If, as Damasio urges, the quality of behavioral consequences –​ that is, their reinforcing pleasurable outcomes on the one hand and their punishing aversive outcomes on the other hand –​ is assumed to engender physiological changes in the consumer, then this is clearly an effect generated at the super-​personal level, namely, that of the reinforcement and punishment of the consumer’s activity and is consistent with a super-​personal to personal link (A1), which is supportive of PA1. Indeed, the SMH begins with operant behavior: responses defined by discriminative learning generate reinforcers as a result of which the amygdala triggers emotional/​bodily states. Another way of putting this is to say that these operant responses eventuate in somatic markers based on the environmental events that generated reinforcement or punishment and their corresponding emotional rewards and sanctions, namely, pleasure or displeasure (P), arousal or unarousal (A), dominance or submission (D) (in Mehrabian and Russel’s, 1974, terms). Hence, a super-​personal event defined by prior learning impacts and modifies the personal, notably by producing a learning history, in the form of emotional feelings (PAD); these somatic markers influence the probability of similar action recurring when the appropriate circumstances present themselves. This is a link from the super-​ personal to the personal level (A1), further reinforcing PA1. Emotional states and associated feelings that come about through the activation of somatic markers encourage approach and avoidance responses to the stimuli that are responsible for the activation (A2). Somatic markers also provide an emotion-​based summary of the consumer’s learning history which primes the stimulus field that comprises the current consumer behavior setting to bring about an intentional consumer-​situation that either promotes or inhibits an operant behavioral response (B1). This argues for PB1. These somatic markers are also triggered, via the body loop, by similar situations, when they eventuate in emotional re-​enactments of the consequences of the earlier setting events. This is an example of a super-​personal to personal link (A1), supporting PA1. Such emotional inductions may be direct or indirect, that is, they may arise either as innate or learned responses to the stimulus field provided by a situation, a procedure from the super-​personal to the sub-​personal (B2) which is consistent with PB2, or through the mental rehearsal of past or future situations, a procedure from the personal to the sub-​personal (C1), consistent with PC1. The emotional feelings that eventuate from these emotional inductions are an example of sub-​personal effects, prompted by past and current super-​personal events, on the operation of the personal level intentional consumer-​situation (C2), consonant with PC2. Primary and secondary inductions of emotions are central to understanding the nature and effects of the intentional consumer-​situation (Foxall, 2016a).

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174  Confronting Conceptual Duality Figure 9.4 Valuation in light of somatic markers. Note that this figure is not in itself an exposition of somatic markers (for which, see text and original sources); rather, it suggests an interpretation of the links among sources of value shown in Figure 9.2 in light of the SMH, with the intention of evaluating the six propositions.

Complementarity and Incommensurability  175 Summary and Conclusions This chapter has proposed tentative resting places for the problems of complementarity and incommensurability. Further conceptualization is required in order to achieve a greater sense of integration, a theme which is further explored in Chapter 10. This is, therefore, an appropriate place to summarize the argument that has been pursued and to underline the desirability of a unified account of consumer choice. BPM-​E and BPM-​I provide explanation and interpretation of consumer choice which belong to distinct levels of exposition and immiscible modes of explanation. The extensional and intentional approaches offer irreconcilable methodologies for the pursuit of social and behavioral science. Their separateness is evident from the inappropriateness of employing either form of explanation at a level of exposition for which it was not formulated. This mutual exclusivity has been of immense benefit in the process of justifying an intentional (cognitive) perspective on consumer choice and the intentional behaviorist research strategy depends upon it. However, a unified theory of consumer choice is desirable for two reasons: ontological and methodological. First, consider the phenomenology of consumer experience. In order to function, especially with regard to reaching purchase and consumption choices, the consumer requires to be aware of and to integrate the interpersonal and subjective values which guide her decision-​making. On the one hand are the realities of what has occurred in the marketplace with respect to the establishment through the price system of the values consumers and marketers attach to products and services, and therefore the likely price demands that will be made on her when she again enters the marketplace. On the other hand are her personal and subjective notions of what the commodity is worth to her, as something to own (and to be a source of informational reinforcement) and something to use (a source of utilitarian reinforcement). As we have discussed these sources of value in the context of BPM-​E and BPM-​I, we have kept distinct the explanations we are making of behavior and action. The modes of explanation and their respective levels of exposition have been ring-​ fenced. We have dealt with the realities of V1 and V2 sequentially and uniquely. If the consumer were to follow this procedure seriatim, she would be unable to relate key aspects of her decision process one to another. For what matters to the consumer in making a purchase decision is the relationship between what the market is likely to demand from her, based on its past outcomes, and her personal wants and needs which she alone can know. Clearly, consumers are not so inhibited. Second, consumer psychologists require concepts that can transcend the environmental stimuli that influence consumer choice in an extensional framework of analysis and the intra-​personal desires, beliefs, emotions, and perceptions that bear on decisions and actions in an intentional framework. There are no concepts which capture both the extensional and intentional modes of explanation and which can thereby combine levels of exposition. However, there is a way in which we can construct a view of their coming together, one impinging on another so as to render it intelligible at a different level of exposition even though it does not of

176  Confronting Conceptual Duality itself belong to that system of conceptualization. Foxall (2020) proposed that the intentional conception of value, V2, could be understood as a “Janus-​variable,” one which displays bidirectionality by allowing the extensional idea of value, V1, to be brought into the analytical framework of intentionality. Put simply, the price established by the marketplace enters the consumer’s consciousness in the form of an intentional object which becomes part of her deliberative process. We think about the world, hold perceptions of it, beliefs and attitudes about it, and intend to act in a particular way as a result. Perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, and intentions held in mind as intentional objects are clearly about events occurring elsewhere and thereby suggest a means of overcoming, though not eliminating, the problem of incommensurability. While Foxall (2020) began the use of this conceptual procedure, it was applied only to conceptual interactions between the super-​personal and personal levels; the possibility that events at the sub-​personal level might also participate was mentioned but not taken up. The present book overcomes this partial approach through the consideration of sub-​personal neural valuations, V3, as intentional objects at the personal level of exposition. The treatment of consumer choice from a neuropsychological perspective in the following section is integral to this theoretical development. By extending the dimensionality of valuation to embrace neural value, V3, it provides the opportunity to make the Janus-​variable construct more robust by acknowledging that V2 looks toward both V1 at the super-​personal level and V3 at the sub-​personal level and in some sense incorporates their import in its functioning. The initial stage of the extension of this proposal to the link between the sub-​personal and personal levels is the specification of a neurophysiological model of consumer choice and the investigation of the bases of neural valuation. The diverse components of this chapter have sought to accent the differences between the extensional and intentional modes of explanation by highlighting their central explanatory vehicles. Extensionality confines inquiry to observable behavior and the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment that render it predictable. When strict adherence to the elements of the three-​term contingency no longer suffices for this, it resorts to the notion of rule-​governed behavior. This device can remain within the ambit of a radical behaviorist account, however, only if its elements are reduced to physical stimuli on a par with the discriminative stimuli that play a central role in its basic predictive framework. The very formulation of “rules,” as entities that go beyond this physicalist formulation, invites the criticism that the explanation has ventured into the realm of intentional interpretation. The consequent inevitability of representation as a source of understanding has been illustrated by the portrayal of the consumer at a choice point, a situation which cannot be rendered intelligible in the absence of an interpretive account of her phenomenology. This is well illustrated by the conception of informational reinforcement, the full import of which can be captured by abandoning the confines of physicalist description and venturing into the sphere made available by the folk-​psychological experience which the philosophy of behavioral science –​ among whose ranks radical behaviorism locates itself –​ so rarely admits. None of this is to suggest the out-​of-​hand rejection of radical behaviorism and the operant

Complementarity and Incommensurability  177 psychology based on it. To the contrary, these provide valuable insights not only into the subject matter of economic psychology but also into the methodological issues with which we are concerned. Notes 1 The clear parallel is with matching behavior (Herrnstein, 1997) which is based on flexible responding to immediate environmental contingencies. 2 Based on a substantial literature including Ehrenberg (1988), Romaniuk and Sharp (2016), Sharp (2010), and, in the context of consumer behavior analysis, Foxall (2017b) and Foxall et al. (2007). 3 The emphasis on aggregate patterns of buyer behavior here is also germane to the argument. Operant psychology is confined to the prediction and control of individual behavior; dealing in aggregates is eschewed in radical behaviorism. The strength of operant analysis of patterns of consumer choice is found, however, in the prediction of large number of consumers and is far less apparent in the sphere of predicting individual responses. See, inter alia, Curry et al. (2010), Foxall (1998, 1999a), Foxall and James (2002, 2003), Foxall et al. (2007), Foxall et al. (2010a, 2010b), Oliveira-​Castro, Foxall and James (2010), Romero et al. (2006), Wells and Foxall (2013), and Yan et al. (2012a, 2012b). 4 The role of BPM-​N is far from confined to the evaluation stage of the intentional behaviorist research strategy. That is simply the role it has been assigned in the present work. 5 See, in this context, the discussion of “intensional fluency” in Foxall (2020) and Foxall (in press). Failure of intensional fluency lies behind a-​rationality which was discussed in Chapter 2. 6 Dennett’s proposal for a sub-​personal cognitive psychology is, however, an ingenious attempt to achieve the required reconciliation, a statement of what can be said in the attempt to resolve the mind–​body problem (though Dennett would not welcome this term). My reasons for not accepting it, despite its ingenuity, are given in Foxall (2020) along with what I consider a more acceptable, albeit more modest, account of what can be said.

10 Confluence

Abstract This chapter reaches tentative conclusions on complementarity and incommensurability. It develops the concept of Janus-​variables, intentional objects which function bidirectionally by conceptually linking super-​personal and sub-​personal levels of exposition, respectively, to the personal. They thereby assuage the problem of incommensurability without deploying a term that makes sense only in one paradigm as though it belonged naturally, rather than at best metaphorically, to another. Their explanatory role is illustrated by reference to subjective value and affective markers. Janus-​variables, first, promote the capacity of the members of the suite of consumer choice models to work together to explain consumer choice. This requires relating the styles depicted in the Continuum to the modes of explanation exemplified by BPM-​E and BPM-​I, that is, the need to achieve complementarity between extensionality and intentionality. Second, they mitigate the problem of incommensurability by showing events described extensionally by either the BPM-​E or BPM-​N, to be accessible to personal level intentional interpretation. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the progress under way in the research program as a whole. Bidirectionality This chapter brings together the intentional-​behaviorist research strategy, the BPM suite of models, the complementarity of these models over the Continuum of Consumer Choice, and the synthesis of the incommensurable explanations offered by the extensional and intentional models. It builds, therefore, on the integration facilitated by the interaction of these models in the context of a conceptual dual process depiction of consumer choice, aided by the provision of a neurophysiological model, and the function of intentional objects in promoting the synthesis of the levels of exposition to which the models severally belong. It draws particular attention to the role of Janus-​variables, which are intentional objects and belong, therefore, to the personal level. Their virtue lies in their having connections with the super-​ and sub-​personal levels which do not invoke the mereological fallacy. DOI: 10.4324/9781003262510-13

Confluence  179 Their purpose is to bridge the epistemological gaps between levels of exposition by allowing events occurring at the super-​or sub-​personal level to be represented at the personal level. Janus-​variables thereby allow the theory of consumer choice to integrate the levels of exposition which would otherwise remain impermeable on account of their incommensurability. Their bidirectional construal means that, although they are unobservable intentional objects existing subjectively at the personal level and, therefore, the stuff of interpretation rather than empirical demonstration, their presence may be inferred on the basis of parallel considerations at the super-​personal and sub-​personal levels. While they are, therefore, vital components of the intentional consumer-​situation, they map onto entities which are demonstrably existent and effective at other levels of exposition. This chapter discusses two examples of Janus-​variables, considering how subjective evaluations (V2), which have been discussed earlier, and affective markers, introduced in this chapter, may perform the integrative role which the assuaging of incommensurability makes desirable. Subjective evaluation, V2, qualifies as a Janus-​variable because it conjoins the super-​personal and the sub-​personal, respectively, to the personal. Affective markers, the feelings of pleasure, arousal, and dominance that derive from past consumption experiences and which shape decision-​making and future action, are relevant in two ways to the evaluation of the conceptual dual process portrayal examined in Chapter 8. First, the conception of affective markers enriches understanding of the styles of consumer choice that are arrayed on the Continuum and the relations between the extensional and intentional explanations used to account for them: the horizontal dimension which relates to complementarity. Second, their explicatory significance derives from the elucidation they offer of the relationships among the three levels of exposition: the vertical dimension which relates to incommensurability. Simply knowing that there is a physical link between extensionally specified events at the level of inter-​personal market transactions and similarly specified neuronal activities is of course interesting but it does not suffice to overcome the more general problem of incommensurability that arises when the nature of the explanatory contribution of intentionality is taken into account. For it is the integration of the personal level into the overall explanatory framework that lies at the heart of the impasse. We need to link all three levels conceptually in a way that, first, elucidates and, second, validates the intentional interpretation that consists not in empirically testable entities like electrons and chemical bonds but in intentional objects whose existence rests on inference. My conjecture is that certain intentional objects, namely, Janus-​variables, are so linked to super-​ and sub-​personal events which are empirically available as to illumine the nature of consumer decision processes which are otherwise unobservable. In order to be considered a Janus-​ variable, then, an intentional object must reduce the problem of incommensurability among the various imports of a concept like value which was mentioned in this respect in Chapter 9, that belong to disparate levels of exposition. This chapter shows how the discussion of value and valuation in that chapter qualifies subjective valuation as a Janus-​variable and goes on to consider affect as another.

180  Confronting Conceptual Duality Subjective Valuation as a Janus-​Variable Before turning to subjective valuation as a Janus-​variable, it is useful to recapitulate the three dimensions of valuation discussed in the last chapter in order to emphasize the different modes of explanation appropriate to their several imports and, especially, to highlight that of personal valuation. Super-​personal Valuation (V1). The inter-​subjective value may be set through market transacting when it takes the form of a price at which exchange has taken place. It may also take the form of the amount of work that must be expended in order to obtain a reinforcer (typically money). Both of these reflect the utilitarian reinforcement obtained by the parties to a transaction. Another source of value is the informational reinforcement that accompanies such transacting: the kudos of owning a particular product or brand or of shopping (being seen to shop) at a particular retail outlet. Informational reinforcement also leads to the subjective feeling of self-​worth that derives from the super-​personal conferment of informational reinforcement. This self-​esteem is principally regarded as a super-​personal → personal communication, though it may be mediated by sub-​personal emotional activity. The consumer’s behavior is reinforced by the acquisition or use of the physical and social outcomes of the transactions in which she participates; i.e., by being afforded the opportunity to benefit from the use of a product or service (utilitarian) and by receiving social esteem by dint of such ownership and control. She is rewarded by the feelings of self-​esteem that arise from the transaction and its aftermath. Personal valuation. Consumers reflect upon outcomes of prior transactions and the possibilities for further reinforcement and reward offered by the current consumer behavior setting. In this, they entertain expectations of the utilitarian and informational reinforcement obtainable contingent upon buying and using various products and services. As a result of this mental activity, the consumer arrives at subjective valuations of her past actions and the opportunities for further benefits. Such rumination at the personal level generates further affective reactions to the imagined contingencies which further color her valuation of these past and potential actions and nuance her valuation of the goods on offer (V2). The consumer’s forming and acting upon personal judgment is at the core of the process of subjective evaluation that characterizes the intentional consumer-​situation. It relies, therefore, on contingency-​representations that summarize her experience to date and prefigure her assessment of the contingencies that will prevail on subsequent occasions of purchase and consumption. “Value” in this sense is an intentional idiom (since one always values something). Sub-​personal Valuation. Sensual detection of the socio-​economic good in question or mentally envisaging it or the contextual stimuli that have become associated with it over the consumer’s consumption history stimulates dopaminergic action potentials which gauge its worth (V3) and may, through engendering RPEs and affective evaluations, motivate appropriate action.

Confluence  181 However, it is highly relevant that neural valuation consists also in its capturing the physiological substrate of the affects that represent the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment of consumer choice, namely pleasure, arousal and dominance. Figure 10.1 summarizes their relationships as detailed in Figure 9.2. V2 qualifies as a Janus-​variable, then, because it conjoins the super-​personal and the sub-​personal, respectively, to the personal. The consumer’s rumination on the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment activates the neurophysiological basis of affective experience and assists the sub-​personal preparation of arousal making possible the readiness to respond at the personal level which in turn instigates action at the super-​ personal level. In earlier chapters, its capacity to embody inter-​personal estimations of value as an element in the collective intentionality surrounding market-​based transactional interactions has been described (for more detail, see Foxall, 2021). Of particular note is the relationship between valuation at the neural level in the form of the rate of dopaminergic action potentials and reward prediction errors which initiate the preparation of arousal for action. Also significant is the relationship between the achievement of operant reinforcement (and punishment) at the super-​personal level and the emotional bases of the pleasure, arousal, and dominance felt at the personal level. In the context of the SMH, it noted the putative relationship between the physiological bases of emotion and feeling and their roles in truncating the decision process and facilitating rapid behavioral response. Affect experienced at the personal level is accordingly an index of the valuation occurring during sub-​personal neural activity. The regeneration of personal level affective reactions of this kind by the stimulus field provided by a new consumer behavior setting offering new opportunities to act and promising contingent utilitarian and informational reinforcement (as well as punishment) brings together all three levels

Figure 10.1 Subjective valuation, V2, as a Janus-​variable.

182  Confronting Conceptual Duality of exposition through the intentional representation of the other levels in the form of the affective evaluation of present stimuli and future courses of action. Affective Markers as Janus-​Variables We can further explore the role of intentional objects in the integration of the levels of exposition by extending Damasio’s SMH on the basis of the empirical evidence on behavioral, affective, and neurophysiological activities adduced in earlier chapters. This exegesis takes the form of an intentional interpretation rather than an extensional empirically based treatise. That is, its aim is not to lay the basis of a research program, still less to provide a therapeutic method: its goal is only to extend the interpretation which our discussion of intentional objects inspires. It extends the concept of the intentional consumer-​situation begun in Foxall (2017a). As such, contingency-​representations in the form of conative, affective, and cognitive reflections of the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment which impinge on action feature strongly. Recall that behavior belongs to the super-​personal level of exposition, affect to the personal, where it is closely allied with other intentional objects such as desires and beliefs (conation and cognition). Emotion is neurophysiologically based activity at the sub-​personal level that gives rise to affect. The general proposition with regard to the idea of emotional markers, their origin and influence on decision-​making and behavior/​action is explicated under the banner of Everyday Selection, but many of the principles apply across the Continuum. This is a matter of determining how some perceptions, namely, those that are affectively based, are formed, and come to influence consumer choice. Affective markers perform three functions. First, they allow the consumer to “read” the nature of her situation. Because affective markers are keenly linked to the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment that accompany behavior and action, they enable the consumer to quickly read the environment and sense the potential for positive and aversive consequences that are likely to be contingent on behaving in a particular manner. Affective markers are conceived as emotion-​based rather than conative or cognitive intentional objects. Their evolutionary function is to truncate the decision-​making process in order to deliver rapid guides to behavior and action. Only highly-​ and unequivocally-​judgmental evaluations can deliver the rapid responses to new situations that are precursors and reinforcement and punishment. This argues for an evaluative mechanism that is perceptual since cognition is too slow for most of the situations that occur in natural settings encountered in a phylogenetic history. Conation based on physiological requirements can motivate behavior rapidly but when it is linked to action that occurs in complex social milieux like consumption in affluent marketing-​orientated economies, it may lead temporarily to indecision, deliberation, and tardy responses. The most effective mechanism is, therefore, likely to be perceptually based, evaluative according to unambiguous criteria, and rapid. By relating current contingencies to the consumer’s learning history they immediately signal the tone of the likely outcomes of consumer activity.

Confluence  183 Second, affect is promptly sensitive to the full complement of behavioral contingencies with which the consumer is faced. Affective markers take the form of feelings of pleasure, arousal, and dominance which, respectively, map the capacity of the environment to deliver utilitarian reinforcement, and informational reinforcement, as well as denoting the texture of the consumer behavior setting in terms of its compulsive or permissive nature. Thirdly, affect may be overridden by cognitive and conative considerations when circumstances and the consumer’s cognitive style press for this. While feelings provide the most readily available summary of the contingencies and while they will, when circumstances permit, be tempered by cognitive considerations (what the consumer believes) and conation (her goals), they are efficient and effective in directing action-​in-​the-​moment. Cognition and conation can act more slowly than a perceptual response like affect but provide a measured and considered view of what is in the consumer’s best, longer-​term, interests. The overriding may take the form predominantly of modifying the affect-​based behavioral tendency, changing the emotional tone of the consumer’s outlook rather than knocking out her affective reaction altogether. Affect is, therefore, a summary variable for contingency-​ representations in general. Affective markers are a theoretical device which, while empirically grounded, are conceptually distinct from the somatic marker construct that Damasio employs in the SMH. While Damasio’s idea of somatic markers emphasizes the sub-​personal level of neural registering of an individual’s response to the outcomes of operant behavior (along with, of course, felt emotion), that of affective markers focuses from the beginning on what the consumer feels as a result of engaging in market transactions. It is, therefore, built on the conception of operancy. The point of this is to emphasize how the elements of the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment that have influenced past behavior and those that are taken into account in decision-​making with respect to future action are perceptually summarized in the intentional consumer-​situation. Affects are, of course, dependent for their incidence on neurophysiological events but we should not concentrate so heavily on the latter that the guidance of consumer activity by emotional feelings is marginalized. In addition, the unambiguous portrayal of affect as a personal level phenomenon motivates further the search for linkages between this level and the extensional levels of exposition. We noted in Chapter 5 the view of Coricelli and Rustichini (2009) to the effect that emotions are affective evaluations of differences between expected and realized rewards and take the form of disappointments and satisfactions. In terms of operancy, therefore, emotional feelings may constitute the affective correlates of RPEs. If so, they effectively link the super-​personal, personal, and sub-​personal levels and support the idea of Janus-​variables in the form of affective markers. The procedure of affective marking has three stages. I On the first occasion that a good (i.e., a brand or product or retailer) that is new to the consumer is purchased and/​or used or otherwise encountered (e.g.,

184  Confronting Conceptual Duality in an advertisement or in the possession of another consumer), an emotional response takes place, leading to an affective reaction in the form of a feeling of pleasure, arousal and dominance. Once this response is learned, a “marker” is established at the neurophysiological level, i.e., a readiness to react affectively to the components of a stimulus field presented say in the form of a marketing mix or simply recalled in memory. This establishment of a marker is presumably due to the LTP of the affected synapses which make the generation of the affect probable in future when an appropriate environmental stimulus or cognition, conation, affect stimulates sub-​personal activity. Any contingency-​ representation that refers to this good evokes a similar affective reaction to that which accompanied the initial encounter. Such a conception links super-​ personal, personal and sub-​personal levels of exposition. II On subsequent occasions, when the reinforcer (the good in question) has been established as a discriminative stimulus or motivating operation for pleasure, arousal and dominance this affective reaction becomes habitual, automatic.1 It may still be activated by a mediating neurophysiological (emotional) response to the stimulus but for all intents and purposes the operative link is from the super-​personal reinforcer to the personal affect. Importantly, it may also be mediated by previous cognitive processing in which the attributes and efficacy of the brand is monitored and appraised and its inclusion in the consumer’s consideration set is a considered and deliberative judgement based on its efficacy according to its fulfilment of the consumer’s goals. In the case of responsive behavior, the PAD reactions to the stimulus field, grounded in rapid neurophysiological valuation, are sufficient to explain the consumer’s response; but, in the case of more considered action, the PAD reactions are effective in guiding decision making only because they may be tempered by a thoroughgoing cognitive evaluation. Responding at the neurophysiological level, reliant on LTP, is then not the whole story: cognitive processing, itself grounded in neurophysiological substrates, is also necessary to understand the consumer’s action. III This process of establishing the reinforcer as a discriminative stimulus or motivating operation for pleasure, arousal and dominance is also operative when the reinforcer is not physically encountered but thought of, imagined, or spoken of. Crucially, once such PAD reactions are learned, the decision-​making process can be truncated even to the point where the decision is apparently a wholly contingency-​based response or a perceptual reaction, depending on one’s paradigm. The critical observation, however, is that this process remains decision making: the procedure has become simplified, abbreviated, abridged, but it remains based firmly on cognitive processing even if this is not to the fore. The process of turning the outcomes of this cognitive processing into effective action has simply been made more efficient. It is a different style of decision making but the cognitive work of setting up a consideration set and determining whether the new brand will become part of it has to precede the exercise of this perceptual competence.

Confluence  185 Affective Markers and Complementarity More routine consumer choice comes in two styles: everyday selection and intermittent consumption. In the case of the former, the frequent purchase of consumer nondurables, consumer choice is marked by cognition insofar as this is indispensable to establish and maintain a consideration set and deal with the adopt/​reject decisions made necessary by any novel brands that get through the consumer’s initial perceptual screening. Thereafter, perception suffices for the selection among current members of the consideration set during regular shopping, but this is highly cognition-​based. In the case of intermittent consumption, which notably concerns durable goods and other relatively expensive and infrequently consumed items exemplified by white and brown goods and vacations, there is a heavier reliance on cognitive processing for the comparison of alternatives against the criteria set by the consumer’s goals. Is more routine consumer choice better explained as perceptual or stimulus-​ bound? Since a cognitive process of constructing and maintaining the consideration set precedes everyday consumer choice, it would appear that this can be better understood in cognitive terms and assigned therefore to BPM-​I. However, as was argued in Chapter 9, this behavior may be predictable, at least in the aggregate, if it is treated as operant. A considerable body of empirical research indicates that it is amenable to prediction and behavioral explanation if it is depicted as operant choice, but only at the cost to this paradigm of abandoning its single-​subject research strategy. There is a case to be made, therefore, for treating those aspects of it that do not rely directly on cognitive decision-​making as perceptual. This retains the relevance of BPM-​I. In the case of intermittent purchasing, the relatively infrequent selection of consumer durables and other more expensive choices which bear higher risk and greater uncertainty, cognitive contingency-​representations come to the fore. These consist in the beliefs that have resulted from the intellectual effort involved in establishing, monitoring, and policing the consumer’s consideration set. Affective contingency-​representations are less prominent in this cognitive appraisal of alternatives, possibly including the option of not purchasing at all. This style of consumer choice is undeniably cognitive. Credit-​purchasing, which often accompanies these intermittent decisions but is not confined to them, may display a mixture of cognitive appraisal if longer-​term consequences are taken into account as well as some perceptual content. However, the possibility of full-​scale cognitive processing and decision-​making is reduced by the immediacy of the consumption experience that buying on credit makes possible. The role of perception increases for intermediate styles of consumer choice in which there is an increasingly extreme style of consumer activity: credit purchasing and the various styles of over-​consumption all are based on considerable perceptual influence except when behavior change is considered, in which case cognitive considerations come to the fore. As an example of over-​consumption, environmental despoliation is strongly influenced by perceptual factors and may not have

186  Confronting Conceptual Duality the cognitive backing that everyday brand choice rests on. It is unlikely that longer-​ term considerations are given weight in this activity. Like other styles of over-​ consumption, such as over-​eating and over-​drinking, it is likely to be impulsive rather than considered. A tendency toward compulsive buying and consuming falls short of addiction but may be its precursor. There is a strong perceptual element in this, especially given the prevalence of neurophysiologically based incentive salience for both the relevant reinforcers and the stimulus field that predicts them. Liking is giving way to wanting and, if not checked, craving. Significant perceptions take the form of affective evaluations of the differences between expected and realized rewards which manifest as satisfactions and disappointments and, as we have seen, may be regarded as the affective concomitants of RPEs. Hence, for such behaviors, perceptual factors outweigh cognitive; the stimulus field in which consumption occurs, predominantly as it is experienced and perceived by the consumer, assumes increasing control. There is some indication that cognitive decision-​making is involved in some of this activity, perhaps in its initial stages and foundations. But the persistence of such behavior invites explanation in terms of (cognitively founded) perception and even if it may be predictable in terms of operant psychology. Turning to extreme consumer choice, it is evident that affective marking is also highly relevant to compulsive and addictive behaviors. In this case, consumer activity is triggered by the perception of stimuli that have become associated with consumption and reinforcement. Incentive salience is highly likely in physical and social settings akin to those in which reinforced behavior has previously occurred; there is a strong progression from hedonic responses to stimuli to incentive motivation to obtain the reinforcer. As we proceed along the Continuum toward the extreme pole, it is increasingly apparent that the contribution of cognition becomes more minimal, while the behavior involved can be modeled as operant. This behaviorist portrayal has limited explicatory significance, however; it is useful for the purposes of prediction, but its explanatory role is largely confined to its acting as a check on otherwise unregulated intentional interpretation. However, perception remains important as a contributor to explanation, especially when it takes the form of affective reactions to the stimulus field provided by consumer behavior settings. BPM-​I remains important, therefore. The right-​hand side of the Continuum also increasingly invites explanation in terms of neurophysiological events which offer explanation and prediction that may be unmatched by the extensional and intentional models. While there is no suggestion that they are thereby superseded, they may require supplementation by considerations arising from neurophysiological valuation. There may, therefore, be few styles of consumer activity in which cognitive decision-​making is indisputably predominant. Its effects are manifest in the formation of perceptions and the cognitive appraisal required when behavioral change is contemplated. Either way, BPM-​I is of principal relevance. Aspects of the consumer activity that is attributable to perception may be predictable by treating it as an operant in which case BPM-​E may be used. Its descriptions of consumer behavior may fail, however, to explain behavioral continuity or discontinuity as

Confluence  187 when a new brand is introduced to a product category or the individual whose behavior is marked by compulsion or addiction is compelled to change direction. None of this is to downplay extensional depiction of consumer choice or the relevance of BPM-​E: its purpose is, rather, to establish their sphere of applicability and import. Figure 10.2 summarizes the relevance of affective marking, which is perceptual, and decision-​making, which is cognitive, to styles of consumer choice. it also denotes where operant considerations may be expected to play a role in explanation, through the demonstration of what is readily predictable in terms of environmental stimulation. BPM-​E thus contributes both to the production of new knowledge that would not otherwise become available and to the critique of intentional interpretation. Affective marking emerges as especially relevant to the extremes of the Continuum of Consumer Choice. First, it is important in the everyday purchasing of fast-​moving consumer goods which are already members of the consumer’s consideration set. Such selection is highly dependent on perceptual reactions at the personal level mediated by sensory contact with a reinforcer, either through a direct encounter with it or via memory and imagination. Typically, consumption of this kind is sparked by the presentation of a familiar brand from the consumer’s consideration set. Certainly, any disruption to the pattern of behavior of the consumer –​ for example, a new contender for inclusion in her consideration set –​ engenders a decision process based on cognitive appraisal.

Figure 10.2 Sources of explanation over the continuum. The spectrum of mental operations shown here might seem smoother if Everyday Selection and Intermittent Purchasing were inter-​changed: this would yield a progression from cognition to perception across the Continuum. However, such a progression does not reflect the degree of temporal discounting involved which ranges from the shallowest (everyday) to the steepest (addiction). There is little or no temporal discounting involved in Everyday Selection but a good amount in Intermittent Purchasing.

188  Confronting Conceptual Duality Even a brand that is entirely new to the relevant product category may be tried if its characteristics are perceived to be similar, that is, functionally equivalent, to those which define the qualities of the tried and tested brands that constitute the current consideration set. Clearly, if this occurs, it is in the complete absence of a relevant learning history with regard to the new brand, ruling out an explanation in terms of behavioral conditioning. Even if the behaviorist argues that the characteristics of the new brand are essentially those of the brands constituting the consumer’s consideration set, we must point to the consumer’s having to perceive that this is the case in order for her to initiate behavior toward the trial of the novel item. The behaviorist’s argument will lose plausibility as the stimuli that compose the new item and the marketing mix of which it is a component differ increasingly from those that constitute the known brands, products, and outlets that make up the consumer’s consideration set. Very similar considerations are apparent in the case of the consumer whose behavior may be accurately described as extreme who seeks to modify her addictive activity through a reappraisal of the significance of the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment that govern it. This is a process of preference reversal as surely as that which occurs as SSR becomes available (as discussed in Chapters 4 and 6, and depicted in Figures 4.2 and 6.1). Behavior modification which ameliorates extreme consumer choice necessarily relies on cognitive reconstruction and rehearsal of acting in novel situations; it also entails the learning of new propositional attitudes (Foxall, 2017a, in press). These are undeniably cognitive. In truly extreme instances, behavior modification that is necessary to radically transform such a pattern of choice may conceivably require the imposition of a highly restrictively closed consumer behavior setting on the consumer. The persistence of any behavior change beyond such confines requires cognitive learning. Affective Markers and Incommensurability A Dual Perspective

Affective markers require for their operation communicability between the levels of exposition. This does not demand the demonstration that “information” is actually interchanged among the levels. It does require, however, that the theory of consumer choice should be capable of articulating how the levels of exposition can plausibly impinge one upon another. The idea of their bidirectionality conveys the fact that some intentional objects are related both to (a) a set of contingencies of reinforcement and punishment and (b) a neurophysiological event (or events, of course, though to avoid unnecessary repetition I shall not continue to specify this) that is also occasioned by these contingencies. This is not the case for all intentional objects: a belief about a product range, for instance, has no obvious neurophysiological relations –​or if it does these are not directly relevant to the explanation of consumer choice as it is pursued here. What defines a Janus-​variable is that it relates to both a pattern of environmental contingency and a related neurophysiological event and that there is a logical relationship between the super-​personal and sub-​personal occurrences. This is the case for both of the Janus-​variables considered in this chapter.

Confluence  189

Figure 10.3 Super-​personal and sub-​personal correlates of an affective marker.

In Figure 10.3, a behavioral response (say, browsing, purchase, or consumption) is occasioned by a particular set of contingencies. The resulting behavior has stimulus properties which bring about an affective reaction: utilitarian reinforcement occasions pleasure; informational reinforcement occasions arousal; and an open consumer behavior setting occasions dominance. Again, for the sake of clarity, I shall not continually specify that the contingencies might also be utilitarian and informational reinforcement and punishment and the behavior setting scope submission. These felt affects also correlate with neural valuations and the neurophysiological bases of pleasure, arousal and dominance. A Janus-​variable is understood, therefore, on the analogy of Janus’ looking both ways: as noted, not all intentional objects have this property. A Janus-​variable links the super-​personal and sub-​personal level by dint of its separate relationships with each; in this way, it reconciles the understandings of concepts such as value and affect which have referents at all three levels. Cognitive and Conative Elements

Janus-​variables may, potentially and conceptually, be cognitive or conative as well as affective however, although these can be readily associated with a pattern of contingencies of reinforcement and punishment and learning histories, their neurophysiological bases are more elusive. And affective intentional objects may be closely associated with cognitive and conative stimuli that are instrumental in effecting the functions of affective Janus-​variables in decision-​making and the guidance of action. At least at present, therefore, cognitive and conative Janus-​ variables are not the primary focus of the designation of some intentional objects as Janus-​variables. Whatever the eventual status of cognitive and conative intentional objects, it is probable that felt pleasure, arousal, and dominance are basic to the processes

190  Confronting Conceptual Duality of decision-​making and contingency-​monitoring and evaluation. Their perceptual nature delivers not only knowledge-​by-​acquaintance of the contingencies but also their valuation in terms of the costs and benefits of consumer activity both past and future. Cognitive and conative intentional objects are derived from this knowledge-​ by-​acquaintance in a slower process of deliberation and rumination that is the hallmark of knowledge-​by-​description. Their development requires the consumer’s describing to herself or others what has been felt with respect to the operation of particular contingencies of reinforcement and punishment and the anticipation of the outcomes of current and future contingencies. These cognitions play an essential role in the decision process, ensuring that consumption is not simply the result of affective reactions but also cognitive consideration. Conation is built on affective and cognitive evaluations as these lead to desires for future positive and negative reinforcement. The emerging essence of Janus-​variables, therefore, is that they are primarily perceptual, though they acquire related cognitive and conative elements through the procedures in which knowledge-​by-​acquaintance is transformed into knowledge-​by-​ description. As rather specific contingency-​representations, they can only function in the decision process if they are relatively rapid, sometimes instant, reactions to the contingencies. Their acquisition of cognitive elements enhances their role in decision-​making itself, as well as inter-​decisional ruminations on the contingencies and the guidance of future action. This collaboration of intentional objects in the form of contingency-​representations also feeds into the conative element. The weights of the disparate, though inter-​connected roles of affective, cognitive, and conative contingency-​representations differ from Janus-​variable to Janus-​ variable. Janus-​variables are after all a mixed grouping: they refer to quite distinct entities at the super-​personal and sub-​personal levels –​ that is, a variety of contingencies and a variety of neurophysiological substrates –​ and they participate in both perceptual, affectively-​based, and sustained cognitive processes of decision-​ making. Hence, while subjective valuation is perceptual and affective, the decision processes to which it contributes also exact strong cognitive demands. Affective markers are strongly perceptual, acting very rapidly to assess consumption experience and form impressions and judgments on concurrent actions. While the nature of Janus-​variables differs from one to another by virtue of their specific contributions to decision-​making and preparation of arousal and action, they also fluctuate with consumption history, other perceptions and cognitions, satiety levels (a key source of motivating operation), and other characteristics of the stimulus field with which the consumer is confronted. Their relevance to consumer activity over the Continuum of Consumer Choice and the conceptual portrayal is clearly apparent.2 Conclusions Concluding remarks have been drawn at the end of each chapter, obviating the need for a detailed retrospective analysis here. Given this, and acknowledging that theoretical work may never come to a neat conclusion, it is possible to note some general signposts to progress. The first is the definition of consumer choice,

Confluence  191 which has been cast in terms of temporal discounting. The second is the discovery of interconnections between the styles of consumer choice that compose the Continuum of Consumer Choice in terms of how BPM-​E and BPM-​I combine in their explanation, plus those between the sub-​personal and super-​personal levels of exposition and the personal. These “horizontal” and “vertical” dimensions of theorizing are genuinely integrative. Finally, attention should be drawn to the conception of “preparation of arousal,” which lies at the heart of each of the three models. While this idea means very different things in each of the three contexts, there is great value in contemplating their varied answers to the question of what motivates consumer choice. It presents, therefore, a paradigm case of the kinds of consideration that is central to the intentional behaviorist research program. Moreover, these three considerations are not just signposts to what has been achieved: they are, equally, opportunities for further theorization. Delineating Consumer Choice

Consumer choice has been understood here as selection between socio-​economic goods, which vary in terms of the extent to which they differ quantitatively or qualitatively, and the costs of acquiring them, including the temporal investment they demand. This criterion allows the various styles of consumer choice, ranging from the routine to the extreme, to be arrayed on a continuum from the everyday which entails the least temporal discounting, if any, to the addictive which demands the most. It has proved possible to describe the neurophysiological substrates of the behavior patterns, affective reactions, and cognitive processing of these routine-​ to-​extreme styles of choice in terms of three sub-​continua. It was tentatively hypothesized that while the routine actions of consumers would be explicable in the cognitive and perceptual terms in which the BPM-​I traffics, consumer behaviors at the extreme pole of the Continuum would be amenable to explanation in terms of BPM-​E. As a gross generalization, this was borne out by the examination of the conceptual dual process depiction of consumer activity introduced and exploited in this book. However, scrutiny of this result based on knowledge of consumer behavior patterns gleaned through the marketing-​based investigation of consumption suggests more nuanced and subtle relationship between styles of consumption and explanatory modes. This has raised the problem of complementarity –​how are the explanations provided, respectively, by the extensional and intentional models to be apportioned to the actualities of consumer choice? The resulting pattern is one of combined relevance, especially at the polar extremes of the Continuum. Although BPM-​I retains much relevance to routine consumer choice and BPM-​ E to extreme consumer choice, the relationship between extensional explanation and intentional explanation is one of antithetical methodologies working in tandem rather than being monolithically allocated specific roles in isolated spheres. The sources of explanation themselves remain antithetical, however, incommensurable. This means that each is applicable, not so much to a particular pattern or style of consumer choice, but to a different genre of explication. This state of affairs may be fitting to academic discourse, where intricacies of expression are

192  Confronting Conceptual Duality the stock-​in-​trade of the intellectual observer. But such delicacy leaves a hole in the overall explanation that can be achieved. It is fragmented, compartmentalized. Consumers do not think in this way about the realities they face: their consumption space may have inconsistencies and discontinuities to it, but they attain a level of unified experience in their socio-​economic activities that is at odds with the disjointedness of theoretical standpoints. Although their activities are shaped by the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment and by their perceptual and cognitive responses, they manage somehow to avoid the mental conflict that consumer theory imposes on its practitioners. In addition to addressing the problem of complementarity, the theorist must also find an accommodation to the problem of incommensurability. Positing the intentional representation of the outcomes of behavior taking place at the extensional levels of analysis suggests a way forward, if not a comprehensive solution. Recognizing that some intentional objects allow the extensional and intentional levels to cohere by means of their providing a reciprocal representation at the personal level may be further instructive. Janus-​ variables appear to be a useful vehicle for such exploration. Janus-​variables are not of course a solution to the mind–​body problem. They cannot be the biconditional variables (which in themselves encompass both the extensional and the intentional) that McGinn (2004) argues are essential to achieving this. The reason is that they are wholly intentional. But they suggest a means of crossing the divide between extensionality and intentionality by at least indicating how to approach the problem that explaining behavior and action requires a duality of explanatory modes without falling prey to the mereological fallacy. And they may possibly indicate the border between the knowable and unknowable that shows how far we can get toward accommodating if not solving the problem. As McGinn argues, there is no solution available to humans as they are presently cognitively constituted, which does not prevent us from scoping out the areas involved and seeing what can be achieved. Even if closure is unattainable, this is a valuable exercise in its own right. Achieving Rapport: Horizontal and Vertical

Preceding chapters have explored the epistemological status of a suite of three models of consumer choice, the explanations of which are clearly incommensurable. The possibility of their integration explored in this chapter is, therefore, problematic in view of the quest to attain a unified understanding of socio-​economic choice, but the achievement of at least a degree of synthesis among them is promising for two reasons. The first is that the extensional and intentional models can be cogently related to the Continuum of Consumer Choice, the spectrum of styles of consumer choice which reflects the level of temporal discounting by which they are characterized. That is, these styles of consumer choice can be sensibly related horizontally on the basis of the analysis undertaken with respect to a conceptual dual process theory and the introduction of the neurophysiological model which underpins it. This arrangement fulfils the need to demonstrate the complementarity of the extensional

Confluence  193 and intentional models, their capacity to work together in the explication of the various styles of consumer choice as they are arrayed on the Continuum. The second is that the three levels of exposition that, respectively, characterize the extensional, intentional, and neurophysiological models can be related vertically through the concepts of the intentional object and the Janus-​variable. There is no question of the ensuing explanations breaching mereological integrity since they do not necessitate the employment of the linguistic mode assigned to one level of exposition at another under the misconception that this is an acceptable integrative device. It is in any case unnecessary in the case of interactions between the two extensional levels –​ super-​personal and sub-​personal –​ since the physicality of the entities at one of these levels that impinge on the physicality of the other requires no great feat of conceptual translation. Only when we consider how events at the super-​ or sub-​personal level can be understood as influencing events at the personal level and, therefore, how we can speak of those extensional events within the scope of the intentional does a problem arise. The accommodation of the extensional events at the intentional level in the form of intentional objects makes this adjustment possible. The recognition that events occurring at one level of exposition can also play an active role in the analysis performed at another permits the disjuncture of the models due to the incommensurability of their explanations to be tempered and suggests that the incorporation of the three levels of exposition does not present an insurmountable barrier to a comprehensive understanding of consumer choice. There is no possibility, however, of synthesizing the extensional and intentional modes of explanation which are severally necessary to account for consumer choice. Synthesis implies an overarching framework in which incommensurable conceptions are somehow merged, perhaps by the adoption of novel theoretical constructs that show how apparently immiscible perspectives may be jointly comprehended. The incompatibility of extensionality and intensionality will not permit this without damage to one or other conceptual field. That a degree of integration is feasible, however, is shown by the capacity of the personal level to incorporate information resulting from events at the sub-​personal or super-​ personal level to be comprehended at the personal. In this way, the possibility of a confluence of the perspectives is opened up. The demonstration of complementarity between these methodologies, their co-​operative capacity to render the styles of consumer activity that form the Continuum of Consumer Choice intelligible, while a positive step forward, does nothing to demonstrate that they are functioning as a unit rather than working in tandem. And that is all that could have been expected given their logical independence. The demonstration that they are not blind to one another suggests, more encouragingly, that they are not permanently estranged as though the various facets of consumer choice to which they are addressed exist in parallel universes. Achieving the possibility of such integration, the comprehension of one domain within the bounds of another while preserving the explanatory independence of both, is progress indeed. While there can be no synthesis of the opposing philosophical positions that mark out extensionality and intentionality, they may achieve a measure of confluence, of coming to flow in a

194  Confronting Conceptual Duality complementary fashion to elucidate human behavior, insofar as it is exemplified as consumer choice. Preparation of Arousal

It is now possible to be more explicit about a component of all three BPM models which is essential to how consumer activity is produced. This may appear a pedantic note on which to conclude the book, but the matter in question encapsulates so much of what has gone before that it both provides a summative statement and opens the way for further research. This is “preparation of arousal,” which features in all three iterations of the BPM, and so all three levels of exposition, but about which little has thus far been said. Preparation of arousal refers to the attainment of readiness for activity. Preparation of arousal refers to the concatenation of conative states, processes, and events –​be they physical or sensual or perceptual or cognitive, or affective –​that occasions a particular instance of activity. This idea lies at the heart of the explanation of consumer behavior or consumer action since within it is found the conception of what “motivates,” “causes,” “correlates with,” or “renders intelligible” whatever activity we are striving to “explain” or “interpret.” At the level of least elaboration, it identifies the factors (independent variables) of which this activity (dependent variable) can be shown to be a function. Consideration of preparation of arousal in the varying BPM models is instructive to understand the nature of extensionality and intentionality and therefore the argument with which this book is concerned. Perhaps surprisingly, this is most difficult to specify in the case of the extensional model. At its simplest, it might be thought coterminous with the extensional consumer-​situation (somehow the amalgamation of a learning history with a prevailing consumer behavior setting). But is it not merely their juxtaposition that matters; rather, it consists in their interaction, the priming of the stimulus field presented by the current consumer behavior setting by the consumer’s learning history. Synonyms of “primed” here would be “activated,” “actuated,” and “stimulated.” All of these may appear at first sight to be neutral terms consistent with radical behaviorism and if they denote some unspecified interaction of past and present events requiring no further analysis. Indeed, if that makes future behavior more predictable, it may, indeed, suffice as summary of independent variables of which that behavior can be shown to be a function. This is the spirit in which they are employed in the theoretically minimal composition of the consumer-​situation for the initial stage of the intentional behaviorist research strategy. And there we might leave it. But we may recognize in addition that, thinking even slightly beyond this, we must acknowledge that these are all highly theoretical terms which invite further analysis to demonstrate why and how these extensionally specifiable constructs can combine to predetermine what the consumer will do next. These are not the concerns of radical behaviorism and, if our interest is to understand the implications of its parsimonious perspective for the delineation of consumer choice –​as it is in the theoretically minimal stage –​they need not be ours.

Confluence  195 Some radical behaviorists do not confine their analytical framework to discriminative stimuli and histories of reinforcement and punishment (maximally and most unambiguously available, as in the closed setting of the animal laboratory though elsewhere increasingly tenuous, and dare I say, theoretical). Hence, they speak also of motivating operations, states or events which enhance (intensify) the response–​reinforcement relationship; and these are included in the extensional consumer behavior setting specified by BPM-​E. Motivating operations may be states of deprivation (e.g., hunger, behaviorally specified as time that has elapsed since eating). As such, this parameter is extensional, operational, and capable of entering an operant experiment, where the process involved is understood physically and the sole purpose of employing such a motivating operation is the prediction and control of behavior. This process entails the learning history’s investing neutral stimuli with the capacity to bring behavior under stimulus control. In other words, the learning history sensitizes the stimulus field to generate the kinds of response which will be effectively reinforced. The whole procedure remains extensional and physical, and the practice is legitimate on pragmatic grounds, that is, that it renders the behavior of interest more predictable and controllable. Indeed, motivating operations are most easily distinguished in their effects when they have a physiological basis which gives rise to deprivation. For this reason, some radical behaviorists restrict the definition of motivating operations to those which can be physically specified. It is when this construct is extended, for example, in the suggestion made in Chapter 4, that the motivating effect of augmentals enables us to consider them as motivating operations, that the matter becomes complicated.3 The reason is that augmentals’ verbal expression gives rise to the possibility that they are intentional expressions. Supermarkets that demarcate their premium ranges by classifying them as Finest (in the case of Tesco) or Taste the Difference (Sainsbury’s) might conceivably be employing augmentals as motivating operations in accordance with an extensional paradigm. Nevertheless, there remains the possibility that the enhanced brand names conceal the intentional exhortation, “You should believe that…” or “You can be assured that… .” If we wish to continue along this route, we must recognize that our analysis is shading from the theoretically minimal into the realm of intentional interpretation.4 On this note, the discussion of preparation of arousal elides naturally into the intentional conception of conation, feelings of desire, the impulse to act, which may be representations of states of deprivation as defined above but may as well be engendered through persuasive communication (e.g., word-​of-​mouth or advertising) or by the ruminations of one’s own imagination. These processes are all understood intentionally. The aim is to interpret aspects of consumer activity that lie beyond a behaviorist or extensional account. The impetus to this process of further elucidation of consumer activity rests on explicit acknowledgment of theoretical concerns arising from questions of the continuity or discontinuity of behavior, the need to allude to the personal level, or the delimitation of behavioral interpretation (Foxall, 2020.) The concept of Janus-​variables is essential to this since they are the focus of super-​personal and sub-​personal events. The sensitization of the stimuli that compose the consumer behavior setting is now envisaged as a

196  Confronting Conceptual Duality mental procedure, since the intentional consumer-​situation exists only in the form of contingency-​representations and is thus a wholly intentional construction. Moreover, intentional behaviorism overcomes a severe difficulty inherent in a strictly interpretivist account of human action which seeks to define choice in relation to its underlying intentionality. Interpretivism accounts for human action by relating desires and beliefs and relating them such that, If a person, x, wants outcome, d, and believes that a particular action, a, will lead to d’s attainment, then x will do a. (Rosenberg, 2016, p. 39) In this way, desires and beliefs provide reasons for action, idioms which render it intelligible, reasonable. However, as Rosenberg points out, the definitions of desire, beliefs, and action overlap; hence, employing this formulation to predict and explain an individual’s actions necessitates an independent statement of desires and beliefs. Providing this remains an enduring problem for interpretivism (Rosenberg, 2016, Chapter 3; see also Rosenberg, 1992) which does not arise in intentional behaviorism. The initial stage of this research strategy, theoretical minimalism, provides an empirically testable understanding of what consumers purchase (i.e., optimal quantities of utilitarian and informational reinforcement) prior to its embarking on the second stage, intentional interpretation. The extensional model identifies the consumer’s revealed preferences from which her intentionality can be independently deduced. Hence, intentional interpretation is not based on a logical syllogism of choice which lacks empirical foundation. Rather, it is founded upon the empirical findings of extensional behavioral science which have been shown to reveal the factors that shape and maintain consumer choice and, above all, render it predictable. The utilitarian and informational reinforcement that consumers maximize constitute their preference functions, and it is reasonable to assume that their expectations (beliefs about probabilities of outcomes) are consistent therewith. In other words, we can assume with justification that they desire that combination of products and services that provides the blend of utilitarian and informational reinforcement, acting synergistically to produce an optimal amalgam, that is their ultimate aim. And we can similarly propose on scientific grounds that they believe that the route to achieve this, given the current set of circumstances (defined by the stimulus field that defines the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment), is to perform those actions that will so optimize. Their desires and beliefs are logically a function of their learning history and the consumption outcomes promised by the consumer behavior setting plus the embellishments to these contingency-​representations that result from their personal ruminations and projections (Foxall, 2020). The personal level understanding of the preparation of arousal for consumer action is, therefore, solidly based on what extensive investigation of super-​personal-​level consumer action in natural settings has disclosed. In the case of neurophysiological preparation of arousal, the generation of reward prediction errors whether by environmental stimuli or through the

Confluence  197 conscious or unconscious raising of expectation is one source of initiation of the preparation of arousal; the activation of somatic markers (and ultimately affective markers) is another. The presentation of novel events, the salience of which it indexes, increases its phasic production. Both RPEs and somatic markers (both of which are sub-​personal) may eventuate in affective markers (personal level) which stimulate action (super-​personal). Janus-​variables are again essential concepts to show how the three levels of exposition may link in this process. DA is essential to understanding the preparation of arousal at this level. As noted, this neurotransmitter is not connected with pleasure but is implicated rather in arousal (as evidenced by wanting or even craving). These affects are, of course, personal level constructs and as such form part of an intentional interpretation. Janus-​variables are invaluable in linking the three levels of exposition involved since, while the activation of sub-​personal dopaminergic neurons is a physical matter (and, therefore, extensional), it engenders emotional feelings (which are intentional) which in turn stimulate action (which again is extensional). While DA is not itself implicated in the generation of pleasure, it affects opioid systems in its role as a neuromodulator, the interaction not only producing pleasure but also intensifying arousal. The phasic activity of dopaminergic neurons is strongly evocative of incentive salience, increased valuation of reinforcers, and preparedness for appetitive and consummatory responses. In the theoretically minimal understanding preparation of arousal is captured by the extensional consumer-​situation comprising the stimulus field that forms the consumer behavior setting and the consumer’s appropriate consumption history; this depiction recognizes the interaction of these extensionally specified elements as the consumer-​situation of which consumer behavior is a function. In the intentional interpretation, preparation of arousal comprises the contingency-​representations that encapsulate the consumer’s consumption history as it bears on her current consumer behavior setting. These are the explanatory variables that account for the consumer’s action, not because they cause it but because they are the reasons for it and with which, assuming her rationality, it should be consistent. In the case of the neurophysiological portrayal, the rate of dopaminergic action potentials instigates readiness to respond. In what sense might the intentional depiction of preparation of arousal constitute a Janus-​variable that references super-​personal and sub-​personal events? The intentional objects referencing the current consumer-​situation and the outcomes of prior consumer-​situations, principally affective contingency-​ representations tempered by cognitive contingency-​representations, are elements of the intentional consumer situation which affect the probability of action. The personal level decision-​making which occasions the selection and acquisition of socio-​economic goods thus comprehends the super-​personal events that constitute the extensional consumer-​situations that have preceded the present action and the current consumer behavior setting that accompanies it. Other events which enter into the intentional consumer-​situation are the sub-​personal emotional responses, presumed to be dopamine-​related, which generate affective contingency-​ representations at the personal level.

198  Confronting Conceptual Duality Notes 1 To avoid unnecessary elaboration, I am describing the impact of affective markers in terms of only reinforcers and goods. Elaboration would make reference to punishers and bads, too. 2 Chapter 9 stated that Links between the super-​personal and sub-​personal levels are less problematic than either of the other relationships since both levels are domains of extensional explanation. They, therefore, avoid the problem that arises when the levels for which we seek integration have different (nay, incommensurable) modes of explanation. This remains the case of course but the concept of the Janus-​variable introduces a new dimension to this generalization by way of an additional interpretation of how the super-​ personal and sub-​personal levels are conceptually related which invokes operations occurring at the personal level (cf. Dennett, 1969). Nothing about the introduction of this interpretation implies that the three levels of exposition have ceased to be methodologically independent by forsaking the principle of explanatory independence. 3 See, for instance, Poling et al. (2017). 4 Strictly speaking, augmentals can be construed as extensional only if they are reduced to their constituent physical stimuli and these are configured as part of a three-​term contingency that employs them as physical discriminative stimuli. That is, if they are reduced to the brute articulated sounds of the spoken word or the visual symbology that composes a written statement as physical components of the consumer behavior setting. The social constituents of the setting, that is, the people who deliver the spoken or written augmental, must be similarly construed if we are to remain within the confines of a strictly behaviorist account of behavior. Augmentals must then be understood as a concatenation of physical stimuli. If they are reduced to such psycho-​physical stimulation, however, there is hardly a need to conceptualize them as an “augmental” since the unadorned three-​term contingency suffices to permit the prediction and control of behavior without the notion of “rules.” To speak of them as (verbal) rules suggests that augmentals properly belong to the realm of intentional interpretation since they apparently rely on representation.

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Index

Note: Page locators in bold and italics represent tables and figures, respectively. action potential see neuron affect: and contingency 77; emotion and feeling 127–​9; and operancy 17–​19; pleasure, arousal, and dominance as core affects 75–​7; rewards and sanctions 17–​19 affective marker: and complementarity 185–​8; and conation 189–​90; and cognition 189–​90; dual perspective 187–​8; and explanation of the Continuum 185–​8; and incommensurability 188–​90, 189 Ainslie, G. 23, 26, 48, 54, 57–​8, 134, 137, 152, 155 Alexander, R. 121 Ballesta, S. 61 Barker, R. G. 56 Barrett, L. F. 75–​7, 121, 124 Bechara, A. 125, 127, 129, 144 Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM) Chapter 5 passim; affect and contingency in 77–​9; appraisal of passim, 71–​3, 159–​61; and consumer behavior setting scope 15–​16; and consumer-​situation 13–​15; extensional (BPM-​E) 65–​73, 66; extensional consumer-​situation 65–​7; generic 13–​19, 14; intentional (BPM-I) 73–​9, 73; intentional consumer-​situation 73–​4; neurophysiological (BPM-​N) 6–​8, 79–​82, 80, 159–​61; neurophysiological consumer-​situation 79–​80; operant classes of consumer behavior 67–​8; patterns of consumer-​situation 67–​8; and patterns of contingent affective response 77–​9, 78; and pleasure, arousal, and dominance 18, 75–​7, 76; and

reinforcement 16–​17; value in 68–​71, 74–​5, 80–​2 Bennett, M. R. 38, 163 Berridge, K. C. 79, 121, 123, 124, 146, 147 Bermúdez, J. L. 125 Bickel, W. K. 51, 118, 134–​6, 142, 144, 145, 152 bilateral contingency 69–​70, 69, Chapter 6 passim; asymmetric 96–​8, 100, 102, 107, 108; and picoeconomic interests 137–​8; symmetric 96–​8, 102, 105, 107, 109; and utility functions 98–​107 Brakel, L. A. W. 27, 150 Buss, D. M. 124 Cabanac, M. 129 Cardinal, R. N. 121 Catania A. C. 66, 83 Chisholm, R. M. 35 choice point see temporal discounting Cole, S. W. 127 Coricelli, G. 73, 183 Coull, J. T. 121 complementarity 6, 8, 9, 29, 86, 90, 111, Chapter 9 passim, 178, 179, 185–​8, 191–​3; dual processes 152–​61; and extreme consumer choice 155; and intermediate consumption 155–​6; and routine consumer choice 153–​5; and working hypothesis 140–​61; summing-​up 175–​7; see also working hypothesis confluence: Chapter 10 passim; and bidirectionality 178–​9; horizontal and vertical rapport 192–​4; preparation of arousal 66, 73, 80, 80, 194–​6; see Janus-​variable, affective marker

214  Index consumer action 5, 9, 65, 82, 162, 194, 196; compared with consumer behavior 43–​4, 45; and intentional interpretation 34–​7 consumer behavior passim; compared with consumer action 43–​4, 45; and theoretical minimalism 32–​4, 162 consumer choice passim; delineation of 191–​2; and economic choice 60–​2, 162; and evaluation 37; as temporal preference 45–​7 consumer behavior setting scope see Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM) consumer rationality 21–​9; A-​rationality 26–​8, 49, 138, 105; B-​rationality (biological) 24–​5, 51, 105; E-​rationality (economic) 23–​4, 61, 105; EP-​rationality (economic-​psychological) 25–​6, 49, 61, 93, 105; PP-​rationality (philosophical/​ psychological) 23 consumer-​situation see Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM) consumer styles: affective 4; cognitive 4; temporal discounting 4 consumers’ goals 21–​2, 59–​60 Continuum of Consumer Choice passim; addiction 2–​3; compulsion and addiction 54; defined 2–​4, 4; everyday brand choice 2–​3, 45, 49, 53, 84–​5, 122, 138–​42, 153–​5, 157–​8, 182–​8, 187, 191; intermediate consumption 54, 84–​5, 138–​42, 156–​8, 182–​8, 187, 191; intermittent purchasing 2–​3, 53–​4, 84–​5, 138–​42, 157–​8, 182–​8, 187, 191; over-​consumption 2–​3, 54, 84–​5, 122, 138–​42, 153–​5, 157–​8, 182–​8, 187, 191; sub-​continua of consumer choice 4, 39–​40, 142–​50, 152–​3, 161, 191; see also temporal discounting; temporal preference Crane, T. 36 Cummins, D. D. 124 Damasio, A. R. 125–​9, 145, 172, 173 Dani, J. A. 119 Daw, N. D. 127 Dawkins, R. 22 Dennett, D. C. 2, 22, 35, 36, 95, 163, 164 De Young, C. G. 144 DiChiara, G. 126 Dickinson, A. 170 Dretske, F. 44 dual processes modelling: BPM-​based portrayal 138–​42, 142; competing

neuro-​behavioral decision systems (CNDS model) 134–​6; conceptual portrayal 138–​40, Chapter 8 passim; picoeconomics 137–​8, 137; and styles of consumer activity 84–​5, 140–​3; summing-​up 150–​1; tri-​process model 136–​7; Types/​Systems 1 and 2 133–​4; see also neural valuation; working hypothesis economic choice: and consumer choice 60–​2; see also Padoa-Schioppa, C. Ehrenberg, A. S. C. 45, 53 Eisenberger, N. I. 127 Ellis, G. F. R. 75, 76, 124 Elster, J. 137 emotion and feeling 127–​9 Everett, B. J. 118, 126 explanation: extensional 32–​3; intentional 33–​6; intensional sentences 34–​5 extensional and intentional paradigms passim; compared 82–​7 extensional BPM (BPM-​E) see Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM) extreme consumer choice see Continuum of Consumer Choice Fagerstrøm, A. 66 Foxall, G. R. passim Frost, R. 143 Geertz, C. 105 Glimcher, P. W. 20, 81 Goldberg, E. 127 Hacker, P. M. S. 38, 163 Hayes, S. C. 89 Heatherton, T. F. 145 Hebb, D. O. 117 Hélie, S. 148–​50 Herrnstein, R. J. 56 Higley, J. D. 121 Ho, C.-​Y. 146 Hofmeyr, A. 58 Hornsby, J. 44 Horstmann, A. 80 Houston, A. I. 23 Hurley, S. 23 hyperbolic discounting 23–​4, 48–​50, 54–​9, Chapter 4 passim; and somatic marker hypothesis (SMH) 129–​30 incommensurability 6, 9, 21, 29, 31, 139, 179, 188–​90, 192, 193, Chapter 9

Index  215 passim: inter-​level relationships 161–​9, 164, 165, 171, 174; root of 37–​8; summing-​up 175–​7 informational reinforcement; in BPM-​E 65–​7, Chapter 5 passim; in BPM-​I 73–​5, 95–​6, Chapter 5 passim; in BPM-​N 79–​80, Chapter 5 passim; defined 16–​17, 91, Chapter 6 passim; extensional 91–​2; interactive 97, 102, 104; patterns of 96–​8, 107–​11; reciprocal 96–​7, 102–​7, 103, 106; reciprocal informational reinforcement 96–​7, 100–​2, 103, 106; simpliciter 96, 100, 101; social reinforcement 92–​3, 102–​7; summing up of 98, 107–​11; symbolic reinforcement 93–​5, 108, 109; and utility functions 98–​107 intensionality 33–​4; intensional sentences 34–​5 intentional BPM (BPM-​I) see Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM) Intentional Behaviorist Research Strategy 4–​6, 59–​60; advanced 95; basic 93; evaluation stage, accounting for consumer choice 37–​8; intentional interpretation stage, accounting for consumer action 34–​7; theoretically minimalist stage, accounting for consumer behavior 32–​4 intentionality: coming to terms with Chapter 6 passim; and intentional interpretation 34–​7; and intentional objects 25–​36; and intentional systems 36–​7; orders of 36–​7; problem of 31–​2 inter-​level relationships 161–​77; “A” route (personal and super-​personal) 166–​7; “B” route (sub-​personal and super-​ personal) 167–​8; “C” route (personal and sub-​personal) 168; triadic relationship 168–​9; “D” relationship (responsive behavior and considered action) 169; significance of reward prediction errors (RPEs) 170–​2; significance of somatic markers 172–​4 intermediate consumer choice see Continuum of Consumer Choice intermittent consumer choice see Continuum of Consumer Choice James, V. K. 25, 53 Janus-​variable: affective markers as 182–​4, 181; subjective valuation as 180–​2 Jerram, M. 124, 125 Johnson, M. W. 118

Kacelnik, A. 21, 23 Kahnt, T. 19 Kelley, W. M. 145 knowledge by acquaintance 38–​40 knowledge by description 38–​40 Knutson, B. 121 Kobayashi, S. 125 Kober, H. 125 Kringelbach, M. L. 146 Landsman, D. 118 Laraway, S. 66 Laviolette, S. 148 LeDoux, J. 122 Legrenzi, P. 120 Lewis, P. A. 121 liking and wanting 122–​4, 143, 145–​7 Lindquist, K. A. 120, 121 London, E. D. 144 McClure, S. M. 143 McGinn, C. 39, 40, 164, 192 McNaughton, 143 Marsch, L. A. 51 Mehrabian, A. 75–​7 mereological fallacy 37–​8, 163–​4, 178–​9, 192, 193 Michael, J. 66 Miller, E. K. 51, 128 Naqvi, N. 127 Nestler, E. J. 118 neural valuation: affect 145–​7; and central nervous system (CNS) 112–​14; cognition and decision-​ making 148–​50; cognitive valuation 148–​9; discounting 143–​5; foundations Chapter 7 passim; habituation 116–​17; long-​term potentiation (LTP) 117, 184; memory processes 149; sensitization 116–​17; sub-​continua of consumer choice 142–​7, 143; tolerance 116–​17 (see also neuron); tripartite brain 113–​14, 114 neuron: action potentials 8, 14, 47, 79–​81, 114–​16, 119–​20, 123, 139, 149, 160, 163, 162, 164, 168, 169, 180, 181, 197; functions 114–​17; neurotransmission 115–​16, 116; structure 114–​17, 115; synaptic communication 115–​19, 116 neurophysiological BPM (BPM-​N) see Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM) neurophysiology and reinforcement 117–​20; mesolimbocortical system

216  Index 117–​19, 118; reward prediction error (RPE) 119–​20, 120; significance of 170–​2, 171 neurophysiology and reward 120–​5; arousal 121–​2; dominance 124–​5; linking pleasure and arousal 122–​4; pleasure 120–​1 neurotransmission see neuron Nudds, M. 23 Nummenmaa, L. 121 Oliveira-​Castro, J. M. 22, 25, 155 operancy: defined 17–​19, 19, 90–​1; further dimensions 90–​1, Chapter 6 passim; and valuation 19–​21, 29; and value 19–​21, 29 Padoa-​Schioppa, C. 20, 51–​2, 59–​61, 85 Panksepp, J. 75–​6, 122, 124 Paulet, 121 Peciña, S. 146 Phelps, E. A. 129 Platt, M. L. 80 pleasure, arousal, and dominance (PAD): and contingency 77–​9; as core affects 75–​77; and operancy 17–​19; neurophysiological bases of 189, 189 Politser, P. 21, 75 Quine, W. V. O. 35 Rachlin, H. 137 Rizzolatti, G. 61 Rauch, S. L. 121 Reinforcement: informational 16–​19; and reward 125–​6; somatic markers (including somatic marker hypothesis, SMH) 125–​30; utilitarian 16–​19 reward and sanction 17–​19; symbolic 98–​9 Robbins, T. W. 118, 126 Robinson, T. E. 79, 121, 123, 124, 145, 147 Rolls, E. T. 21, 22, 75, 121, 145, 170, 172 Romaniuk, J. 45, 53 Rosenberg, A. 196 Ross, D. R. 25, 126, 137, 144, 148, 169 routine consumer choice see Continuum of Consumer Choice Rubinstein, A. 23 Russell, B. 38 Russell, J. A. 75–​7 Rusticini, A. 73, 183 Sander, D. 121 Schoggen, P. 56

Schultz, W. 119, 120, 170 Searle, J. R. 32, 34–​6, 70 Serra, D. 20, 61, 150 Sharp, B. 45, 53 Sinigaglia, C. 62 Skinner, B. F. 17, 66, 71, 83, 159 Smith, T. 72 Sokol-Hessner, P. 129 Solomon, R. C. 76 Somatic Marker Hypothesis (SMH) 125–​30; and hyperbolic discounting 129–​30; linking emotions and feelings 127–​9; linking reinforcement and reward 125–​6; origins 127; significance of 172–​4, 174 Stanovich, K. E. 134, 136, 150, 152 Strawson, G. 36 Subramaniyan, M. 119 Sulloway, F. J. 77 synapse see neuron Tallis, R. 36 Tappolet, C. 74 temporal horizon 3–​4 temporal discounting Chapter 4 passim; and choice point 49–​50, 54–​9; vs. cognitive appraisal 50–​2; determination of 140–​2, 142; and perception 54–​9; and representation 54–​5; valuation in 47–​52 temporal discounting and Continuum of Consumer Choice 52–​4; everyday selection 53; intermediate consumption 54; intermittent purchasing 53–​4; compulsion and addiction 54 temporal preference Chapter 4 passim; and behavioral discontinuity 56–​9 Toates, F. 117 Tobler, P. N. 19, 126, 127 Toronchuk, J. A. 75, 76, 124 Umità, C. 120 Uttal, W. R. 120 valuation: bundling 56–​9; foundations of Chapter 7 passim; neural 80–​2; at personal level 74–​5, 162–​4, 162, 180; roles of contingency-​shaping and rule-​ governed behavior vs. perceiving and believing 82–​6; at sub-​personal level 80–​2, 162–​4, 162, 180–​1; at super-​ personal level 47–​52, 68–​71, 162–​4, 162, 180; by temporal horizon Chapter 4 passim, 48 Volkow, N. 147

Index  217 Wager, T. D. 121 Wagner, D. D. 145 Wallis, J. D. 51, 128 wanting and liking see liking and wanting Watts, A. G. 122, 123 Winkielman, P. 121, 124 Winterhalter, B. 51 working hypothesis 140, 142, 150–​1; contribution of BPM-​N 159–​61; extreme consumer choice 155; general remarks

152–​3; intermediate consumer choice 155–​6; review of 152–​61; routine consumer choice 153–​5; significance for complementarity 158–​9; summary of key conclusions 157–​8 Yi, R. 134, 135, 142, 144, 145 Zettle, R. D. 83 Zuckerman, M. 14