Licensing and fluency of sacrosanct experience recall

David Raska

doi:10.7273/000005837

This dissertation advances the notion that when consumers recall their past sacrosanct experiences (i.e., experiences portraying the self as moral, lovable, and capable), they affirm themselves of their positive self-concept and subsequently feel licensed to self-indulge. Building on research in accessibility experiences and licensing effects in consumer decision making, I demonstrate that recall of past sacrosanct experiences can render two distinctly different processes: retrieval fluency versus substance of retrieved content. While each requires retrieval of a different amount of past experiences as evidence for a positive self-concept, each necessarily leads to licensing effects. According to both theoretical and empirical work presented in this dissertation, it seems that the process that comes into play is likely to depend on the accessibility of sacrosanct experiences. This accessibility is determined by the type of sacrosanct experience and its compatibility with one's self-construal, but only for those whose self-concept is construed predominantly around independence. When people with independent self-construal recalled self-centered sacrosanct experiences (more compatible with independent self-construal), they evaluated their positive self-concept more favorably and were more likely to license after having recalled a large number of sacrosanct behaviors in which they had previously engaged. In this view, licensing increased as a function of increasing substance of recalled experiences (content-based licensing effect). When people recalled other-centered sacrosanct experiences (less compatible with independent self-construal), a reverse effect emerged. Indeed, people evaluated their positive self-concept more favorably and were more likely to license after having recalled just a small number of such experiences. Licensing increased as a function of increasing fluency with which experiences were retrieved from memory (fluency-based licensing effect). No such effects, however, were found for interdependent self-construals, presumably due to activation of their self-regulation goals that help them avoid making decisions associated with negative self-attributions such as self-indulgent consumption. Work described herein contributes particularly to marketing literature by advancing a novel approach to understanding how consumers' sacrosanct beliefs about the self affect self-indulgent consumption.

Licensing and fluency of sacrosanct experience recall

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