When should we not expect attraction effect? The moderating influence of analytic versus holistic thinking

Abstract

The attraction effect has been investigated primarily in Western cultures. In this research, we demonstrate that the attraction effect is mitigated in Eastern cultures. Cognitive processing styles of these cultures can explain the findings. Moreover, our theorizing also explains the empirical anomalies in the attraction effect literature. Based on our theory, we predict specific conditions under which the attraction effect will be enhanced or mitigated. In four studies, we observe: (a) no attraction effect in Eastern cultures or people primed for holistic processing, (b) for the attraction effect to occur in the Western cultures, the perceived target–decoy similarity should be significantly greater than other pair similarities, and (c) cuing perceptual similarity enhances the attraction effect for the analytic processors.

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