Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
2010, Vol. 98, No. 5, 721–733
© 2010 American Psychological Association
0022-3514/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0019260
False Fame Prevented: Avoiding Fluency Effects Without Judgmental Correction
Sascha Topolinski and Fritz Strack
University of Wuerzburg
Three studies show a way to prevent fluency effects independently of judgmental correction strategies by
identifying and procedurally blocking the sources of fluency variations, which are assumed to be
embodied in nature. For verbal stimuli, covert pronunciations are assumed to be the crucial source of
fluency gains. As a consequence, blocking such pronunciation simulations through a secondary oral
motor task decreased the false-fame effect for repeatedly presented names of actors (Experiment 1) as
well as prevented increases in trust due to repetition for brand names and names of shares in the stock
market (Experiment 2). Extending this evidence beyond repeated exposure, we demonstrated that
blocking oral motor simulations also prevented fluency effects of word pronunciation on judgments of
hazardousness (Experiment 3). Concerning the realm of judgment correction, this procedural blocking of
(biasing) associative processes is a decontamination method not considered before in the literature,
because it is independent of exposure control, mood, motivation, and post hoc correction strategies. The
present results also have implications for applied issues, such as advertising and investment decisions.
Keywords: fluency, judgment, embodiment, judgment correction, decontamination
did not attribute this feeling of familiarity to the fame of the names
but rather to the prior exposure (cf. Schwarz & Clore, 1983;
Strack, 1992; Strack & Hannover, 1996; Strack, Martin, &
Schwarz, 1988). Moreover, they could well remember the information that the names they had just received belonged to people
who were not famous and thus correctly judged these old names as
being less famous than new names (for which no particular clue to
fame was provided). In contrast, the participants for whom the test
phase followed after 24 hr could not recollect anymore which
names had actually been on the study list. Having forgotten the
actual source of fluency, they did not discount fluency from their
fame judgments but rather used it as a cue to fame (Jacoby &
Kelley, 1987; Jacoby, Kelley, et al., 1989; Jacoby & Whitehouse,
1989).
This study itself has become famous, being literally the textbook
example of how fluency may infiltrate judgments as an experience
and how it can be corrected for (e.g., Clore, 1992). The pervasive
impact of fluency was shown for a wide range of judgments that
exploit the ease of processing a target, whether the fluency
stemmed from repeated exposure (as just described) or from other
sources such as subliminally primed targets (e.g., Jacoby & Whitehouse, 1989). Because fluency can be mapped onto many dimensions, the affected judgments range from judgments concerning
physical properties of the target (e.g., Jacoby, Allan, Collins, &
Larwill, 1988; Whittlesea et al., 1990) to the veridicality of a
statement (the truth effect, Bacon, 1979; Hasher, Goldstein, &
Toppino, 1977; see also Begg, Anas, & Farinacci, 1992; Reber &
Schwarz, 1999; Unkelbach, 2007) to preference (Phaf & Rotteveel,
2005; Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004) and intuition (Topolinski & Strack, 2009a, 2009b, 2009d).
In some cases, fluency is a valid cue to the judgmental criterion,
such as in the case of familiarity (e.g., Jacoby & Kelley, 1987;
Jacoby & Whitehouse, 1989; Johnston, Dark, & Jacoby, 1985;
Whittlesea, 1993; Whittlesea et al., 1990; Whittlesea & Williams,
2000; for reviews concerning the involved memory systems, see
In their classical study, Jacoby, Kelley, Brown, and Jasechko
(1989) presented names to participants who were told that the
names belonged to people who were not famous. Then, in a
subsequent test phase, participants received these old names together with new names and were asked to judge the fame of these
persons. For participants for whom this test phase followed after a
delay of 24 hr, old names were more likely to be judged famous
than were new names. In contrast, for participants for whom the
test phase followed immediately after the study phase, old names
were less likely to be called famous than were new names.
Why did this pattern occur? Reading the old names in the study
phase rendered their processing more efficient later in the test
phase (cf. Jacoby & Dallas, 1981; Jacoby & Whitehouse, 1989;
Jacoby, Woloshyn, & Kelley, 1989; Whittlesea, Jacoby, & Girard,
1990). This increased processing fluency triggered a brief positive
affect (cf. Harmon-Jones & Allen, 2001; Reber, Winkielman, &
Schwarz, 1998; Topolinski, Likowski, Weyers, & Strack, 2009;
Topolinski & Strack, 2009a, 2009b, 2009d; Winkielman &
Cacioppo, 2001; for an integrative review, see Reber, Schwarz, &
Winkielman, 2004) that was experienced as a feeling of ease that
can readily be attributed to familiarity (cf. Bornstein &
D’Agostino, 1992; Garcia-Marques, Mackie, Claypool, & GarciaMarques, 2004; Whittlesea, 1993). The participants for whom the
test phase followed immediately after the study phase, however,
Sascha Topolinski and Fritz Strack, Department of Psychology II,
University of Wuerzburg, Wuerzburg, Germany.
This research was partially funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Research Training Group RTG 1253/1). We thank Friederike Finger, Rebecca Spatz, and Carolin Kempf for their support in running the
experiments.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Sascha
Topolinski, Department of Psychology II, Social Psychology, University of
Wuerzburg, Roentgenring 10, 97070 Wuerzburg, Germany. E-mail:
sascha.topolinski@psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de
721
TOPOLINSKI AND STRACK
722
Rajaram, 1996; Yonelinas, 2002), because prior exposure and
fluency are ecologically correlated (e.g., Jacoby & Dallas, 1981).
In other cases, however, fluency is not a valid cue and may have
powerful biasing effects, such as in persuasion (e.g., Allport &
Lepkin, 1945; Cacioppo & Petty, 1979; Skurnik, Yoon, Park, &
Schwarz, 2005; Weaver, Garcia, Schwarz, & Miller, 2007) or
advertising (Fang, Singh, & Ahluwalia, 2007; Hawkins & Hoch,
1992). Yet in other cases fluency may even cause irrational behavior with substantial economic consequences; for instance, if the
fluency of names of authentic shares in the stock markets influences the prices of these shares (Alter & Oppenheimer, 2006), if
the fluency of product names determines consumers’ choice
(Novemsky, Dhar, Schwarz, & Simonson, 2007), or if nutrition
additives with fluent names are rated as less toxic than additives
with less fluent names (Song & Schwarz, 2009).
Besides excessive relearning of the direction between fluency
and judgmental criterion (Unkelbach, 2007), the only means to
prevent the impact of fluency that have been discussed in the
literature are mechanisms of judgmental correction (decontamination, Wilson & Brekke, 1994; debiasing, Larrick, 2004; see also
the General Discussion). For instance, discrediting the informational value of fluency has been found to result in spontaneous
discounting (e.g., Oppenheimer, 2005; Schwarz et al., 1991; for
reviews, see Clore, 1992; Kelley & Rhodes, 2002; Schwarz, 2004).
However, judgmental correction for fluency is possible only if
individuals are aware of it (Hertwig, Herzog, Schooler, & Reimer,
2008; Strack & Hannover, 1996; Topolinski & Strack, 2009b,
2009d; see also Reber, Wurtz, & Zimmermann, 2004), if an
alternative source of fluency is provided to attribute it to (e.g.,
Hasher et al., 1997; Jacoby, Kelley, et al., 1989; Schwarz & Clore,
1983), and if individuals know in which direction they should
correct their judgment (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Strack, 1992;
Strack & Hannover, 1996). In most cases, these conditions are not
met, which prompted Oppenheimer (2008) to write about the
secret life of fluency.
Thus, the only way to escape the pervasive influences was
considered to be judgmental correction, a strategy that takes place
at a later stage of information processing. However, by that time
fluency has already contaminated the judgment. The earlier stages
during which fluency is assumed to infiltrate the judgment were
not considered a feasible stage of correction. Once fluency was
altered, the judgment was seen to be hopelessly tainted. However,
if one succeeded in identifying the exact processes that exhibit
fluency variations, one could attenuate fluency variations and thus
reduce its impact on the judgment from the outset. This could be
achieved by identifying the actual source of the fluency gains,
which could then be manipulated or blocked to prevent its impact
on judgments in a way that makes subsequent correction processes
unnecessary. With this goal in mind, we first outline our theoretical claims and then present three experiments in which fluency
was prevented from influencing judgments without the need for
judgmental correction processes.
Embodied Precursors of Fluency
Most recently, new approaches have adopted an embodied account of fluency by exploring its procedural undercurrents as being
sensorimotor processes (Beilock & Holt, 2007; Topolinski &
Strack, 2009c), which are outlined in the following. Regarding the
notion of embodiment, we represent stimuli by covertly simulating
those sensorimotor processes that are specifically associated with
them (e.g., Barsalou, 1999; Glenberg & Robertson, 2000; Grush,
2004; Hommel, Müsseler, Aschersleben, & Prinz, 2001;
Niedenthal, 2007; Stürmer, Aschersleben, & Prinz, 2000; Wilson,
2002). For instance, passive viewing of graspable objects automatically activates those brain regions that are responsible for actually
grasping them (e.g., Craighero, Fadiga, Umiltà, & Rizzolatti, 1996;
Tucker & Ellis, 1998), or hearing a sound played by a piano
automatically triggers motor activity in the fingers of piano players
(e.g., Bangert & Altenmüller, 2003; Drost, Rieger, Brass, Gunter,
& Prinz, 2005; Haueisen & Knösche, 2001). Likewise, in highly
skilled typists, the mere perception of letters triggers the motor
programs to type them (Beilock & Holt, 2007; Van den Bergh,
Vrana, & Eelen, 1990).
We argue that it is the efficiency of these covert stimulusspecific sensorimotor simulations that actually drives fluency effects. When perceiving a certain stimulus, these automatically
running covert sensorimotor simulations run more or less fluently
(Beilock & Holt, 2007; Topolinski & Strack, 2009c; Van den
Bergh et al., 1990). An unexpectedly high degree of fluency
(Hansen, Dechêne, & Wänke, 2008; Whittlesea & Williams, 2000,
2001a, 2001b) automatically triggers a subtle positive affect
(Harmon-Jones & Allen, 2001; Reber et al., 1998; Topolinski et
al., 2009; Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001) that is experienced as a
cognitive feeling (e.g., Clore et al., 2001; Schwarz & Clore, 2007)
and may bias the eventual judgment (Schwarz, 2002, 2004).
This is illustrated in the empirical findings concerning letter
perception in highly skilled typists (Van den Bergh et al., 1990).
There, highly skilled typists were asked to spontaneously indicate
their liking of letter dyads in a task that did not entail typing any
letters. It was found that letter combinations that—when actually
being typed— do not produce motor interference between fingers
are preferred over letter dyads that do. Apparently, participants had
covertly simulated typing the letters, which led to increased simulation fluency for noninterfering compared with interfering letter
combinations and elicited a positive affect that drove those preference judgments.
That this is actually the case was most recently shown by
Beilock and Holt (2007), who engaged typists in a concurrent
manual motor task during the same preference-rating task. Obviously, engaging the manual motor system in a concurrent task
prevents simulations of typing the letters. As a consequence, the
preference bias toward noninterfering letter combinations was
attenuated (Beilock & Holt, 2007). Thus, blocking underlying
covert sensorimotor simulations attenuated the immediate hedonic
consequences of fluency.
A similar approach was most recently applied to implicit memory, namely the mere exposure phenomenon (Zajonc, 1968; for a
review, see Bornstein, 1989), which is the increased preference
toward repeatedly encountered stimuli. Topolinski and Strack
(2009c) exploited the notion of an embodied memory by Glenberg
(1997) that the past of an object to individuals is the traces of
sensorimotor responses they collected with it (see also Cohen,
1989; Engelkamp & Zimmer, 1980; Saltz & Donnenwerth-Nolan,
1981; cf. the notion of object affordances, Gibson, 1979) and also
the hedonic consequences of these responses (MacDorman, 1997).
More specifically, Topolinski and Strack (2009c) argued that when
stimuli are repeatedly encountered, the sensorimotor responses
PREVENTING FLUENCY EFFECTS
specifically associated with them are covertly simulated and run
more efficiently when executed repeatedly. Applied to the case of
verbal stimuli such as words, the predominant response of pronouncing them (Stroop, 1935) is automatically covertly simulated
when perceiving them. Because it is known that repeated exposure
to words increases the fluency of overtly pronouncing them (Forster & Davis, 1984; Savage, Bradley, & Forster, 1990; Scarborough, Cortese, & Scarborough, 1977), Topolinski and Strack
(2009c) argued that also the sensorimotor simulations of pronouncing words run more fluently with repetition, which may
result in immediate hedonic consequences that drive mere exposure effects.
Testing this hypothesis, Topolinski and Strack (2009c) blocked
stimulus-specific motor simulations during a mere exposure paradigm. More specifically, they prevented the oral motor system
from simulating by letting participants chew gum (see Experiment
1) or whisper a task-irrelevant word (see Experiment 2) during
repeated exposure to neutral visual characters (visual stimuli not
mediated by the oral motor system) and to nonsense words (verbal
stimuli mediated by the oral motor system). As a consequence,
they found mere exposure effects for the visual stimuli but not for
the words. In contrast, engaging the manual motor system in a
concurrent task (that is not related to either verbal or visual
stimuli) had no such specific effects but rather yielded mere
exposure effects for both visual characters and words. These
findings extend the role of sensorimotor simulations to implicit
memory (Schacter, 1987). The question, however, remains
whether these embodied simulations are also responsible for the
biasing effects of fluency on social-cognitive judgments.
Aim of the Present Work
Taken together, the findings by Beilock and Holt (2007) and
Topolinski and Strack (2009c) provide initial evidence concerning the underlying embodied processes that drive the hedonic
consequences of fluency. In the present approach, we investigate whether sensorimotor simulations are the force driving the
biasing effects of fluency on social-cognitive judgments. Identifying the mechanisms underlying fluency (Oppenheimer,
2008), we trace back how embodied mechanisms generate the
experiential cues (Strack, 1992) that may bias judgments and
demonstrate how they can be prevented without the need for
post hoc judgmental correction processes to debias (Larrick,
2004; Schwarz, 2002, 2004) or decontaminate (Wilson &
Brekke, 1994) judgments.
Because the present approach cannot cover all the fluency
effects found in the literature (as reviewed earlier; see also
Oppenheimer, 2008, for a succinct review), we limited the
present research to the most classical stimulus type found in
fluency research, which are simple verbal stimuli, such as
names. To initially provide evidence that the biasing effects of
fluency can be neutralized once its underlying mechanisms are
identified, we chose the repeated exposure of names in judgments of fame (see Experiment 1) and trustworthiness (see
Experiment 2) and chose word pronunciation in judgments of
hazardousness (see Experiment 3).
723
Experiment 1
How Not to Become Famous Overnight
As outlined earlier, the classical becoming-famous-overnight
effect (Jacoby, Kelley, et al., 1989) depends on the increased
fluency of names that were preexposed in a study phase compared
with names that were not presented before (Bornstein &
D’Agostino, 1992). The present experiment addresses the question
of whether these fluency gains stem from covert sensorimotor
simulations specifically related to names. Because names as verbal
stimuli are intimately mediated by the oral motor system (e.g.,
Inoue, Ono, Honda, & Kurabayashi, 2007), we argue that the
becoming-famous-overnight effect substantially depends on oral
motor simulations. To test this, we conceptually replicated the
classical setup by Jacoby, Kelley, et al. (1989) and implemented
two concurrent motor tasks, of which one should prevent oral and
the other should prevent manual motor simulations during studying the words. We predicted that the classical effect by Jacoby,
Kelley, et al., namely the misattribution of increased fluency to
fame, would vanish under the oral motor task but would still be
detected under a manual motor task. Importantly, this should occur
not because participants could more successfully engage in a
correction process but because fluency gains could not be acquired
in the first place.
Method
Participants. Fifty (34 female) undergraduate psychology
students participated for course credit.
Materials and procedure. Forty names of actually existing
Bollywood actors (e.g., Aishwarya Rai), whose names ranged
from 10 to 22 letters in length, were used. Each item consisted of
a first name and a last name. A pilot study revealed that on
average, less than 5% of these names were known to German raters
(N ⫽ 10). After arrival in the lab, participants were told that they
would participate in a study assessing the cultural impact of the
Asian culture and that they were to judge how famous authentic
Asian actors are in Germany. Additionally, they were told that
simple movements had to be executed concurrently to this task to
simulate everyday life conditions.
First, in a study phase, participants received 20 randomly chosen
names and were asked to merely read them. Each name was
presented for 2,000 ms followed by an intertrial interval of 1,000
ms. This was followed by a pause of 60 s during which participants
should simply relax. Then, a test phase followed in which the 20
old names from the study phase reappeared together with 20 new
names in a random order. Participants were asked to indicate how
famous these names were to them using a Likert scale ranging
from 0 (Not famous at all) to 10 (Very famous). They were also
told that the name could repeatedly appear. To engage participants
in concurrent tasks either allowing a covert motor simulation of
pronouncing the items or not, we had participants engage in either
an oral or a manual motor task, respectively. To ensure that our
manipulation did not interfere with the proper encoding of the
preexposed stimuli in the first place, we implemented these concurrent motor tasks only during the test phase at the time of the
TOPOLINSKI AND STRACK
724
fame rating (cf. Topolinski, in press; Experiment 2).1 In the
manual-motor-task group (n ⫽ 25), participants were asked to
move a soft foam ball slightly in the left hand while using the
computer mouse with the right hand to provide the fame ratings
(cf. Topolinski & Strack, 2009c). In the oral-motor-task group
(n ⫽ 25), however, participants were asked to eat popcorn during
the test phase (cf. Topolinski & Strack, 2009c; for other ways to
engage or block the oral motor system, see Campbell, Rosen,
Solis-Macias, & White, 1991; Cinan & Tanör, 2002; Emerson &
Miyake, 2003; Miyake, Emerson, Padilla, & Ahn, 2004; Saeki &
Saito, 2004). The procedure took 5–10 min.
Results
Over the fame ratings in the test phase, a 2 (exposure: old items,
new items) ⫻ 2 (concurrent motor task: manual, oral) analysis of
variance (ANOVA) was run with motor task as a between-subjects
factor. A main effect of exposure, F(1, 48) ⫽ 5.54, p ⬍ .023, ␩2p ⫽
.10, surfaced, as well as an interaction between exposure and motor
task, F(1, 48) ⫽ 4.12, p ⬍ .05, ␩2p ⫽ .08. The conditional means are
displayed in Table 1. Planned comparisons showed that in the
manual control group, old names were rated to be more famous
than new names, t(24) ⫽ 2.70, p ⬍ .012, d ⫽ 0.43. However, in the
oral group, no difference between old items and new items was
found (t ⬍ 0.3).
To additionally investigate the possible role of time of judgment
formation, we first calculated the correlations between the value of
a given fame judgment and the response latencies for this judgment on a trial level, separately for each condition in the 2 ⫻ 2
design. None of the obtained correlation coefficients exceeded an
absolute value of r ⫽ .05 and was close to significance. Mean
response latencies for the fame judgments in the manual group
were 2,844 ms (SD ⫽ 1,411) for new items and 2,872 ms (SD ⫽
1,522) for old items. Moreover, none of the differences in the
response latencies for the fame judgments between new and old
items within the oral and the manual group—and for old and new
items between the oral and manual group—was statistically reliable (all ts ⬍ 1). In sum, if (a) response latency and judgment
value were unrelated and (b) the experimental conditions did not
differ in response latency, then it is implausible that time of
judgment formation may have caused the present pattern.
Discussion
Two decades after publication of the original experiment, the
present experiment reveals that motor simulations are a substantial
causal force underlying the false-fame effect (Jacoby, Kelley, et
Table 1
Average Fame Ratings of Actors in Experiment 1 as a Function
of Concurrent Motor Task
Exposure
Task
Old items
New items
Manual (kneading a ball)
Oral (eating popcorn)
5.36 (0.27)
5.16 (0.32)
4.82 (0.22)
5.12 (0.36)
Note.
Standard errors are in parentheses.
al., 1989; see also Cermak, Verfaellie, Butler, & Jacoby, 1993;
Jacoby & Whitehouse, 1989; Jacoby, Woloshyn, & Kelley, 1989).
We replicated the finding that repeated exposure of names influences the fluency-based fame judgments of these names (Jacoby,
Kelley, et al., 1989) under a concurrent task that involves a motor
system that is not associated with these verbal stimuli. However,
this effect was destroyed by implementing during the test phase a
concurrent motor task that selectively engaged the motor system
that is most closely related to words, namely the mouth. Note that
pronouncing the words was actually not necessary to accomplish
the task, and participants were not instructed to do so. We suggest
that, instead, covert simulations of pronouncing the appearing
names were automatically triggered (Stroop, 1935; cf. Beilock &
Holt, 2007; Van den Bergh et al., 1990) but were blocked by the
concurrent oral motor task in the test phase. Thus, covert pronunciation of the words may have been trained during the study phase
but could not exhibit fluency gains for old compared with new
items during the test phase, which diminished the effect of repeated exposure.
How substantially the fluency effect depends on covert oral
simulation is reflected in the fact that obviously participants in the
oral group did not switch over to visual fluency as a cue for their
judgments. Although their access to the oral motor representation
of the target may have been impaired, their processing of the visual
appearance of the names was not; yet visual fluency was not used
(cf. Topolinski & Strack, 2009c, Experiment 1), which is in
contrast to earlier considerations (Jacoby & Hollingshead, 1990;
Whittlesea et al., 1990).
In contrast to the original study (Jacoby, Kelley, et al., 1989),
this study did not even require participants to wait for 24 hr to
obtain a fluency impact on fame judgments, as was necessary in
the classical study. This is easily explained by the fact that we did
not tell participants that the names in the study list were not
famous (because we were not interested in judgmental correction
processes; cf. Begg et al., 1992; Jacoby, Kelley, et al., 1989). Thus,
participants did not engage in a correction process for old items in
which they discounted the experienced fluency but rather used the
emerging feeling of fluency for their fame judgments, as it was
shown before (e.g., Cermak et al., 1993).
The pattern of the present interaction between exposure and
motor blockade seems to be surprising at first glance (see Table 1)
and should be further interpreted at this point, because we also
found it in the remaining studies. If asked to speculate about rating
levels in the false-fame paradigm under a prevention of fluency
gains, one might predict that all targets, both old and new, receive
ratings as low as the new targets in a control condition without
fluency prevention, because none of the targets exhibits fluency
gains, and thus all of them should be experienced as nonfamous. In
contrast, we found that the judgments under fluency prevention
varied around an average mean similar to that of the prevention
group without showing a reliable difference between old and new
items. Fluency prevention did not decrease the overall ratings but
made them simply insensitive to the exposure manipulation.
This finding is easily explained by the fact that participants have
no objective criterion for fluency and therefore experience fluency
variations not as deviations from a precomputed norm but as
1
We thank Norbert Schwarz for pointing us to this issue.
PREVENTING FLUENCY EFFECTS
fluency differences within the particular items presented (Whittlesea & Leboe, 2003; Whittlesea & Williams, 2000, 2001a,
2001b; see also Kahneman & Miller, 1986), which was impressively demonstrated in recent research (Dechêne, Stahl, Hansen, &
Wähnke, 2009; Hansen & Wänke, 2008; Hansen et al., 2008).
Thus, in the control condition new items receive low fame ratings
because they are contrasted with old items with regard to experienced fluency, and old items receive high fame ratings because
they are contrasted with new items. In the fluency-prevention
condition, however, the current target cannot be contrasted with
another particularly high or low fluent item, which results in the
observed intermediate rating level for all targets.
One might object that in the present paradigm the participants in
the oral motor group were not affected by fluency because they
more likely recollected having seen the name before in the study
phase and attributed fluency to this prior episode (cf. remembering
the priming event, Strack, Schwarz, Bless, Kübler, & Wänke,
1993). This, however, is unlikely because the delay between study
and test phase was the same for both the manual and the oral motor
group, thus rendering the likelihood of consciously recollecting the
study event equal for both groups. Moreover, we know from the
literature that engaging in concurrent oral tasks even impairs
memory for words (Gupta & MacWhinney, 1995; for a review, see
Wilson, 2001).
Another related alternative interpretation of the present finding
might be that the present body manipulations may have caused
processes of cognitive tuning (Bless, 2001), which is the notion
that individuals engage in more effortful and elaborated processing
when they are in an analytical rather than a heuristic processing
style (e.g., Alter, Oppenheimer, Epley, & Eyre, 2007; Kuhl, 2000;
Schwarz, 2002; Strack & Deutsch, 2004; Whittlesea & Price,
2001). For instance, Ruder and Bless (2003) found that analytic
processing style decreased the reliance on fluency in retrieving
memory contents. It could be possible that the present oral motor
task compared with the manual motor task induced a more analytic
processing style in participants, thereby increasing the likelihood
that they corrected their judgments for fluency (Begg et al., 1992;
Jacoby, Kelley, et al., 1989). This, however, is unlikely because
previous research has shown that, if anything, engaging in oral
motor tasks induces more heuristic information processing (Janis,
Kaye, & Kirschner, 1965). Furthermore, although analytic compared with heuristic processing requires more working memory
capacity (Bless, 2001), it was found that engaging the mouth in
concurrent motor tasks actually impairs working memory (Wilson,
2001). Furthermore, analytic processing in general is more time
consuming than is heuristic processing (Bless, 2001). Our finding
that the response latencies for judgment formation did not differ
between the experimental groups contradicts this possibility. Thus,
an inadvertent induction of analytical processing by the oral task
seems highly unlikely.
In conclusion, the present experiment identified the sensorimotor foundations of fluency-based fame judgments (Jacoby, Kelley,
et al., 1989), which are stimulus-related embodied simulations.
Independent of post hoc judgmental correction processes such as
discounting fluency (for a review, see Schwarz, 2002, 2004), we
prevented fluency from tainting the fame judgments. In the second
experiment, we extended this finding to another domain, namely
judgments of trustworthiness.
725
Experiment 2
A Broker’s Breakfast
Because processing fluency is readily attributed to any dimension that is asked for, a wide array of judgments can be biased by
it (see introduction). Of course, in many settings fluency is related
to the judgmental criterion and may thus serve as a rational cue, for
instance to judge familiarity (Schwarz, Sanna, Skurnik, & Yoon,
2007). However, judgmental effects of fluency can even reach into
domains where fluency is no valid cue for the criterion, for
instance the trust in the veracity of a persuasive message or the
quality of an advertised product (e.g., Cacioppo & Petty, 1979;
Fang et al., 2007; Hawkins & Hoch, 1992; Skurnik et al., 2005;
Weaver et al., 2007). Even in domains in which judgments should
normatively be rational, because wrong decisions may harm individuals’ financial well-being, biasing effects of criterion-irrelevant
processing fluency were found, namely when the pronunciation
fluency of names of shares in the real-world stock market predicted their price developments (Alter & Oppenheimer, 2006; see
also Novemsky et al., 2007). To address the question of whether
these effects can also be prevented by blocking sensorimotor
responses, we asked participants to rate the trustworthiness of
share names and brand names under concurrent oral and manual
motor tasks, respectively.
Method
Participants. Thirty (19 female) nonpsychology students participated for a compensation of €6 ($9 at that time).
Materials and procedure. We used actually existing names
of companies in the stock market and of brand names of drugs. The
names of 36 shares were randomly chosen from the Asian stock
market indices Nikkei 225 and CSI 300 (effective 2008), and the
length of the names ranged from seven (e.g., Unitika) to 14 (e.g.,
Zheijanghuahai) letters. The names of 36 drugs (e.g., Duragesic)
were chosen from the top 200 U.S. brand-name drugs according to
retail dollars in 2006 (retrieved from www.modernmedicine.com).
The length of the drug names ranged from five (e.g., Zyvox) to nine
(e.g., Pravachol) letters.
The design of Experiment 1 was replicated by implementing
concurrent motor tasks only during the test phase. However, the
following three modifications were made: First, using the financial
world crisis as a cover story, we told participants that in these days
the trustworthiness of many companies is doubted and that the
present experiment assesses the remaining trust of European people in Asian shares and in American brand names. In both the
study and the test phases participants received the names and were
asked to indicate how trustworthy the particular name was to them
using a Likert scale ranging from 0 (Not at all trustworthy) to 10
(Very trustworthy). Second, the pause between the study and test
phases lasted 30 – 40 min and was filled with several unrelated
experimental tasks (watching geometric shapes, evaluating words,
evaluating jokes). Third, both concurrent motor tasks were again
implemented during the test phase exclusively; however, whereas
the manual task consisted again of slightly moving a ball in the left
hand (n ⫽ 15), a different oral motor task was implemented in the
experimental group (n ⫽ 15). In this group, participants were
asked to hold a cereal bar in their left hand and eat it while using
TOPOLINSKI AND STRACK
726
a computer mouse with the right hand to judge the appearing
stimuli. Again, half of the stimuli were randomly chosen to be
presented during the study phase, and both old and new stimuli
were shown in random order during the test phase. During the
study and test phases, names of shares appeared on some blocks,
and brand names of drugs appeared on other blocks, with the
sequence of blocks randomized. The whole experimental session
lasted for 35– 40 min.
Results
The 2 (exposure: old items, new items) ⫻ 2 (concurrent motor
task: manual, oral) ⫻ 2 (stimulus type: share names, brand names
of drugs) ANOVA on the trustworthiness judgments in the test
phase with motor task as a between-subjects factor obtained a main
effect of exposure, F(1, 28) ⫽ 4.74, p ⬍ .038, ␩2p ⫽ .15, as well
as an interaction between exposure and motor task, F(1, 28) ⫽
6.26, p ⬍ .018, ␩2p ⫽ .18, and no other effects (all Fs ⬍ 1). The
conditional means for each stimulus type are displayed in Table 2.
Collapsed over stimulus type, this interaction exhibited the following pattern. In the group executing the manual motor task, old
items were rated as being more trustworthy (M ⫽ 3.38, SD ⫽ 1.17)
than new items (M ⫽ 3.01, SD ⫽ 1.07), t(14) ⫽ 3.12, p ⬍ .008,
d ⫽ 0.34; in the group executing the oral motor task, no reliable
difference occurred between old items (M ⫽ 3.06, SD ⫽ 1.07) and
new items (M ⫽ 3.08, SD ⫽ 1.11), t ⬍ 1.
Discussion
The present experiment addressed the biasing effects of fluency
on perceived trustworthiness of names of shares and brand names
and their embodied underlying processes (Alter & Oppenheimer,
2006). Participants for whom the manual motor system was engaged (i.e., unrelated to verbal stimuli) reported higher trustworthiness of old compared with new names. In contrast, in participants for whom the oral motor system (which mediates
sensorimotor simulations of verbal stimuli) was engaged, this
fluency effect did not occur. As in Experiment 1, we prevented
stimulus-specific sensorimotor simulations from occurring and
thus prevented fluency effects without a need for judgmental
correction. In the last experiment, we wanted to generalize the
present claims to yet another judgment and stimulus set, and, most
importantly, to another fluency induction, namely pronunciation.
Experiment 3
Mouthfeel
In the first two experiments we focused on the fluency induction
of repeated exposure, which is a well-established manipulation (for
reviews, see Bornstein, 1989; Oppenheimer, 2008; Schwarz,
2002). However, there are numerous other manipulations that alter
the processing fluency of targets, such as figure– ground contrast
(e.g., Reber & Schwarz, 1999; Unkelbach, 2007) and subliminal
priming (Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001). Regarding the embodied representation of verbal stimuli, the fluency induction of the
pronunciation of names (Song & Schwarz, 2009) seemed highly
relevant and therefore important to address. Most recently, Song
and Schwarz (2009) provided an impressive biasing effect of
pronunciation, showing that ostensible food additives with hardto-read names were rated as more harmful than those with easyto-read names. In this case, apparently, the fluency-triggered positive affect was used to indicate (low) hazardousness. The present
study should replicate and qualify this effect as being dependent on
oral motor simulations.
Method
Participants. Eighty (56 female) psychology undergraduate
students participated for course credit.
Materials and procedure. We used the five easy-topronounce (e.g., Magnalroxate) and five hard-to-pronounce (e.g.,
Hnegripitrom) names of ostensible food additives provided by
Song and Schwarz (2009). Participants received these names in
random order on a computer screen and were asked to judge the
hazard posed by these different food additives. They provided their
judgments on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (Very safe) to 7 (Very
harmful). Most crucially, half of the participants (n ⫽ 40) were
additionally asked to chew gum while judging the names, whereas
the other half (n ⫽ 40) were asked to knead a soft foam ball in the
left hand while providing their judgments with the right hand. The
procedure was part of a battery of unrelated experiments and took
1–2 min.
Results
Over the harm judgments we conducted a 2 (pronunciation: easy
to pronounce, hard to pronounce) ⫻ 2 (concurrent motor task:
manual, oral) ANOVA with motor task as a between-subjects
factor and found a main effect of pronunciation, F(1, 78) ⫽ 12.07,
p ⬍ .001, ␩2p ⫽ .13, as well as an interaction between pronunciation and motor task, F(1, 78) ⫽ 8.78, p ⬍ .004, ␩2p ⫽ .10. The
conditional means are displayed in Table 3. Planned comparisons
revealed that in the group executing the manual motor task, easyto-pronounce names were rated as less harmful than hard-topronounce names, t(39) ⫽ 4.88, p ⬍ .001, d ⫽ 0.87. However, in
the group executing the oral motor task, we found no such difference between easy- and hard-to-pronounce names (t ⬍ 0.4).
Table 2
Average Trustworthiness Ratings of Share Names and Drug Brand Names in Experiment 2 as a
Function of Concurrent Motor Task
Share names
Drug brand names
Task
Old items
New items
Old items
New items
Manual (kneading a ball)
Oral (eating a cereal bar)
3.43 (0.41)
3.13 (0.41)
2.95 (0.40)
3.15 (0.42)
3.34 (0.34)
2.99 (0.32)
3.07 (0.28)
3.02 (0.31)
Note.
Standard errors are in parentheses.
PREVENTING FLUENCY EFFECTS
Table 3
Average Ratings of Harm of Ostensible Food Additives in
Experiment 3 as a Function of Concurrent Motor Task
Pronunciation of food
additive names
Task
Easy
Hard
Manual (kneading a ball)
Oral (chewing gum)
3.74 (0.23)
4.06 (0.21)
5.00 (0.23)
4.16 (0.16)
Note.
Standard errors are in parentheses.
Discussion
Using pronunciation rather than repeated exposure as a fluency
induction, we replicated the finding by Song and Schwarz (2009)
that food additives with easy-to-read names are judged as being
less harmful than additives with hard-to-read names. However,
illustrating that this fluency effect is mediated by oral motor
simulations, we also showed that this effect largely decreases
under a concurrent oral motor task. As strong as the effect of
pronunciation may have been in the manual group, it was substantially attenuated in the oral group. Without participants’ engaging
in correcting for fluency, we could again neutralize the biasing
effects of fluency on judgments of hazardousness.
General Discussion
In the present microprocedural approach to the biasing effects of
processing fluency on social– cognitive judgments we adopted an
embodied view and identified the sources of fluency in stimulusspecific sensorimotor simulations (cf. Beilock & Holt, 2007;
Topolinski & Strack, 2009c; Van den Bergh et al., 1990). In the
present case of simple verbal stimuli, which are most widely used
in fluency research (Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004;
Schwarz, 2002), we identified covert oral motor simulations as
being the source of fluency gains driving the biasing effects of
repeated exposure (e.g., Jacoby, Kelley, et al., 1989) and word
pronunciation (Song & Schwarz, 2009) on the exemplary judgments of fame (see Experiment 1), trustworthiness (see Experiment 2), and hazardousness (see Experiment 3).
Once having located the exact juncture of fluency variations in
the stages of processing judgmental targets, we were able to block
selected sources of fluency and thus prevent it from infiltrating the
judgment. By this means, we were able to neutralize fluency
effects without post hoc judgmental correction processes (Larrick,
2004; Oppenheimer, 2005; Schwarz et al., 1991; Strack, 1992;
Strack & Hannover, 1996). With this approach we expand theorizing in a long research tradition on judgmental correction processes in social psychology (e.g., Cacioppo & Petty, 1979; Jacoby,
Kelley, et al., 1989; Martin, Seta, & Crelia, 1990; Ross, Lepper, &
Hubbard, 1975; Ross, Lepper, Strack, & Steinmetz, 1977; Schwarz
et al., 1991; Schwarz & Clore, 1983; Shaffer & Case, 1982;
Weaver et al., 2007) by introducing a judgmental decontamination
procedure not yet considered (Wilson & Brekke, 1994).
In the following, we first discuss urgent implications for applied
issues and possible future research and then connect the present
approach to the literature on judgmental correction processes in
727
more general terms. Finally, we discuss other forms of fluency in
the literature, such as visual fluency (Topolinski, in press).
Applied Issues: When Brokers Should Chew Gum and
Why Advertising Brand Names in Cinemas Is Futile
Our findings have strong implications for applied issues, especially in the field of persuasion. We tried to ensure a certain degree
of ecological validity both in our stimulus sets, which were authentic names that one can come across in the media, and in our
oral motor tasks, which were laboratory implementations of everyday behavior such as eating popcorn. Thus, we deem the
present results to contribute to our understanding of judgment
construction in the real world, specifically of repeated exposure in
advertising and persuasion (e.g., Allport & Lepkin, 1945;
Cacioppo & Petty, 1979; Fang et al., 2007; Hawkins & Hoch,
1992; Skurnik et al., 2005; Weaver et al., 2007). Consider movie
trailers or movie credits that repeatedly feature actors’ names. The
result of the present Experiment 1—namely that eating popcorn
prevents increasing fame during repeated exposure, together with
earlier findings that such motor blockades prevent fluency effects
when applied during the first or second encounter of a stimulus
(Topolinski & Strack, 2009c, Experiment 2)—suggests that repeated exposure of actors’ names may not lead to increased fame
or even increased preference (cf. Topolinski & Strack, 2009c)
among popcorn-eating cinema audiences. Similarly, the participants who ate cereal bars in Experiment 2 resembled business
people studying the stock market in the morning paper while
having breakfast. Also, they did not develop trust in repeatedly
encountered brand names and thus were immune to the persuasive
effects of mere exposure.
Blocking oral motor simulations may also yield beneficial effects for other persuasive contexts in which fluency biases judgments detrimentally. For example, Alter and Oppenheimer (2006)
showed that price developments of authentic shares in real-world
stock market data are influenced by motor fluency; those shares
with names that are easy to pronounce outperformed shares with
hard-to-pronounce names during the first month on the market.
This effect was still detectable at the end of the first year of
performance. Although market behavior may also be substantially
influenced by other factors, such as rational considerations, the
impact of fluency on stock choices is apparently not at all rational
(cf. Kahneman, 2003). As simple as it may sound, the present
findings strongly suggest that both stockbrokers and clients could
protect their consumer choices from these irrational biases by
simply chewing gum while making investment decisions. The
present approach also has, besides these applied implications,
important implications for the more general realm of debiasing
(Larrick, 2004; Schwarz et al., 2007) or decontaminating (Wilson
& Brekke, 1994) judgments, as is outlined in the following section.
A New Way of Judgment Decontamination
It has frequently been shown that associative processes can bias
our judgments by generating experiential information that is easily
available as a basis for judgment but provides no valid judgmental
cue (for an extensive review, see Wilson & Brekke, 1994). These
internal cues may be affect, such as moods (Schwarz & Clore,
1983; Zillman, Katcher, & Milavsky, 1972; see also Schwarz &
728
TOPOLINSKI AND STRACK
Bohner, 1996), or concepts popping into the mind, for instance
social categories (e.g., Higgins, Rholes, & Jones, 1977; for a
review, see Schwarz & Bless, 1992), but they may also be nonaffective cognitive feelings, such as fluency (Clore et al., 2001;
Schwarz & Clore, 2007). In judgments under uncertainty (Kahneman, 2003), these proximal cues are readily used as the only
available basis for judgment, which may have detrimental effects
on judgmental accuracy when they are influenced by factors that
are unrelated to the veridical judgmental criterion (e.g., Kahneman, 2003; Wilson & Brekke, 1994).
In the literature, we find several ways to control for these
biasing effects—ways that can be divided into pre- and postprocessing strategies. Preprocessing ways to achieve decontamination
focus on the stimulus side and try to prevent biasing influences
from even being encoded, for instance via exposure control (Gilbert, 1993; e.g., switching the channel when an advertisement is
on, Wilson & Brekke, 1994), changing the presentation format of
stimuli in a way that prevents biasing associative processing (e.g.,
Gigerenzer & Hoffrage, 1995; Glöckner & Betsch, 2008), gathering more ecological information about the to-be-judged criterion to
avoid sampling biases (e.g., Fiedler, 2000; Unkelbach & Plessner,
2008), or preventing fluency gains by changing the stimulus format between the study and test phases (Westerman, Miller, &
Lloyd, 2003). However, these strategies can hardly be used once
one is confronted with a given target.
In contrast, postprocessing strategies to achieve decontamination are strategies that take place after processing the to-be-judged
target as well as related information at a time when internal cues
emerge and solicit the judgment at hand. These strategies may
include ignoring the internal cue (e.g., Wyer & Unverzagt, 1985),
discounting it from the judgment by some means (Clore, 1992;
Kelley & Rhodes, 2002; Schwarz, 2004), or actively correcting for
it (for reviews, see Holyoak & Gordon, 1983; Schwarz & Bless,
1992; Tourangeau & Rasinski, 1988; Wilson & Brekke, 1994).
However, these judgmental correction processes are time consuming (e.g., Strack, Erber, & Wicklund, 1982) and need cognitive
capacity (e.g., Martin et al., 1990). Furthermore, they require
awareness of the bias and its direction and magnitude (e.g., Martin,
1986; Strack et al., 1993; Wegener & Petty, 1995), the motivation
to correct it (Martin et al., 1990; Strack & Hannover, 1996), and
the general ability to correct it (Wilson & Brekke, 1994; for
reviews, see Strack, 1992; Strack & Hannover, 1996; Wegener &
Petty, 2001; Wilson & Brekke, 1994).
Moreover, even if these conditions are met, judgmental correction sometimes leads to judgments that are still biased, namely in
the case of overcorrection (Hatvany & Strack, 1980; Shaffer &
Case, 1982; Strack & Hannover, 1996), that is, when a judgment
is recomputed in the opposite direction of the internal cue but too
heavily compensates for it, thus yielding a contrast effect (for
reviews, see Mussweiler, 2003; Schwarz & Bless, 1992; Strack &
Hannover, 1996). Finally, with every subsequent judgment or
inference made with contaminated information, it becomes less
and less possible to identify the discredited information and correct
for it (Ross et al., 1975, 1977; see Forgas, 2001, for the case of
affect infusion). These multiple constraints of postprocessing correction strategies prompted Wilson and Brekke (1994) to conclude,
“[W]e are rather pessimistic about people’s ability to avoid or
correct for mental contamination” (p. 120).
A final way to neutralize biasing effects is mood, because
people seem to be less susceptible to biasing heuristics under
negative compared with positive mood (e.g., Bless et al., 1996; for
a review, see Clore, Schwarz, & Conway, 1994). However, besides
the fact that this decontamination strategy requires an affect induction, its effects are equivocal in the literature. For instance,
whereas Ruder and Bless (2003) found that negative compared
with positive mood decreased the reliance on retrieval fluency,
Freitas, Azizian, Travers, and Berry (2005) found that an experimentally induced prevention focus (negative state) compared with
promotion focus increases the preference for fluency.
Taken together, for all these decontamination strategies the
associative processes leading to judgmental biases remain experimentally impenetrable: For preprocessing strategies they are prevented by controlling the stimulus input, and for postprocessing
strategies they are corrected for by additional processing. As
Strack (1992, p. 267) put it, “[N]either the accessibility of information nor the particular experience can be undone.” Now we
know they can be prevented. The present approach introduces the
possibility of a procedural decontamination, which consists of
blocking the associative processes themselves; it is a way to
achieve decontamination that requires neither changing the stimulus input nor correcting for an internal cue. This provides a new
possibility of judgmental decontamination not yet proposed in the
literature (Wilson & Brekke, 1994) and may open various approaches for future research.
Admittedly, the metacognitive correction dilemma (Wilson &
Brekke, 1994), namely the appropriate situational knowledge of
biases and how to correct for them, still cannot be solved by the
present fluency blockade. Procedural decontamination does not
encompass the identification of biases and the selection of the most
effective decontamination strategy; rather, it is a decontamination
strategy itself. Thus, to adaptively implement procedural decontamination (see also a variety of possible examples in the following section) the particular bias and its embodied sources must be
known.
Limitations and Further Research
The present approach is only the first step toward more extensive research of procedural decontamination in further areas of
fluency impacts and probably beyond. In the course of this future
research, the qualifying factor to derive predictions is not the
judgment asked for but rather the target to be judged and the
various systems processing it. Depending on which sensorimotor
systems are involved in processing a particular target, specific
ways of manipulating these systems shall be developed. The
present manipulations focused on the oral motor system mediating
the processing of verbal stimuli, because nearly all fluency effects
in the literature employ this classical stimulus type. However,
although the oral motor system is likely to mediate other fluency
effects as well, such as rhyme (McGlone & Tofighbakhsh, 2000)
or meshing of oral motor programs (Poldrack & Cohen, 1997),
other fluency phenomena will be mediated by different effector
systems, such as the manual motor system involved in the perception of letters (e.g., Beilock & Holt, 2007; Van den Bergh et al.,
1990) and graspable objects (e.g., Gibson, 1979; Tucker & Ellis,
1998) or the ocular muscle system involved in viewing moving
objects (Topolinski, in press).
PREVENTING FLUENCY EFFECTS
Furthermore, the notion of target-specific motor systems being
the crucial source of fluency is obviously limited to attitude objects
that elicit a motor response when processed. Although the range of
these objects is surprisingly broad, as converging evidence from
diverse lines of research suggests (e.g., Bangert & Altenmüller,
2003; Craighero et al., 1996; Haueisen & Knösche, 2001; Kato et
al., 1999; Niedenthal, Winkielman, Mondillon, & Vermeulen,
2009; Tucker & Ellis, 1998; Van den Bergh et al., 1990), there are
fluency effects grounded not in motor systems but in sensory
processes, most obviously in the classical domain of vision
(Zajonc, 1968) but also in haptics (Wippich, Mecklenbräuker, &
Krisch, 1994). For these phenomena, specific procedural accounts
and predictions shall be derived, and how to engage the responsible sensory systems in unrelated processing to neutralize fluency
impacts shall be tested. For example, can the influence of prototypicality (Winkielman, Halberstadt, Fazendeiro, & Catty, 2006)
be prevented by letting the visual system simultaneously maintain
additional unrelated visual information, for instance via concurrent
visual imagery? To go a step further, can people be made immune
to the effects of symmetry (e.g., Palmer & Hemenway, 1978;
Reber, Brun, & Mitterndorfer, 2008) or even beauty (Reber,
Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004)?
Also, fluency effects in a given stimulus domain may not be tied
exclusively to one motor or sensory system. Take, for instance, the
fluency manipulation of the figure– ground contrast of words (e.g.,
Reber & Schwarz, 1999; Unkelbach, 2007). Although the present
findings strongly suggest that judgments of repeating names draw
exclusively on motor fluency (see also Topolinski & Strack,
2009c, Experiment 1), visual manipulations may not alter the
efficiency of covert pronunciation simulation but rather change the
fluency in visually processing the word (cf. Kliegl, Nuthmann, &
Engbert, 2006; Reber, Wurtz, & Zimmermann, 2004; Wurtz,
Reber, & Zimmermann, 2008). Thus, visual manipulations of
fluency may be neutralized by means other than motor tasks.
Finally, the present account is limited to the case of one stimulus
and its fluency. In other fluency phenomena, such as the truth
effect, in which judgments draw on the fluency of reading statements (e.g., Reber & Schwarz, 1999; Unkelbach, 2007; Weaver et
al., 2007), or the retrieval heuristic, in which judgments draw on
the fluency of retrieving several memory contents (Koriat & LevySadot, 2001; Schwarz et al., 1991), the fluency in processing
involves several stimuli, usually concepts and their semantic relations. Here, factors other than the mere efficiency of processing
may play a causal role, for instance the temporal contiguity of the
concepts, which determines how their representations are meshed
(cf. Botvinick & Plaut, 2006; McClelland et al., 1995; Norman &
O’Reilly, 2003), as was shown most recently by Topolinski and
Reber (2010).
Finally, the notion of a processing-related blockade of associative mechanisms biasing judgments and attitudes may also be
employed in research on implicit attitudes. Future research may
find— besides top-down control of the associative response (see,
for recent approaches, Amodio, 2009; Amodio, Devine, &
Harmon-Jones, 2008; Payne, 2001; Richeson & Trawalter, 2005),
alteration of the associative processes via slow learning mechanisms (Rydell & McConnell, 2006; for instance via conditioning,
Ito, Chiao, Devine, Lorig, & Cacioppo, 2006; or excessive negation training, Kawakami, Moll, Hermsen, Dovidio, & Russin,
2000), or activation of information that is incompatible with the
729
associative response (e.g., Blair, Ma, & Lenton, 2001; Dasgupta &
Greenwald, 2001; Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park, 2001)—ways to
procedurally block associative processes that lead to attitude biases.
Conclusion
The present approach introduces a procedural decontamination
of social– cognitive judgments by identifying and experimentally
blocking the underlying embodied processes that lead to fluency
biases.
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Received July 13, 2009
Revision received November 17, 2009
Accepted November 19, 2009 䡲