Fluency and Processing Styles

The study of Alter et al. (2007):

It is known that positive mood signal that the

interaction between person and environment is

going smoothly; therefore not much has to be done,

and people can think heuristically. In contrast,

negative mood signals that something is wrong and

attention is needed; people have to think analytically

(Bless et al., 1990; Bohner et al., 1992).

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Fluency and Processing Styles

Similarly, high processing fluency may signal that

the interaction between person and environment is

going smoothly; therefore not much has to be done,

and people can think heuristically. In contrast, low

processing fluency signals that something is wrong

and attention is needed; people have to think

analytically.

Alter et al. (2007) tested this assumption.

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Fluency and Processing Styles

In one of their experiments, they gave participants

the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT). In this test, an

intuitively plausible answer contradicts the correct

answer which can be found after some thinking.

The authors presented the CRT in an easy-to-read

font (fluent condition) for one group and in a difficult-

to-read font (disfluent condition) for another group.

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Fluency and Processing Styles

From the three tasks in the CRT, participants in the

fluent condition solved 2.45 tasks on average,

whereas the participants in the disfluent condition

solved 1.90 task.

From the participants in the fluent condition, 90%

made at least one mistake, but only 35% of the

disfluent condition did so.

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Fluency and Processing Styles

Other experiments in the same article showed that

processing ease, compared to processing difficulty,

led to more heuristic processing in product

evaluation, the representativeness heuristic, and

syllogistic reasoning.

In sum, the studies supported the notion that easy

processing signals that the situation is well, eliciting

heuristic processing, whereas processing difficulties

signal problems and elicit analytical processing (see

Song & Schwarz, 2008, for a similar finding).

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