"Reward, emotion and consumer choice: from neuroeconomics to neurophilosophy" by Gordon Foxall

Reward, emotion and consumer choice: from neuroeconomics toneurophilosophy

Gordon R. Foxall*

,

y

Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Aberconway Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF10 3EU, UK

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Neuroeconomics has found no definitive role in the explanation of consumer choice and itsundevelopedphilosophicalbasislimitsitsattempttoexplaineconomicbehaviour.Thenature of neuroeconomics is explored, especially with respect to what it reveals about thevaluation of alternatives, choice and emotion. The tendency of human consumers todiscount future rewards illustrates how behavioural and neuroscientific accounts of choicecontributetopsychologicalexplanationsofchoiceandtheissuesthisraisesforbothroutine everyday choices and more extreme compulsions. Central to this is the phenom-enon of matching in which consumers tend to select the immediately larger or largest rewardandtheneurophysiologicalandbehaviouralbasesofthischoice.Recognitionthat rewards are evoked by reinforcement contingencies and that the rewards themselvesengender emotional responses via classical conditioning enhances understanding thecontribution of neurological activity to the explanation of consumer behaviour. It isargued that neuroeconomics can play a vital explanatory role by providing an evolu-tionarily consistent warrant for the ascription of intentionality. The Behavioural Perspective Model is used as a template for investigations of consumer choice that lead to iterative theoretical development, forming the basis of a neurophilosophy in whichneuroeconomics can find a decisive role.

Copyright

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2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Introduction

Psychology is a biological science. It is uncon-troversial therefore to assert that its explana-tion of complex human behaviour must draw upon analyses of the reception and perceptionof environmental stimuli, subsequent physio-logical functioning at the neural level and theuse of evolutionary logic to understand thefunction and effects of both. Consumer psychology is now actively involved in appre-ciating the ramiﬁcations of this, and isincreasingly joining forces not only with biology but also with economics and philos-ophy in order to embrace the full spectrum of behavioural causation in marketing. But it isequally true that psychology is a behaviouralscience and a cognitive science. It is the task of

Journal of Consumer Behaviour

J. Consumer Behav.

7

: 368–396 (2008)Published online in Wiley InterScience(www.interscience.wiley.com)

DOI:

10.1002/cb.258*Correspondence to: Gordon R. Foxall, Cardiff BusinessSchool, Cardiff University, Aberconway Building, ColumDrive, Cardiff CF10 3EU, Wales, UK.E-mail: foxall@cf.ac.uk

y

Gordon Foxall is Distinguished Research Professor atCardiff University.

Copyright

#

2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal of Consumer Behaviour, July–October 2008

DOI: 10.1002/cb

consumer theory to integrate these variouscomponents of explanation into a syntheticframework for research and interpretation. A particular difficulty arises here from theaccumulation of disparate results of fMRIscanning and other means of observing neuralactivity in relation to consumer behaviour. Inthe absence of any generally accepted frame- work of conceptualization and analysis, so-called ‘neuromarketing’ is likely on presentformtoleadtothemultiplicationofpotentially interesting but disconnected research findings which does nothing to advance a generaltheory of marketing or, more modestly, theinterdisciplinary explanation of consumer choice. This paper is concerned, therefore, with the way in which progress in neuro-science can be incorporated into a conceptualframework for the analysis of consumer choice. More specifically, the paper drawsuponadvancesinneuroeconomicswhichhaveled to greater understanding of the role of reasoning and emotion in the discounting of future rewards. Such understanding is crucialtotheexplanationofconsumerchoiceinsomeof its more extreme manifestations – addictionand compulsion, for example – but also plays arole in the theory of more everyday consump-tion including routine buying, impulsivenessand innovativeness.This paper pursues an elaborate argumentand some explanation of its structure isnecessary at this stage. The paper first estab-lishes the nature of neuroeconomics and itsrelevance to the investigation of consumer choice which derive from the analysis of thebases of reward. It goes on to consider how far the kinds of choices that consumers make canbejudged to be rationallymotivated: how faristhe emphasis on neurocognition that tends tomark economic (and to a large degree market-ing) analysis justified compared with the needto take an affective neuroscientific perspect-ive? The argument is that the phenomenon of matching reveals that emotional responsestotheshort-andlong-termrewardsavailabletoconsumers are highly important and in somecases definitive in determining choice even when this is not rational. This is most easily illustrated with respect to extreme consumer behaviour, which involves compulsion andaddiction. It is described here in the case of drug use, because this is the area in which thebehavioural and biological sciences often meetand to which neuroeconomics is especially pertinent. But recent work has shown thatmatchingisalsoanimportantphenomenonfor more everyday consumer behaviours such asfood brand choice (Foxall

et al

., 2007; see alsoFoxall,1999a)andthediscussionlaterexpandsinto consideration of this kind of choice. But itis important to remark that even extremechoice is viewed as a facet of consumer behaviour, one involving the selection amongavailable choices as much as other aspects of purchase and consumption. ‘Consumer behaviour’ and ‘consumer choice’ are, therefore,regarded synonymously, partly on the groundsthat choice is always a behaviour (Herrnstein,1997), partly on the grounds that this under-standing of choice does not prejudice theargument over the use of intentional terminol-ogy which is a later theme of the paper. A critical link between emotionality and theexerciseofchoiceis foundin the identiﬁcationof the reward structure (the pattern of reinforcement) that accompanies particular kinds of consumer behaviour, and its capacity to induce not only a particular category of consumer choice but related affective feelings.This is ﬁrst discussed in terms of research inneuroscience, and then in terms of work onthe Behavioural Perspective Model which makes the relationships clearer in the contextof

consumer

behaviour. There follows adiscussion of the way in which these resultsare to be explained and this involves ﬁrst acritique of neuroeconomics as it is currently practised – notably its indiscriminate use of intentional terms – followed by an expositionof how neurophilosophy might more success-fullymakeuseofneuroeconomicstheoriesandﬁndings. In a nutshell, it is argued that, whilethe uncritical use of intentional terminology inthe explanation of consumer choice is to bedeplored, some means must nevertheless befound for overcoming the inadequacies (whenit comes to explanation rather than prediction

Copyright

#

2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal of Consumer Behaviour, July–October 2008

DOI: 10.1002/cb

Reward, emotion and consumer choice 369

and control) of a purely extensional account of behaviour, be it based on neuroscience or behavioural science. The implications of two aspects of this,

intentional behaviourism

and

super-personal cognitive psychology

,are ﬁnally explored and an agenda isproposed for the next steps in the research programme.

Neuroeconomics

Central to the explanation of choice are therole of reward in consumer behaviour and theenvironmental contingencies that relaterewards to the rate at which particular behaviours are repeated. Reward, which is atthe heart of economic behaviour, fulﬁls anumber of evolutionarily consistent functionsby virtue of the fact that the capacity to detectand value rewards is essential to the control of behaviour (Schultz, 2000; Rolls, 2008). Thefoundations of neuroeconomics lie in therecognition that these capacities dependultimately upon activities that occur at theneuronallevel(Glimcher,2004;Camerer

etal

.,2005; Politser, 2008). The neuronal mechan-isms that have evolved to provide thesefunctions contribute to the prediction of behavioural outcomes by making possiblethe comparison of future potential rewards with those that have previously resulted fromsimilar behaviour. Rewards generated in thecourse of past responding are neuronally represented as a result of which they assumethe status of goals that guide future behaviour (Rolls, 2008). Schultz (2000) mentions twospecific functions of rewards in this context.First, as goals, rewards may elicit approach behaviour, thereby conferring positive motiv-ation power on the objects in which therewards inhere. Second, rewards are linked tothe generation of emotional states that con-tribute to the continuity of behaviour. Inparticular, they maintain learned behavioursand govern the rate at which new ones arelearned through the calculation at the neurallevel of discrepancies between the predictedreward and that which has been normal in theorganism’slearninghistory:‘rewardpredictionerror’ (Rolls, 2008).Neuroeconomics is both a search for theneural substrates of economic decision making,thatischoiceamongcompetingalternatives,andanattempttoportraytheoperationsofthebrainin economic terms, that is to present neurody-namics themselves as economic behaviour involving the valuation of and selection amongdiverse ends in which choice inheres. Hence,neuroeconomics ‘maps economic decisionsstraightforwardly into the neural substrates thatproduce those decisions’ (Zak, 2006, p. 133).The underlying assumption is that in the courseof evolution the brain has developed means of ranking behavioural options ordinally, that is to value the available alternatives. The rewardsystem that carries out the valuation proceduresconsists of certain neurons that fire at higher or lowerratesdependingonwhetherastimulusisbetter or worse than expected on the basis of experience. (In the case of a neutral stimulus,the firing rate stays constant.) The resultingcomputation guides the brain in deciding how much time to allot to each stimulus (Montagueand Berns, 2002).Neuroeconomics viewed from a biologicalperspective tends to have a rather differentemphasis. It again seeks to synthesize neuro-physiology and economic choice. The moredominant perspective is, however, that inthe course of natural selection humans devel-oped a capacity to value potential alternativecourses of action much more rapidly than if they relied on cognitive evaluations. Such valuation would take the form of an ordinalranking of the options immediately presentingthemselves in terms of their being better than/ worse than one another. Such a system of valuation at the level of the nervous system would permit a more rapid and implementabledecision to be made than would the usualcognitive procedures requiring a rational assess-ment of the relative values of the alternatives inrelation to some specifiable goal. Especially whentheneedisforafast,appropriateresponsesuchaneuralroutetodecisionmakingwouldbeessential for survival and the maximization of fitness.

Copyright

#

2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal of Consumer Behaviour, July–October 2008

DOI: 10.1002/cb