Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

First Advisor

Monica Das

Abstract

Suggested by previous research in the field of behavioral economics, the priming effect provides strong evidence for the limitation of the expected utility theory as people do not always make decisions to maximize their utility but rather follow the impulse affected by the priming effect. This study looks at the effect of priming on consumer behavior and how moods influence the effectiveness of priming. Although many research has studied priming effects in different contexts, little research has focused on the affective influences on perceptual and conceptual priming. Supported by the previous research on affect and decision-making, this study is built on the hypotheses that good moods increase the effectiveness of perceptual priming in comparison to bad moods, and bad moods decrease the effectiveness of conceptual priming in comparison to good moods. This study observed and compared the effectiveness of perceptual and conceptual primings in happy and unhappy conditions. Our results provide weak evidence to support our hypotheses.

This paper is structured as follows. Section 1 and 2 introduce topic and provide a theoretical background of the study. Section 3 and 4 discuss details about methodology and regression models used in this study. In section 5 and 6 provide the data analysis, results and the limitations of the study. Finally, section 7 conducts a general discussion and summary of the study.

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