Trust-Choice Incompatibility and the Role of Automatic Activation

This study examines the influence of conscious and unconscious processes on trust and choice within an attribute framing task. Trust-choice incompatibility exists when a decision maker shows preference for one option, but trusts another option. For instance, a decision maker might prefer Butcher A, who advertises ground beef as 75% lean yet trust Butcher B, who advertises ground beef as 25% fat. McElroy and Conrad (2009) suggest that unconscious processing plays an important role in choice. A vigilance task was used to investigate unconscious processing and trust-choice incompatibility. Participants were primed with words to induce trust or doubt and then given the ground beef attribute framing task along with 7-point scales to indicate which butcher they prefer and trust.