01
A utilitarian explanation to Cognitive Consistency
Why do people prefer cognitive consistency? Festinger argued that it is because we would like to avoid dissonance. Harmon-Jones suggested that cognitive consistency is functional—that it provides valuable feedback to guide us in exploring our next actions. In this study, we use neuroimaging techniques to address another possibility: that maybe pursuing cognitive consistency is inherently rewarding.
02
Factorial structure of the fluency experiences
Imagine the experience of seeing an image in 4K resolution vs. deducing a conclusion that "makes sense." The fluency literature has drawn many theoretical distinctions among fluency experiences (Alter & Oppenheimer, 2008; Winkielman et al., 2003). In this line of research, I collaborate with my statistics supervisor, Dr. Dave Flora and world-renowned experts Drs. Rolf Reber (The University of Oslo), David Vaidis (The University of Toulouse), and Christian Unkelbach (The University of Cologne) to search for statistical evidence by examining the factorial structure of fluency experience, intending to create and validate a scale that measures people's preference for fluency and its subtypes.
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OSF: https://osf.io/62vyk
03
Individual Preferences to the Convenient Truth
Information may be more trustworthy simply because it has been repeated more. Meta-analysis revealed that the repetition-truth effect has a fixed effect size (d) of 0.53 and is robust against variations in paradigms (Dechêne et al., 2010). In collaboration with the University of Cologne, we validate a scale that captures individual differences in relying on fluency for truth values.