ABSTRACT
Response latency-based research methods have been popular in cognitive psychology for several decades, but have not been used widely in consumer psychology. These methods deserve greater attention from consumer psychologists for several reasons: (1) Consumer psychologists are very interested in consumer information processing, and response latency methods are useful for drawing inferences about cognitive processes. (2) Consumer psychologists tend to rely too heavily on self-report scales, rather than using maximally different measures to establish construct validity (as recommended by Campbell & Fiske, 1959). (3) Subjects are typically unaware of millisecond differences in response speed across experimental conditions and are often unable to guess the purposes of response latency procedures and analyses (therefore reducing concerns about experimental demand and experimenter bias). And (4) modern computers and computer software provide excellent support for response latency-based research.
