Perception of the chilled groceries foodscape, with and without refrigerator doors

The researchers state their worry bluntly:  “The purpose of this paper is to contribute to an understanding of how consumers behave and what they perceive when shopping chilled groceries from cabinets with doors and without doors in the supermarket.” Sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch are all perception tools that help aid the decision making […]

Where the statistical wear is

Ivars Peterson, in his blog, The Mathematical Tourist, explains how a detective take a mathematical approach to some everyday questions: Marks on objects can provide intriguing statistical glimpses of usage patterns. The darkened leaves of a well-thumbed book may point to favorite passages; the distinctive hollows of oft-traversed steps suggest the characteristic tread of countless […]

People-calculating: open doors and closed doors

Whether one person holds a door open for another is not simply a question of etiquette, says a study by Joseph P Santamaria and David A Rosenbaum [pictured here] of Pennsylvania State University. No, they say. Nothing simple about it. Santamaria and Rosenbaum worked to pursue the answer through a tangle of belief, logic, probability, perception […]

Terrier’s new door-in-the-face technique

Every once in a long while, someone devises a new door-in-the-face technique. It has happened again: “Door-in-the-Face: Is It Really Necessary That Both Requests Be Made by the Same Requester?” Lohyd Terrier [pictured here], Bénédicte Marfaing, and Marc-Olivier Boldi, Psychological Reports, Volume 113, 2013, pp. 675-682. The authrs, at Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne and Université de […]

Guilt and expected guilt in the door-in-the-face technique

Read about guilt and expected guilt in the door-in-the-face technique, if that’s what you want to read: “Guilt and expected guilt in the door-in-the-face technique,” Daniel J. O’Keefe, & Marianne Figgé, Communication Monographs, 66 (4), 1999, 312-324. BONUS: The two co-authors have an earlier take on the topic: O’Keefe, D. J. & Figgé, M. (1997). “A guilt-based explanation […]