The Experience of Thinking ─ How the Fluency of Mental Processes Influences Cognition and Behaviour

When retrieving a quote from memory, evaluating a testimony’s truthfulness, or deciding which products to buy, people experience immediate feelings of ease or difficulty, of fluency or disfluency. Such "experiences of thinking" occur with every cognitive process, including perceiving, processing, storing, and retrieving information, and they have been the defining element of a vibrant field of scientific inquiry during the last four decades.

This book brings together the latest research on how such experiences of thinking influence cognition and behavior. The chapters present recent theoretical developments and describe the effects of these influences, as well as the practical implications of this research. The book includes contributions from the leading scholars in the field and provides a comprehensive survey of this expanding area. This integrative overview will be invaluable to researchers, teachers, students, and professionals in the field of social and cognitive psychology.

Christian Unkelbach is professor for general psychology at the University of Cologne, Germany. He is currently associate editor of the journals Experimental Psychology and Social Psychology. His research focuses on processing fluency, valence asymmetries, prejudice against Muslims, and sport psychology. He has authored numerous articles in international journals covering these topics.

Rainer Greifeneder is professor for social psychology at the University of Basel, Switzerland. His research focuses on experiences of thinking, affective feelings, intuitive decision making, consumer choice, and ostracism. He has authored numerous articles in international journals covering these topics.