اکتشاف اولویت و یادگیری: نقش وسعت و وسعت تجربه

In this article, the authors partition the construct of experience into intensiveness (i.e., amount) and extensiveness (i.e., breadth) and examine the impact of the two specific types of experience on preference learning. In the first three studies, the authors' theory that experience can be partitioned into intensiveness (i.e., amount) and extensiveness (i.e., breadth) of experience and that extensiveness has a greater impact on preference learning is supported in environments where prior experience is measured. Further, in study 4 they demonstrate that extensiveness or breadth of experience exerts a larger influence on preference learning in an experiment where each unique type of experience is manipulated as well as measured.

Nearly every week someone asks me, “How should I begin if I want to learn about wine?” That is why I have put together this simple wine primer, a set of dos and don'ts for the budding wine lover. Do start with simple and inexpensive wines, and work your way up to the powerhouse bottles. Do try a variety of wines. Trying everything is the only way to build your sensory memory and discover your own tastes. You will never make any progress with wine if you stick to the same Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon, no matter how much you like them (Blue, 2002). People's preferences change dramatically over time. In most cases, the changes are too slow to draw attention, but when people look back at their past preferences, they sometimes find it shocking to realize how much they have changed. These changes cover the gamut from food to entertainment, and they occur in most consumption domains. In addition, they include aspects for which people both increased and decreased their liking over time. A few examples of such changes include realizing that grilled cheese sandwiches are not the culinary ideal anymore, developing a taste for beer, and looking forward to visiting a modern art museum. Often, such changes occur over a consumer's lifetime. Yet knowing that preferences change is different from understanding how and why they change. The primary event that influences preference learning is experience. When examining research on this effect, we identify two classes of factors that influence preference learning. One class of factors (e.g., biology and exposure) has a direct influence, whereby preferences respond to lower-order forces such as biological adaptation and sensory feedback. The second class of factors (e.g., informational goals and social learning) has an indirect influence, whereby preferences are subject to higher-order forces such as cognitive representations of desirable end states. We investigate the role of repeated experience with similar options versus the impact of experience with a greater variety of options. Depending on the level of standardization, even repeated experience with the same product includes some variability. Yet the selection and experience of novel options (or preference exploration) should lead to greater variability of experience in a domain. The key question we investigate herein is the relative impact of each type of experience on preference learning. In doing so, we refine the experience construct by partitioning it into intensiveness (i.e., amount) and extensiveness (i.e., breadth) of experience. In addition, we examine the relative ability of each type of experience to impact the amount of preference learning.