Affective Primacy
Feelings about a product can arrive before any beliefs and then shape how the person reacts to it.
What it is
A first like or dislike with no cognitive basis can steer later judgement, which is why a brand can be liked through conditioning alone. The book uses this to justify attitude-change strategies that target affect directly. On this site it is read alongside Mere Exposure Effect, Tricomponent Model of Attitude and Arousal Interpretation of Emotion.
In effect
A consumer comes to like a product through classical conditioning without acquiring any belief about it.
What it does not say
It is not the same thing as Mere Exposure Effect, which sits close to it on this site but describes a different part of how people decide. It also does not say that the finding reaches every product, buyer or setting; where this page goes beyond the cited research, the step is an inference and is labelled as one.
Sources
- See the article listed above for the work this page draws on.