Article

Marketing Theory
10(4) 315–345
Accounting for consumer ª The Author(s) 2010
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choice: Inter-temporal DOI: 10.1177/1470593110382823
mtq.sagepub.com
decision making in
behavioural perspective

Gordon R. Foxall
University of Cardiff, UK

Abstract
Temporal discounting, which is apparent in all modes of consumer behaviour from the routine
to the addictive, is an evolutionary endowment that has been biologically and culturally
modified through time. Its evolutionary advantage is most obvious in the pre-agricultural
phases of the Pleistocene era, when immediate consumption was essential to both survival
and biological fitness and delay would inhibit both. The capacity to overcome impulsivity,
on which both agrarian and animal husbandry depended, required the development of exec-
utive functions that enable long-term memory, self-rule formation and the self-control of
emotional response to engender behavioural inhibition. In human evolutionary terms, the key
outcome of this development has been the capacity of behaviour to be reinforced by symbolic
as well as functional consequences and the consequent ability to enter into collective inten-
tionality. The paper argues that only a model of consumer choice that incorporates the var-
ious influences on impulsive and inhibited choice and their manifestations can explain both
everyday and extreme consumer behaviour. This process requires the integration of evolu-
tionary psychology with the insights provided by neuroeconomics and reinforcement learning.
A model of consumer choice based on reinforcement learning, the Behavioural Perspective
Model (BPM), enables such integration by synthesizing the range of consumer behaviours
observed in the modern world and the differing patterns of influence exerted by their com-
mon neurobiological and environmental causes.

Keywords
addiction, Behavioural Perspective Model, consumer choice, emotion, evolutionary psychology,
matching law, neuroeconomics, temporal discounting

Corresponding author:
Gordon R. Foxall, Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Aberconway Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF10 3EU
Email: Foxall@Cf.ac.uk
316 Marketing Theory 10(4)

The argument
It may be advantageous to start by briefly mapping out the sequential argument that this paper
pursues. An explanation of consumer behaviour must take account of the whole continuum of
choice from routine everyday purchasing to extreme forms of compulsive and addictive
consumption. This task requires a highly interdisciplinary framework. A mere multidimensional
model that eclectically incorporates whatever factors might be causally relevant is not enough.
The required framework needs to integrate the explanatory variables – social, psychological,
economic and neurophysiological – into a unified causal spectrum that points to their inter-
connections and joint influences on choice. No one paper can contain the whole solution.
Nevertheless, understanding why consumer choice takes the particular variety of forms we
observe must at least start with the search for a means of synthesizing elements of behavioural
economics, evolutionary psychology, and neuroeconomics with the behavioural and affective
sciences on which consumer researchers have for so long relied. This paper pursues a sequential
argument in which both the varied forms of consumer choice and the disciplinary bases required
to account for them are combined. While it does not, of course, provide the necessary com-
prehensive theory, it may serve to define the paradigm within which satisfactory solutions will
evolve.
The paper explores temporal discounting as a key to explaining consumer behaviour over the
continuum and identifies its roots in a near-universal tendency to select the greater or more
immediate of competing rewards. This tendency is revealed by matching research that has
recently been translated from the confines of experimental behavioural economics to the realm
of human consumer choice in natural settings. It describes decision making with respect to
choices that range from the routine and everyday to the extreme and debilitating. Temporal dis-
counting is strongly founded in evolutionary history and its coterminous neurophysiology; over-
coming its strictures on decision making can also be traced to evolutionary developments, both
philogenetic and ontogenetic. The resulting competing neural systems hypothesis is a dominant
source of explanation in the neuroeconomics of decision making and the explanation of choice
over the continuum.
There is, however, another strand to the kind of explanatory network we require. Even evolu-
tionary accounts emphasize the role of environmental contingencies in the formation and pre-
servation of patterns of behaviour. It becomes vital, therefore, to understand the part played by
physical/economic rewards and the social consequences of choice in reinforcing consumer beha-
viour, a task for which the Behavioural Perspective Model (BPM) of purchase and consumption is
well suited. Although the paper proposes the BPM as a means of integrating a number of theoretical
perspectives, an emerging argument is that the kinds of contingencies defined by the model must be
accorded much greater weight in the explanation of consumer choice than has hitherto been the case.
Extensive empirical research now links these contingencies with affective reactions to the settings in
which purchase and consumption occur. This work provides a framework for assessing the centrality
and import of emotionality in consumer choice theory, first for its connection with temporal dis-
counting itself and, second, for its association with the immediate reward structure of consumer
behaviours at all points on the continuum of choice. We can now suggest some of the advantages of
the resulting synthesis in the explanation of consumer behaviour in the various forms that this
spectrum of behaviour proposes. In this paper, attention is specifically directed towards the deter-
minative role of the contingencies of reinforcement defined by the BPM and their relationships with
philogenetic and ontogenetic precursors.
Foxall 317

Routine consumer behaviour

Everyday choice: (e.g. for food brands)

Self-controlled
Instalment buying/credit card usage

Environmental despoliation

Compulsive purchasing

Addictions
Extreme consumer behaviour
Impulsive

Figure 1. The continuum of consumer choice

This analysis raises further questions for marketing theory, notably those of how complete an
explanation of choice can be achieved through the extensional behavioural- and neuro-sciences.
The attendant issues of whether consumer theory requires the incorporation of intentionality and
cognition in order to present a comprehensive account of consumer choice – and, if so, how this is
to be achieved – is under current review.

The continuum of consumer choice

Consumer behaviours may be arrayed on a continuum ranging from the most routine (e.g. everyday
brand selection) to the most extreme (e.g. life-disrupting episodes of addiction). One task of
consumer psychology is to explain the pattern of consumer behaviour exhibited across this range
(Figure 1), and one hypothesis is that positioning on the continuum is determined by the degree of
self-control versus impulsivity exhibited in the behaviour. In support of this, we may note that a
consistent characteristic of consumers, irrespective of the location of their behaviour on the con-
tinuum, is the tendency to discount the future; that is, to value future receipts and rewards less than
current ones even though they are equal in monetary terms. Most people would defer receiving a
payment only if they were compensated by way of a bonus (‘I would prefer to have the $1000 you
owe me today to $1000 in three months’ time and am willing to wait for my money only if you pay
me $1100 at the end of that period’.) Temporal discounting underlies such commonplace socioe-
conomic practices as charging interest on loans, joining a pension scheme only if it promises a
large lump sum on retirement, and taking an exotic vacation this year rather than next even if it
could be obtained more cheaply by waiting.
Because impulsivity is often indexed by measures of the extent to which an individual discounts
the future, much interest has focused on the extreme forms of consumer choice in which dis-
counting is substantial, such as the addictions (e.g. Ainslie, 2001; Rachlin, 2000). But a theory of
consumer behaviour should be able to demonstrate the underlying causal features of choice at the
routine, everyday end of the spectrum in similar terms to those used to explain the more extreme
forms of consumption. The link is provided by evolutionary psychology (Toolby and Cosmides,
1981). Bickel and Johnson (2003) propose that discounting is an evolved mechanism, a mental
module that provided adaptive responses for our ancestors during the Pleistocene era. They explore
318 Marketing Theory 10(4)

Utilitarian
Utilitarian
Reinforcement
Reinforcement
Consumer
Consumer
BehaviorSetting
Behavior Setting Utilitarian
Utilitarian
Consumer Situation Punishment
Punishment

Behavior
Behavior

Informational
Informational
Consumer Situation
Reinforcement
Reinforcement
Learning
Learning History
History
Informational
Informational
Punishment
Punishment

Figure 2. Summative behavioural perspective model (BPM)

this possibility by presenting evidence that temporal discounting is an evolutionary endowment

that has been to some degree culturally modified by, among other things, opportunities for social
settlement and agriculture (Bickel and Johnson, 2003: 251). It is unlikely, however, that a
mechanism ingrained so deeply into our natures by evolutionary change would be modified by
cultural change alone. A comprehensive account must also show how evolutionary change made it
possible for humans to overcome extreme discounting, inhibiting behaviours that would have
impeded the social cooperation and economic gains that have marked more recent human
development, and how these changes impinge on contemporary patterns of consumer choice.
(While a general evolutionary psychological framework has been adopted here, more specific uses
of this paradigm remain controversial, especially in their less critical applications to consumer
research. For a philosophical critique, see Buller, 2005. Buller makes a useful distinction between
the more doctrinaire versions of the paradigm – ‘Evolutionary Psychology’ – and more useful but
more critical approaches – ‘evolutionary psychology’).
The key to this undertaking lies in a synthetic model of contemporary consumer choice in
affluent marketing oriented economies that permits analysis of the cultural contingencies that
shape consumer behaviour over the entire continuum, contingencies that may be assumed to
modify the psychological mechanisms honed in our evolutionary past (Figure 2). In addition, the
theoretical basis of the model links current consumer behaviour with its neurophysiological and
evolutionary foundations. The model has undergone development and has occasioned a large
volume of interpretive, empirical and theoretical work since it was devised (see Foxall, 1990
[2004], 1997, 2005, 2007a, 2009; Foxall et al., 2007). Since accounts of the model are widely
available, it is only summarized here.
The BPM is a selectivist device for the interpretation and explanation of consumer behaviour based
on reward learning in which classes of consumer behaviour are influenced by the pattern of reinfor-
cement signalled by the current consumer behaviour setting. Two principal sources of reinforcement
are apparent for human consumer choice: utilitarian or functional on the one hand, and informational or
symbolic on the other. Economic behaviour in all contexts beyond the subsistence level is the result not
only of the concrete technical benefits that accrue from the acquisition and consumption of resources
but also from the socially mediated meanings that goods have with respect to the status system within
Foxall 319

High utilitarian Low utilitarian

reinforcement reinforcement

High informational ACCOMPLISHMENT ACCUMULATION

reinforcement

Low informational HEDONISM MAINTENANCE

reinforcement

Figure 3. Patterns of reinforcement

The labelling of the four operant behaviour classes derived from the patterns of reinforcement that controls
them is based on a priori reasoning but has proved a useful basis for empirical research.

groups. Any merchantable car will deliver the ability to get from A to B (utilitarian reinforcement); a
Porsche delivers also the social status that provides performance feedback on its owner’s general
success in life and his assumed perspicacity as a wise consumer. Since this informational reinforce-
ment is relative to the social situation, one can easily imagine contexts in which the Porsche driver
attracts less social esteem than the driver of a low carbon footprint automobile. Either way, symbolic
benefits act as reinforcers for car purchase and use. We can combine utilitarian reinforcement and
informational reinforcement in a framework of analysis that suggests four major classes of consumer
behaviour based on the pattern of reinforcement that shapes and maintains them (Figure 3).
The pattern of reinforcement thus comprises the interaction of utilitarian (functional) and
informational (symbolic) benefits net of the costs of behaving. The current behaviour setting
comprises stimuli that predict these outcomes contingent on the enactment of the behaviour; the
behaviour classes are defined according to the pattern of reinforcement. Together with the con-
sumer’s learning history, the outcome of previous consumption, the setting variables form the
consumer situation which is the immediate precursor of and source of influence on behaviour.
A final level of analysis is reached by including the scope of the setting in the model, i.e. the range
of behaviours that is likely to be reinforced; some settings such as banks, dentists’ offices and
gymnasia encourage a single pattern of behaviour or at most a few – we refer to these as (relatively)
closed – while others such as bars, swap meets and department stores make possible a much larger
choice of behaviours – and are known as (relatively) open (Figure 4).
This paper explores (1) the role of these cultural contingencies in an evolutionary context;
(2) the ways in which these contingencies have been modified by contemporary practices; and
(3) the influence of the resulting selectionist forces on current patterns of both routine and extreme
consumer choice. More specifically, it shows how the BPM explains and integrates the various
patterns of consumer behaviour that make up the continuum. First, it describes the importance of
temporal discounting (TD), particularly in terms of its evolutionary basis. Second, it demonstrates
how the evolution of executive functions (EFs), the cognitive elements that make behavioural
inhibition possible, facilitated the development in appropriate circumstances of collective inten-
tionality which is at the heart of modern consumer behaviour from the most everyday to the most
extreme. The development of the EFs is particularly important insofar as it opened up a novel
channel of reinforcement, at least for humans and possibly for some apes and monkeys. The
emergence of symbolic reinforcement made possible the evolution of a wider range of consumer
320 Marketing Theory 10(4)

BEHAVIOR SETTING SCOPE

Closed Open

CC2 CC1
ACCOMPLISHMENT
Fulfilment Status Consumption

CC4 CC3

HEDONISM Inescapable Popular entertainment

entertainment

CC6 CC5
ACCUMULATION
Token−based Saving and collecting
consumption
CC8 CC7
MAINTENANCE
Mandatory consumption Routine purchasing

Figure 4. The BPM contingency matrix

The labelling of the consumer situations attributable to the eight contingency categories is based on a priori
reasoning but has proved a useful basis for empirical research. CC ¼ contingency category.

behaviours that took the control of behaviour beyond the immediate contingencies, placing it more
firmly within the influence of social interactions and social expectations and raising the prospect of
societal developments based on collective intentionality.

Temporal discounting and consumer choice

The commonplace form of discounting assumed in economics and finance is exponential, in which
the rate of discounting is constant at all delays:

Vi ¼ Ai ekD ð1Þ
where
Vi ¼ the present value of a delayed reward,
Ai ¼ the amount of a delayed reward,
k ¼ a constant proportional to the degree of temporal discounting
Di ¼ the delay of the reward
e ¼ the base of natural logarithms.
Foxall 321

Figure 5. Exponential and hyperbolic discounting: (a) Exponential discount curves from two differently-sized
rewards available at different times; (b) Hyperbolic curves for two differently-sized rewards available at
different times.
Source: Dr. George Ainslie. Reproduced by permission.

The significance of the constant rate of discounting in the exponential model is that the value of
a larger reward that is delivered later is at all times greater than that of a smaller reward that is
received earlier: the larger later reward (LLR) is always preferred by an individual to a smaller
sooner reward (SSR) in this choice situation (Figure 5a). In many consumption contexts,
however, consumers’ temporal discounting is more accurately described by a hyperbolic
function:
Vi ¼ Ai = ð1 þ kDi Þ ð2Þ

in which the rate of discounting varies with the extent of the delay faced by the consumer (e.g. Ainslie,
1992, 2001; Rick and Loewenstein, 2008). In this case, while the LLR is initially more highly valued,
as the SSR becomes available its value surpasses that of the LLR and it is selected (Figure 5b).
Our working hypothesis is that the various consumer behaviours arrayed on the continuum of
consumer choice (Figure 1) differ from one another in terms of the extent to which consumers
practice temporal discounting. Preference of an LLR over an SSR is depicted in terms of self-control,
whereas preference for an SSR over an LLR is described as impulsivity. Routine consumption, typi-
fied by the everyday purchasing of familiar brands of non-durables such as foods, does not involve
discounting and is generally under the consumer’s ability to practise self-control. Even less frequent
consumer choices like occasional gambling can come into this category. Although many such pur-
chases are described as ‘impulsive’ in the sense of being unplanned, they are not characterized by the
kind of impulsiveness that results from the temporal discounting that is a feature of more extreme
322 Marketing Theory 10(4)

consumer behaviour. Buying a new brand of cookies to try does not disrupt consumer behaviour by
requiring raising extra funds; having an extra glass of wine with one’s restaurant dinner does not sig-
nal the onset of alcoholism; and buying a more expensive coffee-table book as a special gift does not
spell financial ruin. The consequences of these behaviours can be accommodated easily within the
consumer’s normal pattern of conduct even if they require small savings to be made elsewhere.
Less routine and more impulsive in the temporal discounting sense is the purchase of durables
like cars and houses, which cause many consumers to incur debt which may impose costs far
beyond those paid by the person who does not require a mortgage or credit terms. Yet the tem-
porally closer option of buying sooner rather than saving up before buying is selected even though
the costs of the former are known in advance. Considerable impulsivity is apparent also in con-
sumer behaviour that leads to environmental despoliation, usually because the current benefits of
consuming can be not only temporally separated but mentally encapsulated from the longer term
costly effects of the behaviour on the ecological system. Compulsive purchasing borders on
addiction; the indisputable addictions of problem gambling, problem drinking, overeating to the
point of obesity, involve discounting the future at a very high rate.
The underlying mechanism of temporal discounting in consumer choice appears to be the
phenomenon of behavioural matching discovered by Herrnstein (1970, 1979). The matching law
(Eqn 3) is based on the observation that the rate of responding on two choices matches the rate of
reinforcement obtained from each:

B1 = ðB1 þ B2 Þ ¼ AR1 = ðAR1 þ AR2 Þ ð3Þ

which simplifies to

B1 = B2 ¼ AR1 = AR2 ð4Þ

where B1 B2 are behaviours on each of two choices 1 and 2, and AR1 and AR2 are the amounts of
reinforcement obtained from each of these respectively. The behaviour ratio (B1/B2) is, however,
not only directly proportional to the ratio of amounts of reinforcement received (AR1/AR2); it is
indirectly proportional to the amount of delay encountered before the reinforcements are received.
Therefore, Eqn (4) can be expanded to
B1 = B2 ¼ ðAR1 = AR2 Þ ðDR2 = DR1 Þ ð5Þ

where D1 and D2 are the temporal delays imposed before the reinforcements are respectively
delivered.
It is this relationship between delay and choice that lies at the heart of hyperbolic discounting.
Matching behaviour involves the choice of the option offering the greater or faster reward.
Matching and discounting and the impulsivity they engender have been found to characterize
a whole swathe of consumer behaviour beyond that of routine everyday purchasing and
consumption. Yet the latter is also marked by matching (Foxall et al., 2004).
Consideration of the underlying decision process is important for understanding matching
behaviour in different contexts, such as those treated in this paper. Herrnstein (1982; see also
Herrnstein and Vaughan, 1980; Vaughan and Herrnstein, 1987) proposes that the process is
melioration in which the decision maker maximizes immediate (or, as he calls them, local) returns;
Foxall 323

that is, at each choice point he or she selects the alternative that offers the higher level of reward.
Over a series of choices, melioration may not yield the kind of global maximization assumed by
rational choice economics, though in many consumer-buying contexts the assumptions of both
approaches are similar.

Evolutionary bases
Temporal discounting
The tendency toward temporal discounting may have been acquired by the ancestors of modern
consumers during Pleistocene times; temporal discounting may even be a cognitive module that
represents an adaption to the conditions encountered at that time that had to be overcome in order
to optimize fitness rates. Bickel and Marsch (2000) draw attention to a pattern of environmental
influence during and since the Pleistocene that is consistent with a modifiable tendency toward
temporal discounting. Before the development of agriculture some 13,000 years ago, temporal
horizons would likely have been very short. Prior to these, circumstances, in the predominantly
hunter–gatherer economy, wholly favoured the immediate consumption of food as and when it was
encountered. Opportunistic capture of wild animals, seasonal harvesting of wild berries and fruits,
none of which were stored against future need nor incurred costs of production, would be beha-
viourally and economically optimal. The future could be and was almost totally discounted. The
advent of agrarian cultivation and animal husbandry was an indication that temporal horizons had
already shifted toward a greater concern for and ability to manage the future and hence a lower rate
of temporal discounting.
Reasons cited by Bickel and Marsch for the transition to agriculture are: low availability of wild
food and consequent increased costs of hunting and gathering; greater availability of domesticable
wild plants that could thrive in a wider range of habitats as a result of climate change, coupled with
shorter harvesting periods and reduced costs of organized cultivation; the cumulative development
of horticultural and agricultural technologies; and a higher population density once the trend
toward agriculture had begun. The coming of writing would have had a catalytic effect on the
progress of organized cultivation:

This analysis suggests that a consideration of long-term outcomes or, in other words, the
development of a long temporal horizon results from the decreased availability of resources sup-
porting long-term temporal horizons . . . [T]hinking of the future does not come naturally to us
unless it is the most attractive option (i.e. less costly) relative to other options. (Bickel and
Marsch, 2000: 350)

What emerges from this analysis is that change is the result of local contingencies of reinforce-
ment. We can interpret Bickel and Marsh’s account by arguing that the advent of agriculture was
marked actively by a shift in the pattern of reinforcement as the means of attainment of utilitarian
reinforcement altered through natural and technological developments and as new means became
available for performance feedback (informational reinforcement) in the form of status, power and
the observed leisure of others. Social changes would also make these considerations (which arise
from changes in informational reinforcement) more salient in an increasingly affluent and stable
society. The most we can actually say is that genetic change represents a guiding principle for
behavioural change in the absence of countervailing environmental contingencies; but as the
324 Marketing Theory 10(4)

pattern of reinforcement is modified it is the contingencies that are more immediately powerful in
modifying behaviour and socio-technical practices.
Further extension of the temporal perspective adopted by our ancestors was promoted,
according to Bickel and Marsch, by the transition from paganism to Christianity. More recently,
however, they maintain that social and cultural influences have reshaped Western societies in the
direction of a shorter term temporal purview. In support of this they draw attention to the tendency
in contemporary, affluent societies for consumers to receive immediate gratification and leisure
which are in turn made available by the availability of low-cost reinforcers that can be delivered
and consumed immediately. In addition, they cite changes in community and family structures
which have removed forces that hitherto inhibited consumption. These changes promote a discern-
able redirection of temporal perspective toward the short term and the concomitant expansion of
extreme consumer behaviours such as drug dependence, pathological gambling and other forms of
addiction.
The implication again is that changes in the environmental contingencies are responsible for
these transitions in the predominant nature of consumer choice. An inference that can be drawn
from this is that the contingencies are more powerful than, or at least capable of restraining,
evolutionary forces. This appears to be an argument in favour of operant contingencies rather than
evolutionary psychology. But the reality of the situation is more complicated than this. First, it is
necessary to acknowledge the dual nature of reinforcement for human economic behaviour. There
have been vast influences on the extent and form of informational reinforcement in particular as
societies have become more complex and affluent. Utilitarian reinforcement and informational
reinforcement themselves have evolutionary antecedents that any explanation of economic choice
must take into consideration in an orderly and argued manner. Second, the pattern of utilitarian and
informational reinforcement and the scope of consumer behaviour settings are manifest in emo-
tional rewards which themselves have evolutionary and behavioural implications. Third, we have
to explain why routine consumer behaviour is characterized by self-control in the face of consu-
mers’ matching behaviour.
Explanations of temporal discounting that invoke the role of evolutionary forces more
explicitly are put forward by Ainslie (2001). Ainslie (2001: 45–7) asks how the pattern of
behaviour described by the hyperbolic curve which reflects a tendency toward internal conflicts
and preference reversals and which potentially puts a person at a competitive disadvantage
could have survived the process of natural selection. He speculates that there might be two
reasons. First, such behaviour could have preserved genes at the expense of the individual.
Second, they could have been a by-product until too recently to have influenced evolution.
These are arguments that at least put the evolutionary case – Ainslie himself puts them forward
somewhat tentatively – but which are on their own level irrefutable and therefore of limited
scientific value. Penn (2003), in the context of presenting his thesis that environmental prob-
lems stem from the prevalence of certain modes of consumption that, while ecologically dama-
ging, are sustained by aspects of our evolved nature, argues a little more specifically that there
is an evolutionary basis for temporal discounting. Although he puts forward several arguments
for this thesis, by his own admission the evidence is not strong. First, he claims that temporal
discounting is viewed in evolutionary theory as ‘an adaptation to enhance individual survival or
reproductive success’ (Penn, 2003: 284). Although he notes he can adduce no direct evidence,
the reasoning appears to be that animals, squirrels for instance, that spend too much time col-
lecting, preparing and storing food may not live to consume it if they thereby fail to attend to
their more pressing survival needs. Second, temporal discounting is sensible because there is no
Foxall 325

certainty that future payoffs will actually be forthcoming. Animals with shorter lifespans, more-
over, may find it advantageous to discount the future in favour of immediate consumption.
There is some suggestive evidence for this proposition in that men, whose life expectancy is
the lower, discount the future more steeply than women; and women are more likely to be con-
cerned about and engaged in environmental conservation. Again, these arguments do not lead to
testable hypotheses. Most of the temporal behaviour, be it of squirrels or men and women, is
more easily accounted for by changes in environmental contingencies than by philogenetic
imperatives. The difficulty of this type of explanation is that it is so generic that it could apply
almost anywhere in a system that adopts the evolutionary heuristic (Dennett, 1995). Some more
specific formulation is necessary if the argument from evolutionary psychology is to convince
not only those sympathetic to this line of explanation but, especially, those who criticize evolu-
tionary psychological theory on the basis that its adaptationism amounts to little more than just-
so stories.

Executive functions
A more constructive approach is in line with the view of Tooby and Cosmides (1992), to the effect
that the persistence to modern times of mental modules that would have enhanced fitness during
the Pleistocene is responsible for current adaptations to environmental contingencies. Barkley
(2001; see also Barkley et al., 2001), for instance takes an altogether more convincing approach to
the evolutionary psychology of temporal discounting versus self-regulation by considering the
operations and effects of the EFs defined as a means of self-regulation, which was an evolutionary
adaptation within group-living species. ‘The EFs serve to shift the control of behaviour from the
immediate context, social others, and the temporal now to self-regulation by internal representa-
tions regarding the hypothetical social future!’ (Barkley, 2001: 1; see also Ardila, 2008; Jurado and
Rosselli, 2007; Lyon and Krasnegor, 1996).
What precisely are EFs? Barkley describes them as ‘composed of the major classes of behaviour
toward oneself used in self-regulation’ (2001: 4, emphasis original). One of these behaviours is
response inhibition which ensures that a response to a stimulus can be delayed and that, once
begun, responses can be interrupted. Barkley argues that it is not just the response that must be
delayed: it is the decision, too. The prepotent response is that ‘for which immediate reinforcement
is available within a particular context or which has been previously associated with that response
in that context’ (2001: 4). Positive and negative reinforcement must be taken into account since,
while some impulsive behaviour produces immediate reward, others serve to avoid or escape from
aversive stimulation. Such activity, e.g. selecting an LLR over an SSR, requires some sort of
internal capacity to sense the future,

to construct hypothetical futures, particularly for social consequences . . . the weighing of alternative
responses and their temporally proximal and distal outcomes – a calculation of risk/benefit ratios over
time. Some neuropsychological mechanism must have evolved that permitted this relatively rapid
construction of hypothetical social futures while simultaneously engaging in a temporally discounting
economic analysis of immediate versus delayed outcomes. (Barkely, 2001: 5; for further discussion of
the neuropsychological associations of EFs, see Denckla, 1996)

EFs evolved as an adaptation to the problem of taking past occurrences into account and
anticipating future events including the consequences of current actions within social contexts. The
EF system consists of 4 EFs: (1) nonverbal working memory – sensing to the self; (2) verbal
326 Marketing Theory 10(4)

working memory – internalization of speech; (3) self-regulation of affect/motivation/arousal –

affective and motivational properties or valences (somatic markers; Damasio, 1994) which
are associated with mentally representations of verbal and visual information to oneself; and
(4) reconstitution – covert self-directed play involving analysis and synthesis of sensory-motor and
symbolic information.
The nature of executive functioning is:

internalization of sensory-motor action, self-speech, and emotion/motivation along with the internali-
zation of play (reconstitution) [to] provide an exceptionally powerful set of mind tools that greatly
facilitate adaptive functioning. In a sense, these EFs permit the private simulation of actions within
specific settings that can be tested out mentally for their probable consequences (somatic markers)
before a response is selected for eventual execution’. (Barkley, 2001: 9; for behavioural analytic view-
points, see Hayes et al., 1996; McIlvane et al., 1996).

Reasons for believing the EFs to be adaptive follow from the necessary properties of adaptations:
universality, complexity, improbability, and functional design, all of which are characteristic of the
EFs.
Adaptation must do something useful for the organism: ‘A major purpose of the executive
system is self-control, given that the EFs are types of self-directed behaviour humans use to self-
regulate their social conduct for future ends’ (Barkley, 2001: 13; see also Barkley, 1996a, 1996b).
Barkley argues further that EFs evolved in order to facilitate reciprocal altruism or social
exchange. I would suggest that they developed more fundamentally than this in order to facilitate
collective intentionality. This adaptation evolved because of the social niche and lifestyle in which
humanity found itself: ‘the problem or problems to be solved by the EF/SR system were of a social
nature’ (Barkley, 2001: 14): i.e. Group hunting by males, Development of working memory,
Private sensing and speaking to the self, and Need for inhibition. Barkley suggests five major
activities for which inhibition might be required: (1) reciprocal altruism (delayed social exchange)
and formation of social coalitions; (2) imitation; (3) tool use; (4) mimetic skill and communication;
and (5) self-defence and innovation against social manipulation.
The adaptive problems that each EF addresses can be defined through consideration of the
ancestral environment in which human mental processes evolved, what Tooby and Cosmides
(1992) refer to as the environment of ancestral adaptation, or EEA. Some features of that envi-
ronment that impinge on human problem solving and behavioural regulation may persist today: for
example ‘despite marked changes in culture and technology, humans still live as groups that
involve nonkin with whom they engage in reciprocal altruism or social exchange’ (Barkley, 2001:
13). Barkley considers that the principal extra-individual agents that would pose problems that
would require solution through the development of an EF are other people who compose the social
arrangements in which individuals lived and worked. In particular, the need for EF development
arose from competition with other people. The common thread appears to be social exchange and
imitation through vicarious learning. This will necessarily involve inhibiting prepotent (immediate
self-interested) responses, hindsight and foresight (working memory), and the temporal
discounting of consequences arising from reciprocal exchange, and bargaining. (Barkley, 2001:
17 paraphrase). The approach Barkley suggests has advantages in its ability to engage research
at the neurophysiological level that is not possible through vaguer notions that the EFs involve
planning and decision functions devoid of any understanding of the adaptive framework that might
have led to their development.
Foxall 327

The competing neural systems hypothesis

The development of executive functions may not have required the development of specific brain
parts; rather, the recent emergence of these functions in humans may be related to increased
interconnectivity among neurons (Ardila, 2008). Ardila (2008) argues that there may be two
fundamental FEs: metacognitive (including problem solving, planning, and working memory) and
emotional–motivational (which is implicated in the coordination of cognition and emotion). The
inclusion of the second and an executive function might be thought controversial but Ardila
contends that most definitions of executive functions include both and strive for unity. Moreover,
while the metacognitive executive functions on which research has concentrated are useful in
‘solving external and emotionally neutral problems . . . [w]hen social situations and biological
drives are involved, the ability to rationally solve problems seems to decrease in a significant way’
(Ardila, 2008: 97). He further argues that these may depend on different brain systems (cf. Barkley,
1997a, 1997b; Xu et al., 2009). There is evidence at least to the effect that these two styles of
executive functioning play an important role in the choice of behaviour involved in temporal
discounting (Bickel and Yi, 2008;1 Bickel et al., 2007). McClure et al. (2004) represent these
rational and emotional elements in decision-making thus:

rðtÞ ¼ byt rðoÞ ð6Þ

where r(t) ¼ the value of the time-discounted reward at time t, r(0) is the value of the reward if
received ‘now’, i.e., t ¼ 0. ß reflects the emotional element in decision making, and y is the stan-
dard exponential discount rate (see also Rolls, 2008: 517). fMRI scans of human subjects as they
chose SSR and LLR indicate that consideration of immediate rewards produced brain activity
implicating the ß parameter representing emotion in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the medial
prefrontal cortex/pregenual cingulate cortex, and the ventral striatum (McClure et al., 2004). The
yt parameter in equation (6) was represented by activation in the lateral prefrontal cortex (which is
related to higher cognitive functioning), and part of the parietal cortex associated with numerical
processing (Rolls, 2008: 518). McClure et al. (2004) summarize their results:

short-term impatience is driven by the limbic system [ventral striatum, medial OFC], which responds
preferentially to immediate rewards and is less sensitive to the value of later rewards, whereas long-run
patience is mediated by the lateral prefrontal cortex and associated structures, which are able to eval-
uate trade-offs between abstract rewards, including rewards in the more distant future.

Interpretations of these results vary from the authors’ view that the brain does not discount
hyperbolically as Ainslie (1992) argues, but that different parts of it discount exponentially, to the
view that the data show that both limbic and prefrontal areas are characterized by separate
hyperbolic functions (Ainslie and Monteresso, 2004; Ross et al., 2008).

Patterns of reinforcement in consumer choice

While all post-vertebral animals appear to be subject to operant conditioning through the oper-
ation of utilitarian (functional) reinforcement, humans (and possibly some other primates; see,
for instance Mithen, 1996) are subject in addition to the effects of informational or symbolic
reward. The development of EFs appears to be specifically related to the human susceptibility
to symbolic reinforcement and this is closely related to the development of language. The
328 Marketing Theory 10(4)

capacity to be influenced not simply by naturally occurring stimuli but by humanly devised sti-
muli that refer to those natural elements requires explanation in terms of intentionality, under-
stood in its philosophical sense as ‘aboutness’. Some actions such as believing and desiring are
intrinsically about something other than themselves: we do not simply believe; we believe that
p; we do not just desire: we desire that p; and so on (see, for instance, Dennett, 1996). Language
is intrinsically intentional in this way and its acquisition permits not only new dimensions of
expression and communication but the capacity for one’s behaviour to be reinforced by symbols
that stand for naturally occurring stimuli. The cave paintings at Lascaux (as, indeed throughout
the Dordogne and elsewhere) are representations of hunting scenes that depict not only the
physical stimuli embodied in animal, hunter and weapon but also the prestige, success and hon-
our accruing to the person who had made the kill and brought home the food. Symbols permit
the recording of performance feedback which in turn affects the rate at which the behaviours
that produced it are re-enacted. They are essential therefore to the operation of informational
or symbolic reinforcement. It is still far from certain how far therefore behaviour of some
nonhuman animals is reinforced in this way; what is most germane to the present discussion
is that humans, by virtue of possessing highly sophisticated languages, have it in abundance.
Hence, the power of the physical contingencies that motivate behaviour according to the
three-term contingency can be influenced by the actions of verbally-based contingencies that
may augment or even supersede the naturally-occurring reward system. A graphic example is
that of human subjects who were ostensibly reinforced for their participation in an operant
experiment by small coins and pieces of food for which they could work, but who preferred
to see how far they could throw these items out of the window rather than to accumulate them
as rewards for their efforts. When the experimenter began to post information regarding the suc-
cess of each participant in earning the small reinforcers, however, performance improved rap-
idly and became increasingly sensitive to the symbolic reinforcement thus provided (Wearden,
1988). Moreover, unlike typical animal subjects in operant experiments, humans show beha-
vioural insensitivity to changes in the reinforcement contingencies (e.g. schedules) operating;
their behaviour is frequently influenced by the rules they have derived from past contingencies
and by instructions provided by experimenters. The explanation for this behaviour apparently
lies in humans’ use of language to modify for themselves the rules that govern their
performance even though these bear little or no relation to the contingencies actually in oper-
ation. Language, coupled with the ability to act intentionally, seems at the heart of this kind of
influence on human choice (Foxall and Oliveira-Castro, 2010).
Intentionality is also central to the activities which, as Barkley and others have argued, the
emergence of the EFs facilitated. Human society is a construction based on collective intention-
ality, agreement among men and women that certain naturally occurring elements have special
significance simply because everyone agrees that they do (Searle, 1995). Pieces of paper printed
with particular promises are money only because the people who fall within the jurisdiction of the
issuing authority agree among themselves that they can settle debts. Barack Obama is President of
the United States ultimately only because enfranchised Americans say he is. This collective
intentionality must be backed by rules, laws, and perhaps political force before it can successfully
shape human behaviour and social institutions (Searle, 1995; cf. Gilbert, 1989; Tuomela, 2002).
But its central underlying legitimacy derives from linguistic and other symbolic commonalities.
But the significance of the development of EFs may be found in the consequent augmentation of
human capacities for intentional understanding, collective intentionality, and susceptibility to
informational reinforcement (Foxall, 2007b). The emergence of social cooperation, for instance,
Foxall 329

that is well recognized as relying on EFs involves a capacity for behaviour to be reinforced through
mutual reward or reciprocal altruism, and this in turn relies on a system of symbols by which the
behaviour of oneself and others can be represented abstractly and sequentially.
In sum, for much of the Pleistocene period, human behaviour was reinforced by contingency-
based consequences; lack of language prevented rule governance of behaviour; at best primitive
gestural signalling was possible. This might be useful in the context of the opportunistic finding
of food and its immediate consumption. Whether EFs developed as a result of further brain devel-
opment or the proliferation of neural interconnectivity is less important than the physiological
basis provided by this change for a wide range of cooperative ventures. It would have been impos-
sible however to exploit these ventures such as agriculture had they relied solely on developments
in the physical contingencies; they depended vitally also on the development of collective inten-
tionality based on informational reinforcement.
The psychological significance of this development is that behaviour has ceased to be influ-
enced primarily by contingency-based reinforcements occurring in the natural world (which are
most clearly demonstrable by the reinforcement schedules imposed in the animal laboratory) and
has come under the influence of the patterns of reinforcement inherent in relative levels of utili-
tarian and informational rewards. How can consideration of patterns of reinforcement contribute
to our understanding of temporal discounting and the EFs during the recent history of humans
as producers and consumers?

Emotionality and consumer choice

Evidence for this view comes from the establishment of an evolutionarily based understanding of
the affective–motivational component of consumer behaviour, and by showing how this is related
to (a) the contingencies of reinforcement that have shaped consumer choice and which now
maintain its patterns; (b) an evolutionary past that would have made those emotions essential to the
biological fitness of humans; and (c) a neurophysiological present that links the evolutionary past
with current patterns of behaviour.

Emotionality and contingency

Understanding the potential roles of utilitarian reinforcement and informational reinforcement in
the shaping and maintenance of behaviour is not sufficient on its own to account for consumer
behaviour over the continuum of consumer choice. We must in addition take into consideration the
effect of consumer behaviour setting scope, the openness/closeness of settings that differ in the
extent to which they promote or inhibit particular responses. Although this provides a selectivist
approach to the analysis of behaviour, in which the operant conditioning of choice is analogous to
the selective role of natural selection, we need to bind these more closely with evolutionary
processes in order to provide a convincing explanation of consumer behaviour. The link is found in
the role of emotion in encouraging the tendency to discount the future. Emotional responses to the
contingencies of reinforcement signalled by consumer behaviour settings are a link to consumer
behaviour in the past as well as the present and all across the range of behaviours indicated by the
continuum. But an evolutionary explanation requires that they be related to human brain devel-
opment during the EEA and to physiological bases of behaviour that are the result of natural
selection. Both the tendency toward temporal discounting and the capacity for behavioural inhi-
bition can be traced to these biological dimensions.
330 Marketing Theory 10(4)

Rolls (1999, 2005, 2008) proposes that emotional responses are linked systematically to operant
contingencies to the extent that he defines emotionality as the direct outcome of reinforcement
contingencies: ‘ . . . emotions are states elicited by rewards and punishers, that is, by instrumental
reinforcers’ (2005: 11, emphasis in original). He designates the role of conditioning in emotion-
ality by suggesting a two-stage process in which stimuli first reinforce the emitted behaviour that
generated them (instrumental or operant behaviour) and, through Pavlovian association, elicit
emotional responses within the brain. Rolls’s theory attributes a specific role to the genes: that
of determining particular goals (or behavioural outcomes) and thereby making particular operant
classes of behaviour more probable (Rolls, 2005: 59–60). Thus particular actions are not geneti-
cally specified, a state of affairs that would require a remarkably complicated and specialized sys-
tem of behavioural control; rather, genes identify those classes of action that produce a particular
consequence or class of consequences which can be reached by a variety of behavioural means.
Genetic factors, therefore, select the reinforcers that will make particular behaviours more likely
to occur, and thereby increase the frequency of behaviours that convey some ontogenetic advan-
tage. In other words, patterns of operant behaviour, rather than individual responses, are geneti-
cally predisposed. This does not mean that behaviour itself is genetically determined, since
environmental contingencies will influence which particular actions are selected and thus which
molar patterns of responding are apparent. Operant functioning is therefore shaped in a general
way by genetic factors but the selection of particular molar patterns of behaviour relies in turn
on the neurophysiological responses to different behavioural consequences which determine
whether such outcomes of behaviour are reinforcing or punishing.
Mehrabian and Russell (1974) propose the theory that physical or social stimuli in the envi-
ronment directly affect the emotional state of an individual, thereby influencing his or her beha-
viour in it. The three dimensions, pleasure, arousal and dominance, constitute a common core of
human emotional response to all stimuli, regardless of the number of modalities of sensation
involved, which mediate approach–avoidance behaviour (Mehrabian, 1980; for discussion in the
context of consumer choice, see Foxall, 2005). Measures of these dimensions are factorially
orthogonal (independent of each other), so that any level of one may be accompanied by any level
of the other two (Russell and Mehrabian, 1977; see also Yani-de-Soriano and Foxall, 2006). Plea-
sure–displeasure is a feeling state that can be assessed readily with self-report, such as semantic
differential measures or with behavioural indicators, such as smiles, laughter, and, in general pos-
itive versus negative facial expressions. Arousal–unarousal is a feeling state varying along a single
dimension ranging from sleep to frantic excitement. Arousal–unarousal is most directly assessed
by verbal report or with behavioural indicators such as vocal activity (positive and negative), facial
activity (positive and negative expressions), speech rate, and speech volume. Dominance–submis-
siveness is a feeling state that can be assessed from verbal reports using the semantic differential
method. Research has shown systematic relationships between the emotional variables and con-
sumer behaviour. Pleasure, arousal and dominance have shown to mediate more overt consumer
behaviour, such as desire to affiliate with others in the setting, desire to stay in or escape from the
setting, and willingness to spend money and consume (Foxall and Yani-de-Soriano, 2005; Yani-
de-Soriano and Foxall, 2006).
The link with contingency-shaped consumer behaviour stems from the possibility that pleasure,
arousal and dominance respectively reflect utilitarian reinforcement, informational reinforcement
and consumer behaviour setting scope, i.e. that Mehrabian and Russell’s verbal measures of the
three emotional variables they posit are typically reports of the eliciting stimuli and rewarding con-
sequences of behaviour that the BPM summarizes in these ways (Foxall, 1994, 1997). That this is
Foxall 331

BEHAVIOR SETTING SCOPE

Closed Open

CC2 CC1
ACCOMPLISHMENT
PLEASURE PLEASURE
AROUSAL AROUSAL
Dominance DOMINANCE

CC4 CC3
HEDONISM pleasure PLEASURE
AROUSAL arousal
dominance DOMINANCE

CC6 CC5

ACCUMULATION pleasure pleasure

AROUSAL AROUSAL
dominance DOMINANCE

CC8 CC7
MAINTENANCE PLEASURE pleasure
AROUSAL arousal
Dominance DOMINANCE

Figure 6. The relationship between emotional response and behavioural contingencies

indeed so is borne out by a number of studies which show that the contingencies of reinforcement
depicted by the BPM matrix can be systematically related to the patterns of emotional response
proposed by Mehrabian and Russell (1974): pleasure, arousal and dominance. The results of these
studies are summarized in Figure 6. Moreover, these emotions can be systematically related first to
evolutionary imperatives during the Pleistocene and second to evolved physiological mechanisms
in the brain (Tooby and Cosmides, 2008).
The pattern of results obtained in these studies – eight separate investigations conducted across
three cultures through two languages – is shown in Figure 6. Pleasure means were higher rather
than lower wherever the model indicated that utilitarian reinforcement would be greater rather than
smaller (as shown by upper case versus lower case typeface). Moreover, the finding that pleasure,
arousal and dominance indeed vary as predicted with utilitarian reinforcement, informational
reinforcement and consumer behaviour setting scope – as, indeed, does behaviour – extends
Rolls’s two-step portrayal of the roles of instrumental and classical conditioning in the generation
of emotion. Figure 7 proposes how the extended relationship might be depicted. These considera-
tions have important implications for the elaboration of the BPM. In order to appreciate the impli-
cations of this reasoning and the findings with respect to the relationship of the contingency
categories and emotional response for the BPM, we need to distinguish the reinforcing conse-
quences of behaviour, i.e. the environmental stimuli that influence the rate at which similar beha-
viour is subsequently enacted, from the rewarding effects of the emotions elicited by the
332 Marketing Theory 10(4)

Operant conditioning

SR

Antecedent : Behavior Consequence

Remot
SD
CONSUMER SITUATION

LH
Respondent conditioning

Executive functions

Figure 7. Reward, emotion and choice

contingencies that relate these environmental events to the behaviour that produced them. The
BPM portrays behaviour as the outcome of the current behaviour setting (the discriminative stimuli
and motivating operations that signal the reinforcing and punishing consequences of action) and
the consumer’s learning history. Hitherto, specific factors that shape a learning history, the record
of previous behaviour and its reinforcing and punishing consequences, have not been specified, but
it is possible now to locate them at least in part in the rewarding emotional responses elicited in the
process of reward generation. This is suggested in Figure 7 by the feedback loop that links emotion
and learning history. The implication of this conjecture is that the three emotional responses, plea-
sure, arousal and dominance, have explanatory value in a theory of human economic choice which
inheres in their contribution to the repetition of rewarded behaviour (reinforcement) and the
diminution or extinction of behaviour that meets with aversive consequences (punishment). These
emotions can, moreover, have a strong effect on current behaviours, unless they are effectively
tempered by the operation of the EFs.

Pleasure, arousal and dominance during the pleistocene

As Kendrick et al. (1998) point out, an evolutionary psychological explanation must show that
these emotions would have been adaptive during the EEA. These authors pinpoint the essential
problems as: face recognition, language learning, the perception and understanding of dominance
in status hierarchies, and the perception and understanding of agreeableness of others. Face rec-
ognition is closely related to the need to recognize others as part of the social group or as alien to it,
but also to read the emotional states of others so that appropriate approach or avoidance behaviours
can be enacted. Perhaps this would better be called person recognition since it encompasses more
than the face: body language, voice recognition, attribution of friendliness to the tone of voice, etc.
matter a great deal. Moreover, the essential factor in this seems to be perception by exception: the
identification of the degree of discrepancy presented by these stimuli from a norm that is adjudged
safe. If so, this ability is a facet of what Mehrabian and Russell (1974) refer to as arousal. Humans
Foxall 333

can be expected to think about their relative positions in status groups as these reflect dominance
and submissiveness (of themselves and others). Dominance is, furthermore, another of the fun-
damental human emotions studied by Mehrabian and Russell (1974). As far as the detection of
agreeableness or pleasantness is concerned, this ability would surely apply not only to the social
but to the physical environment, and is as such close to what Mehrabian and Russell (1974) argued
for as a basic human emotional phenomenon: moreover, as they pointed out, the pleasantness of
environments is measured by the construct pleasure.
Kendrick et al. (1998) note that agreeableness and dominance emerge from factor analytical
studies as ‘the main axes of a circumplex of interpersonal terms’ (citing Wiggins and Broughton,
1985; see also Foxall, 2005); that cross-cultural research also implicates the prevalence of words
relating to these concepts in language across cultures (White, 1980). White’s argument is that
hominid development designed human minds to be especially sensitive to issues arising from the
dominance and agreeableness of others. It seems obvious that people’s everyday problems with
other people involve these dimensions. Kendrick et al. (1998: 488) conclude that ‘From an evolu-
tionary perspective, the tendency to think about other people in terms of dominance and agreeable-
ness is thus fundamental to human cognition’. Closely connected with this is the necessity of
humans’ having means of evaluating and responding to potential mates, which rely also on notions
of agreeableness/pleasantness and dominance. Specific mechanisms detect anger and hostility in
others. Angry faces are detectable on the basis of their being discrepant from happy faces. This
ties in well with the argument that pleasure, arousal and dominance are fundamental human emo-
tional responses. These three basic emotional reactions to consumer environments must, it
emerges, be central also to a cognitive evolutionary psychology. Moreover, a strong argument can
be put that psychological hedonism, the avoidance of pain and enhancement of pleasure, constitu-
tes an ultimate human motive (Sober and Wilson, 1998).

Neurophysiological bases of pleasure, arousal and dominance

If these three emotions are primary adaptations, their operation should be manifest at the phy-
siological level. Barrett et al. (2007; see also Barrett, 2005) confirm Mehrabian and Russell’s
(1974) central positioning of pleasure, arousal and dominance as fundamental to understanding
the mental representation of emotion but conceptualize the relationships among them rather
differently. They argue that pleasure–displeasure constitutes ‘core affect’ which reflects the
helpfulness or harmfulness of stimulus events, whether they are likely to reward or threaten,
whether they should be accepted or rejected (Barrett et al., 2007: 377). This strengthens the
view that these hedonic considerations are redolent of utilitarian reinforcement, something
that is echoed by Panskepp (1998: 112), who looks beyond the experience of positive feelings
they involve toward their indication that the organism is faced with something that is bio-
logically useful. ‘’’Useful’’ stimuli . . . inform the brain of their potential to restore the body
toward homeostatic equilibrium when it has deviated from its biologically dictated ‘‘set
point’’ level’. Affective processes are central to the homeostatic process: the experience of
pleasure denotes that equilibrium has been restored, e.g. because hunger or thirst has been
assuaged. As an index of material, biological equilibrium, mediated by tangible physical
events, and based on the biogenic influences on behaviour that give rise to primary rein-
forcement, the occurrence of pleasure is consistent with what consumer behaviour analysis
understands as utilitarian reinforcement. And what can be assumed to follow in the case of
primary reinforcers can also be expected to hold for their associated secondary reinforcers. It
334 Marketing Theory 10(4)

is encouraging also to note that research on the ‘evolutionary substrates of socio-emotional

processes’ provides a bridge between the neurochemical level and the human social and cul-
tural context. The connection between the opioids, in particular, pleasure, and appetitive seek-
ing behaviour strongly supports the current interpretation of the nature of consumer choice
and its explanation.
While the experience of emotion cannot be reduced to neural substrates (McGinn, 1996;
Strawson, 1994; see also Foxall, 2007a), it is possible to identify the neurophysiological correlates
of reported mental representation of emotion. In the case of pleasure–displeasure, this involves the
amygdala, orbito-frontal cortex (OFC), and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC). These
areas, associated closely with pleasure–displeasure, form a brain region ‘that is involved in estab-
lishing the threat or reward value of a stimulus’ (Barrett et al., 2007: 382). This is related to repre-
sentations of core affect that has been the consequence of prior behaviour with respect to the
stimulus in question: i.e. it is a representation of learning history. These findings, and those that
show that OFC is implicated in reinforcement and reversal learning, support Damasio’s somatic
marker hypothesis (Barrett et al., 2007: 382).
Barrett et al. (2007) note that the analysis of emotion demands more than the identification of
core affect, however. Emotion is intentional in the philosophical sense of having ‘aboutness’ and a
comprehensive analysis requires that the content of emotions be identified. The elements of
emotion, other than pleasure, that Mehrabian and Russell identify as central – namely, arousal and
dominance – suggest the content of core emotion. Barrett and her colleagues speak of them in
terms of arousal-based content, relational content, and situational content. Arousal signifies active-
ness and is manifest in reports of being active, attentive, wound-up; while unarousal manifests in
stillness, reported as being still, quiet, sleepy. This active-versus-still dimension corresponds with
Mehrabian and Russell’s arousal and incorporates the affective effects of informational reinforce-
ment. Relational content is social and reflects the degree of domination or submissiveness that is
felt in the presence of others. Situational content reflects the extent to which a setting is novel or
unexpected, conducive to or obstructive of a goal, compatible or not with norms and values, and
confers responsibility or agency. These considerations call forth maintenance of or change in the
individual’s behavioural stance, his or her readiness for action.
These content-conferring dimensions of emotion are environmentally determined and Barrett
et al. (2007) point out that it may not be so easy to point to specific neural substrates in their
cases as for core affect. Nevertheless, we can make some suggestions. The capacity of humans
to consistently and communicatively make the mental state attributions on which depictions of
emotional content are based is indicative of both biological and cultural mechanisms for this
function. The ascription of content to one’s core affect is ostensibly a matter of interpreting sub-
jective experiences of emotion which process includes the appraisal of the social and physical
situations in which the individual find’s him or herself. Barrett and her colleagues proceed from
these considerations to the observation that experienced emotion correlates with activation of
medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). It is here that the
possibilities for the attribution of content to experienced emotion arise at the neurophysiological
level. We are here concerned with an interaction of emotional and cognitive functions to pro-
duce content attributions appropriate to the situation in which the person and his or her beha-
viour are located. These considerations also enter into an account of delay discounting and
executive functions involved in the regulation of behaviour. Barrett and her colleagues draw
attention also to the operation of the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) in generating the
selection and inhibition of responses, and working memory; these are in turn implicated in the
Foxall 335

retrieval and integration of cognitive elements of memory processing such as the interpretation
and evaluation of conceptual knowledge.
Specifically with respect to arousal and dominance, we can make some general observations on
the likely brain areas and physiological functions associated with the ascription of appropriate
content to core affect. Neuroscientists’ frequent definition of arousal in terms of anxiety, fear and
anger chimes with Mehrabian’s (1980) understanding of the term. Environments that signal or
encourage competitiveness and uncertainty as to the outcomes of behaviour are most likely to
engender arousal. Sex differences in arousal-seeking tendency have evolutionary support and,
expressed in terms of aggression vs inhibition, flight vs fight, manifest well established sex differ-
ences in behaviour (Campbell, 2007; Taylor et al., 2000). Hormones such as oxytocin and testos-
terone play a role in the regulation of fear and aggression, nurturance and affiliation. Among the
neurotransmitters, serotonin is associated not (as in popular imagination) with pleasure but with the
reduction of anxiety. Reduced functioning of CNS serotonin underlies impairment of impulse con-
trol and is further implicated in violence, impatience, and the assumption of risks of punishment or
injury (Higley et al., 1996). The administration of serotonin, by contrast, as in SSRI medication,
modulates antisocial tendencies (Knutson et al., 1998). These are behaviours closely connected
with feelings of arousal and, although they are too extreme to find a place in most consumption
activities and research, they are indicative of a role for arousal at all points along the consumer
continuum. Arousal and impulsivity are clearly seen in everyday consumer behaviours such as
innovativeness, novelty-seeking and unplanned purchasing; compulsiveness is at the root of unre-
gulated consumption and addiction. Finally, while it plays a general role in the anticipation of
rewarded behaviour, it has a particular affinity with behaviour that eventuates in (reported) arousal.
Dopamine is associated with feelings of excitement, engagement and the involved pursuit of pri-
mary reinforcers; it is responsible for the energization of higher areas of the motor cortex that is
essential to SEEKING (Panskepp, 1998: 144).
The biochemical bases of these responses link also to the arousal-seeking tendencies evoked by
environments that provide varying information rates (Mehrabian and Russell, 1974), i.e. the rate at
which stimuli impinge upon the individual to create excitatory or inhibitory reactions. This is the
basis of feelings of arousal, some of which reflect environmental dynamism and this in turn may
provide the individual with performance feedback on the behaviour that he or she is enacting. It is
considerations such as this that encapsulate informational reinforcement (Foxall, 2005).
The term ‘dominance’ is frequently employed in social psychology to refer to interpersonal
control, a behaviour known to be context-specific (Sulloway, 2007). The dominance to which
Mehrabian and Russell (1974) drew attention is an emotional response to both physical and social
environments and differs with the extent to which the consumer setting permits autonomy or induces
conformity. This latter definition includes but is broader than the former. At the social psychological
level, dominance undoubtedly is connected with some of the traits we have considered to constitute
arousal. Dopamine and opioids are associated with sociability, prosocial behaviour, and affiliation;
the neuropeptide oxytocin increases feelings of trust. Moreover, the reward-centered Dopamine pro-
motes social preferences; but the attractiveness of psychostimulants like cocaine increases with
dopamine deficit (Panskepp, 2007: 156). Hence, submissiveness rather than dominance is associated
with cocaine consumption. Both the neurotransmitter serotonin and the hormone testosterone are
associated with high social status and feelings of dominance; challenges to status and increased
stress are associated with higher cortisol levels (Buss, 2004; Cummins, 2005; Foxall, 2007b). The
relationship between dominance and the BPM resides in a tendency of consumers to report high lev-
els of this emotional response in more open settings, those that provide a wider range of behavioural
336 Marketing Theory 10(4)

VALENCE (frontal)
Pleasure +

Activation of left frontal regions > that of right Activation of left frontal regions > that of right frontal
frontal regions (pleasant emotion) + right regions (pleasant emotion) + activation over right
posterior is highly active (arousal). posterior region is reduced (lower level of arousal.

Behavior is maintained by high levels of UR Behavior is maintained by high level of UR and low
and high levels of IR (Accomplishment) level of IR: Hedonism)

Right HAPPY CALM

parieto-
temporal Arousal + ANXIOUS DEPRESSED Arousal -

Higher right than left frontal activation Higher right than left frontal activation 
 Negative valence, while high negative valence, but low activity in the right
Activity in right posterior region  posterior region decreased arousal that
Increased arousal. distinguishes depression from anxiety.

Behavior is maintained by low UR, Behavior is maintained by low UR, low IR:
High IR: Accumulation Maintenance

Pleasure -

Figure 8. Emotions, neurophysiology and contingencies

Adapted in the light of BPM/PAD research findings from ‘Model of regional brain activity and mood proposed
by Heller (1993)’, Figure 12.2, p. 417 of Banich, M.T. (2004) Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology,
(2nd ed.) (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin).

outcomes, and which are usually under the control of the consumer him/herself rather than another
agent such as a marketer or government department. Following their review of evidence for the
inclusion of dominance as well as pleasure and arousal in a model of emotionality, Demaree et al.
(2008) suggest that ‘the lateralization of emotional ‘‘dominance’’ be explored with the hypothesis
that relative left- and right-frontal activation would be associated with feelings of dominance and
submissiveness, respectively’ (Demaree et al., 2008: 3).
Figures 8 and 9 summarize the relationships among core emotions, their neurophysiological
bases, and the patterns of contingency with which they are associated as defined by the BPM.

Consumer behaviour over the continuum

In order to be persuasive, an account of current human behaviour in terms of evolutionary psy-
chology must rest on a plausible synthesis of several lines of inquiry: anthropological knowledge
of conduct and conditions during the EEA, their cognitive implications and the relation of cog-
nitive and affective adaptations to genetic and phenotypic fitness; the nature of current situations
by comparison with those in which our ancestors’ cognitive and affective capacities developed; the
Foxall 337

DOMINANCE high

Pleasure + In control

Dominance left
frontal brain
activation

Pleasure -
Submissiveness
Controlled right-frontal brain
DOMINANCE activation
low

Figure 9. The dominance dimension

role of reinforcement learning then and now; and the effects of biological and cultural influences,
separately and in tandem, on the continuum of consumer choice. Above all, this requires a critical
attitude not only toward these separate components but also to the manner in which they are
integrated. Two criteria are relevant to the subject matter of this paper: first, the interpretation of
consumer choice it presents must combine the various disciplinary strands of the argument con-
sistently and without damage to the integrity of any (this is discussed in the remainder of this
section); second, the account must generate questions and hypotheses for further research.
In order to fulfil the first criterion, the account must proceed in similar terms for each element of
consumer behaviour over the continuum so that the overall explanation integrates the biological
and cultural forces at work in shaping routine as well as extreme choice. Since all the activities
involved have been identified as consumer behaviour, they must be shown to belong to the same
overall class. Where a final explanation of the differences between consumers who exhibit dif-
ferent behaviours cannot be proposed, at least it is necessary to show how further investigation
could be directed toward a resolution.
A key research question is why consumers differ so pronouncedly in susceptibility to the
influences that bring about normal rewarding experiences (including physical acquisition of goods,
social attention, and neurophysiological effects) and those that are implicated in addictions. Why
do the majority of consumers never think of hoarding the kinds of everyday products they purchase
let alone indulging to excess in the consumption of nicotine and alcohol, other drugs, gambling or
additional sources of addiction? If presumably the same influences can be shown to be effective in
each case – and this is suggested by the BPM and the work on affective and cognitive influences on
choice that we have considered – why do they serve to initiate and reinforce the consumption
behaviours of different consumers so variously? We know that the behaviour of routine purchasers
is also marked by matching, by the choice of the least expensive item within their consideration
sets. Why is their behaviour then not more extreme? The inability of addicts to manage their
338 Marketing Theory 10(4)

behaviour as do everyday consumers must be put down initially and locally to a breakdown of will
(Ainslie, 2001), an abdication of executive function, to inhibit responses even when the
consequences of such behaviour in the past has been catastrophic and painful. It is the inability of
the cognitive faculties to overcome the emotional imperatives that appears responsible for this
breakdown. There may be neurophysiological reasons for this inability to cope with the executive
requirements of moderate behaviour. Some people appear unable to bundle future consequences of
their behaviour to compare them with current choices (Ross et al., 2008).
The broad modes of consumer choice shown by the continuum (Figure 1) can be understood in
terms of the pattern of reinforcement and the scope of the setting that maintains them (se also
Foxall, 2007a, 2007b). The first, Routine Choice, corresponds to the operant class Maintenance
that is determined by relatively low levels of both utilitarian and informational reinforcement.
Such behaviour, typified in open settings by routine grocery purchases, is characterized by
matching but within a restricted framework compared with that found either in the operant
laboratory or in the case of more impulsive consumers. Compared with most laboratory studies of
matching which involve hungry nonhumans, reinforcement has a symbolic or informational ele-
ment as well as an immediate utilitarian component; the overall pattern of reinforcement is central
to consumers’ price sensitivities, maximization takes place only within the consumer’s consid-
eration set, and there is a possibility of multibrand purchasing even on one shopping occasion
(Foxall et al., 2004).
In the case of grocery purchasing, the setting is open to the extent that multiple brands of each
product are available as substitutes for one another, and many products are available which, while
constituting independents and complements in the narrow sense, can also be substitutes on any
particular occasion. Utilitarian reinforcement and informational reinforcement are both relatively
low: the utility provided by food products is always important but the degree of substitutability
among competing offerings is sufficient to ensure that no particular item is vital to life; infor-
mational reinforcement is important within the framework of the family/household and in terms of
the buyer’s self-esteem and perhaps among a few close friends but does not have any broader con-
notations within the society. Most people, therefore, would receive very limited reward for hoard-
ing, excess purchasing or excess consumption: in fact, both behaviours are likely to lead to costs
rather than benefits.
There is a degree of closure in the setting, imposed by physiological considerations since there
is a limit to what most people can and are willing to eat. In the case of more closed settings such as
having to purchase a licence in order to watch television, pay taxes, fill out forms for a passport,
these are negatively reinforced, unlikely to be repeated and there is no kudos or material gain from
performing them to excess. Melioration during this phase is scarcely an all-or-nothing process. The
affluent consumer has a repertoire of substitutable brands the choice of any of which will satisfy his
or her current need. Each product chosen is likely to add only somewhat marginally to the consu-
mer’s overall material and social welfare. The EFs are strongly to the fore insofar as emotional
response is relatively low and the ability to control behaviour through rational action is high.
The implication is that there is a progression from this routine buying behaviour to behaviour
that can have a delayed deleterious effect on the consumer and/or others in the form of unplanned
purchasing which accounts for half of supermarket sales and a similar proportion of retail book
sales, instalment buying and credit card purchases, littering and related cases of environmental
spoliation, all of which can be described in terms of melioration, the choice of whatever is less
costly or more profitable over what might be more advantageous in the long term. This is an
insidious progression. Unplanned brand or even product purchasing scarcely has profound
Foxall 339

consequences when it is pursued within the context of weekly supermarket shopping; instalment
buying is often affordable and taking the waiting out of wanting is often not morally ruinous;
dropping the odd piece of litter does not spoil the commons irretrievably. It is when the harm for
the individual or society passes a point of no return that worry sets in.
This does not mean that the behaviour is halted: inter-temporal choice is marked by the switching
of preferences; first, from the resolve that one will act for one’s own good and prosocially to indul-
gence in behaviour that is harmful or painful; second, from this choice to regret for one’s deviation
and a strong desire to overcome it in future. It is only when these behaviours become so ingrained
that the consumer has difficulty changing them that trouble is sensed. Prior to that point, even in the
case of highly damaging activities that lead to addictions, the consumer may be said to be on the
‘primrose path’ in which he or she has no inkling that they may lose control of their behaviour,
believing that the consequences of behaviour are of little significance (as of course those of a single
instance of the behaviour in the early days may be), and coming gradually under the influence of the
addictive substance or behaviour in question (Herrnstein and Prelec, 1992). What begins as social
drinking, the occasional flutter when out with co-workers, a monthly dining club, takes hold as the
social rewards take second place to those mediated by the product or the practice itself.
The second stage, the Primrose Path, is dominated by informational reinforcement that is
mediated by other people: it is typified by the symbolic as well as functional results of eating and
drinking, the use of drugs for leisure purposes with friends, gambling in organized places such as
casino or bingo halls with a group of fellow players. The utilitarian reinforcement provided by the
imbibed substance or the game is less important at this stage than the social intercourse made
available by the situation (though it need not be lower than it would in the case of Maintenance).
The primrose path begins in the context of relatively open settings but the settings become pro-
gressively more closed as reinforcing reliance on the social approval of fellow revellers is over-
taken by the addictive consequences of indulgence.
Why an individual moves from routine consumption to the primrose path it is suggested is apparent
if behaviour is viewed as embedded in a network of contingencies that control the patterns of choice of
which any particular response (say, drinking or abstaining from alcohol) is a part. Patterning is the key
according to Rachlin (1994, 2000) to both understanding and modifying behaviour. The more long
term a pattern of behaviour has become, the more costly it is to the individual to interrupt it. The
primrose path might be avoided if the individual were more aware of the consequences of getting into
long-term patterns of choice; instead, it is single acts that loom large and whose immediate conse-
quences are seen: the enjoyment of the chocolate éclair becomes the sole outcome of its ingestion.
This analysis is not pessimistic. The problem presented by immediate rewards of the ultimately less
valuable option is capable of being overcome or ameliorated by embedding that response in a pattern
of responses that are extended through time and whose effects can thus be compared with those of the
single indulgence – Ainslie’s (1992) idea of ‘bundling’ future rewards.
The path from sobriety to addiction can, therefore, be portrayed as that from Maintenance in
Open Settings to Hedonism in Closed Settings; if recovery occurs, the sequence continues to
Accomplishment in Closed and then Open settings (Figure 10). Maintenance in Open Settings
(CC7 in Figure 4) enables the behaviour pattern of moderate consumption; moving from there into
Accumulation (CCs 5 and 6) involves entering the primrose path: what matters is social approval
mainly, physical pleasure second; the next stage is to Hedonism in Closed Settings (CC4) which
involves gaining more pleasure from consumption and less by way of interpersonal reward:
characteristics of addiction; finally, Accomplishment in Closed Settings (CC2) would involve the
restoration of a more balanced pattern of reinforcement and more moderate behaviour. This is
340 Marketing Theory 10(4)

BEHAVIOR SETTING SCOPE

Closed Open

ACCOMPLISHMENT Recovery

HEDONISM Addiction

ACCUMULATION The primrose path

MAINTENANCE Routine consumption

Figure 10. Dynamics of consumer choice

Continuous arrow shows route from self-control (low pleasure, low arousal, high dominance) to impulsivity
(high pleasure, low arousal, low dominance). Broken arrows show possible route to recovery.

consonant with Rachlin’s (2000) idea of social discounting which proposes that the capacity to
delay gratification is influenced by contingencies of reinforcement, notably those that are socially
based and which (in our terms) eventuate in the cooperation and collective intentionality fostered
by effective informational reinforcement. Overall, the BPM proposes a single set of causes that
account for everyday consumer behaviour under the control of self-regulation, impulsiveness and
compulsion, and suggests, albeit in a rudimentary way at this stage, how progression occurs among
them, and how recovery might be conceptualized (Figure 10).

Conclusions
Temporal discounting is a near universal tendency in consumer choice but it is overcome to a
greater or lesser extent by the operations of the executive functions (Figure 11). While affective
and cognitive processes act in tandem, temporal discounting is more closely associated with
emotional activity, the executive functions are more closely associated with intellectual activity.
Over the continuum of consumer choice, impulsivity and self-control are apparent in varying com-
binations in the various modes of consumer behaviour from the routine to the extreme. The prin-
cipal emotions involved are pleasure, arousal and dominance which are related to the
contingencies of reinforcement that influence behavioural choice: pleasure with utilitarian
reinforcement, arousal with informational reinforcement, and dominance with consumer beha-
viour setting scope. In turn, these emotions, produced by the contingencies that control choice,
influence learning history. Their operation is most clearly associated with the release of dopa-
mine and opioids by the limbic system. A second brain region, the prefrontal cortex, is
Foxall 341

Restored
Increasing emotional impulsivity executive
function?

Routine Primrose Addiction [Recovery]

Choice Path

Increasing executive function Absence of

impulsivity?

Figure 11. Influence of emotional impulsivity, executive function, and consumer behaviour setting scope on
consumer behaviour

associated with operation of the EFs which temper the effect of strong emotional responses to
particularly potent contingencies. The joint operation of these emotions and the EFs has a major
effect on learning history which interacts with the discriminative stimuli that make up the con-
sumer behaviour setting to produce a consumer situation which is the immediate precursor and
shaper of consumer behaviour.
These physiological procedures and physical/social contingencies provide a general expla-
nation of consumer behaviour over the continuum, and constitute a unified framework for
understanding consumer choice from the most routine to the most extreme, from that char-
acterized as entailing self-control to that which is wholly impulsive. This picture oversimplifies
because affect and cognition interact in ways more subtle than it allows – emotion can be
involved in the self-regulation of behaviour, for instance – but it captures in broad essence the
components of a theory of consumer choice without exposing all of the possible interactions
among its constituent variables.
The foregoing suggests several questions for theoretical and empirical research. First, Rachlin
(2000) argues that addictive consumption and social contact are substitutes and that the route to
recovery lies in encouraging the latter to take the place of the former. This would imply that
utilitarian reinforcement and informational reinforcement are substitutes, too. Is this generally the
case (i.e. does it hold for all of the modes of consumer behaviour shown in the continuum and
discussed above) or is it particularly or only the case for addiction? In the case of Routine Choice,
which has been studied most by the Consumer Behaviour Analysis Research Group, the two
sources of reward appear to work in a complementary fashion rather than competitively (e.g.
Foxall et al., 2007). Are there reasons why this would change in the case of more extreme con-
sumer behaviours? Certainly, both sources of reinforcement seem to lead to similar neurophy-
siological outcomes (Izuma et al., 2008).
Second, can the frameworks and techniques of analysis employed in the study of Routine
Choice be extended to cover more impulsive and compulsive choices in empirical work? At
present, much research on the more extreme consumer behaviours relies on extrapolation: in the
case of behavioural economics work, from the laboratory or treatment room to wider areas of life
and experience; in the case of consumer behaviour analysis, from buying experiments and analysis
342 Marketing Theory 10(4)

of panel data. There is a need to reach out in both cases both conceptually and in terms of empirical
research to the wider phases of experience to which we behavioural scientists most readily apply
the results and conclusions of our investigations.
Specifically, this paper has accentuated the integrative capacity of the idea of the consumer
situation, the interaction of the consumer’s learning history and the current consumer behaviour
setting, to integrate the disparate neurophysiological, evolutionary, social, economic and func-
tional determinants of choice into a definable combination of reinforcement contingencies. As the
immediate precursor and context of current consumer choice, the consumer situation remains the
immediate determinants of behaviour. As the central explanatory component of the BPM, it
synthesizes the effects that stimuli similar to those currently available have exerted in past
instances of similar consumer behaviour. While the resulting contingencies of reinforcement and
punishment form the immediate determinants of consumer behaviour, however, the model has also
served to link them with their evolutionary and neurophysiological precursors which serve not only
to explain their occurrence and effect but also to support the particular interpretation of consumer
choice pursued here. The link among them all is the interaction of temporal discounting and
executive function which, it has been argued, receive much of their relative force from the
operation of the contingencies and the emotional responses they engender.
The refinement and extension of the model, now ongoing, emphasize the role of neurophy-
siological factors in determining the efficacy of reinforcers and rewards, especially as neuroeco-
nomics plays a more dominant role in the explanation of choice. This is a process that both
enhances the explanatory capacity of the basic model and permits its incorporation of intentional
and cognitive sources of exposition.

Notes
1. The remainder of this paragraph draws in part on Foxall (2008).

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Gordon Foxall is Distinguished Research Professor and Professor of Economic Psychology at Cardiff Uni-
versity; he holds PhDs in industrial economics and business (University of Birmingham) and in psychol-
ogy (University of Strathclyde), and a higher doctorate (DSocSc), also from Birmingham. He is the author
of over 200 refereed papers. His 20 or so books include the critically acclaimed Understanding Consumer
Choice and the best-selling Consumer Psychology for Marketing. Fellow of the British Psychological Soci-
ety and of the British Academy of Management, he is an Academician of the Academy of Social Science.
Address: Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Aberconway Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff, CF10
3EU. [email: Foxall@Cf.ac.uk]