1=2: When a Singular Experience Leads to Dissociated Evaluations

This research examines how a single experience with a salesperson can lead to the formation of dual representations of the salesperson resulting in opposing spontaneous and deliberative affective responses and dissociated evaluations. Consumers may either use their spontaneous affective reactions to form an evaluation or may respond more deliberately using information that contradicts this initial affect. As a result, they can hold 2 evaluations of the same salesperson—one that is more spontaneously generated and one that is more deliberate. The 2 cognitive bases for these evaluations can coexist in memory even when they are opposite in valence, and consumers switch back and forth between the 2 evaluations, depending on the level of cognitive activity in which they engage.