Metacognition and consumer judgment: fluency is pleasant but disfluency ignites interest

• Fluency comprises of two fundamental dimensions — pleasantness and arousal.
• Fluency is pleasant and can increase positive affect toward a product by reducing uncertainty.
• Disfluency is arousing and arousal can increase product interest.
• Product evaluation depends on whether consumers are reducing uncertainty or seeking stimulation.

Fluency arising from the ease of identifying a product or understanding the goals it serves is known to evoke positive affective responses that increase liking of products and advertising information. However, recent findings show processing disfluency can also sometimes improve evaluation. In this review, we suggest a novel approach based on the affective properties of processing experiences to integrate these opposing findings. Observing that affective experiences comprise two fundamental dimensions — pleasantness and arousal — we posit that fluency increases pleasantness by reducing uncertainty about products, but disfluency is arousing, and as a result, increases interest and engagement with products. Product evaluation depends on whether the decision is associated more with uncertainty reduction and pleasantness or with arousal and interest.