Using a Within-Subjects Design to Examine Schema Congruity Theory at the Individual Level

The research tests the inverted U shape relation between perceived incongruity and product evaluation at both the average level and at the individual level.

Background

Schema congruity theory (Mandler, 1982; Meyers-Levy and Tybout 1989) predicts an inverted U shape relation between perceived incongruity and product evaluation.
Previous research has examined the effect of product incongruity on product evaluation by comparing the average product evaluations of three categories of incongruity(extremely incongruent, moderately incongruent, and congruent) across consumers.
However, it is unclear whether this relation occurs at the individual level of consumers with continuous measures of perceived incongruity.
We conducted five studies to examine the relation between perceived incongruity and product evaluation by using a continuous measure of perceived incongruity and a within-subjects design.
This research method, combined with the two-line analysis (Simonsohn 2018), allows us to examine the inverted U shape relation not only at the average level, but also at the individual level.