Cupcakes and Central Processing

            I’ve been seeing a guy for a few months now, and about a month ago, it was his birthday. I, of course, stressed myself out trying to think of what to do for his birthday. I didn’t want to go overboard, since we hadn’t been seeing each other for too long, but I also wanted to do something nice. After much discussion with my friends, we decided that I should bake him a cupcake in addition to the gift I was already planning on getting him. The gift itself was easy, since I had something particular in mind and would just have to go to the store to get it. Buying cake mix, on the other hand, turned out to be a bigger ordeal. For the cupcakes, I had to first find a store with a good selection of mixes and then determine which one I would buy in order to make the best cupcake ever. Thus started my journey to find the perfect cake mix and frosting combination at SuperFresh.

            The grocery store is an optimal example of how information is processed and how we ultimately decide which items to choose. The different products have to somehow favorably push our attitude towards that product in a way that will stimulate the behavior to buy it. Normally when I go grocery shopping, peripheral processing dominates what I decide to buy. If I do not have a specific product in mind, I usually end up buying what catches my attention, or if I am choosing between two similar products, what packaging I seem to prefer. All of this is superficial processing in which I use heuristics to facilitate my decision-making. Otherwise, I would spend several minutes comparing different options for each item on my grocery list.

            I used a similar form of processing when I had to buy eggs to make the cupcakes. In this case, I ended up choosing the carton of eggs that was directly at my eye level, since it caught my attention above the other possibilities. But when I got to the cake mix aisle, my form of processing switched to central processing. While the type of eggs I bought should not have affected the cupcakes in any drastic way, I knew that the cake mix and frosting I would choose would make all the difference. In this case, I had high motivation to pick the best products and since my goal of the night was to make these cupcakes, I was in no way distracted. Thus, I wanted to focus my cognitive processing on choosing what I felt would result in the tastiest cupcake. If I were making cupcakes for myself or for a group of friends, I probably would have picked any box of cake mix that would have caught my eye. But in this case, I was highly invested in the situation and thoroughly scanned the different brands, flavors, and whether the cake would be moist or fluffy. I even read the backs of the boxes, which I rarely ever do, and scanned the ingredients. It was extremely difficult to make a decision based on the information provided. Since most of what was on the packaging was meant for peripheral processing, it was harder to choose a product based on central processing. For example, I was looking for the mix that would produce the best cupcakes, but I was given an assortment of colorful boxes with different names and different descriptions, all of which aimed to advertise in a superficial, making every product seem fantastic. What I really wanted and needed were customer reviews and ratings of the product, or even samples so that I could determine which mix to go for.

            In the end, I could only base my decision on the superficial information I was provided.  Even though my mind was ready and thirsting for some central processing, I probably ended up making my decision through peripheral processing since I was not able to access the information that I needed. Looking back at this scenario, I realize that I seem ridiculous and maybe a little crazy, and that I probably would have chosen the same cake mix and frosting if I had spent a few seconds making my decision. After all, it is probably a very good thing that I usually peripherally process when deciding what product to buy, since I was standing in that aisle for half an hour. If I did that with all of the items on my grocery list, I would have to spend the whole day in the grocery store.

            It is interesting to analyze how our attitudes and behaviors are shaped based on how invested we are in the situation. Even within a particular situation, our way of approaching different decisions can be completely different. Since the type of eggs I had to buy was not relevant to me, peripheral processing completely dominated the eggs that I ended up buying. In contrast, the type of cake mix and frosting was important to me, so I spent much more time comparing the products and trying to make the decision I thought was best based on the information, however superficial it was, that was available to me.