The Effect Study Of Circadian Rhythm And Test Time To The Choice Making Between Hedonic And Utilitarian Goods

It was said that birds of a feather flocked together, and as we knew, individual differences were the basis of consumer behaviors research. There were various classification standards, like by age, education background, character, etc., while a kind of division by physical traits was seldom existed in the previous domestic marketing research literature. Actually, in our daily life, the so-called "Morning type" and "Evening type" were put forward long before."Morning type" referred to the group with the lamb, and stopped working at sunset. They were usually vigorous, with high work piece ratio, better suited logistic activity and used to making important decisions at early time of a day. Oppositely, the "Evening type" preferred keeping late hours, and they were with quick thinking and empirical intuition at late time of a day. Accordingly, they usually chose to deal with important work at night. The different attitude and life style of the two groups were noted by all sectors of society.Actually, people soon noticed that the explicit differences were based on the difference between individual circadian rhythms. Circadian rhythm referred to an "invisible clock", and it was a cycle of about24hours, according to which a series of physiological activities were leaded. It was formed in the long natural evolutional process. The formation of the two different individual circadian rhythms was influenced by gene and environment, one of which would get into a peak condition as soon as they got up, and the other one would get into the peak condition at a late time of a day. Their physical ratios like temperature, melatonin and consciousness level cycled according to diverse circulation. In academia, they were called "Morningness Personality" and "Eveningness Personality".According to the circadian rhythm theory, we knew that people would experience a rhythmic change in a day. Simply put, because of the circadian rhythm, people would be in different point of their circadian rhythm cycle in different time of a day, and accordingly, reflected different indicators. May &Hasher regarded the phenomenon as synchrony effect. Synchrony effect would be reflected in motivation level, cognitive resource level, and so on. For the two groups with different kinds of individual circadian rhythms, they would be in different condition. In the previous literature, researchers demonstrated the conclusion in many ways, like attention tasks, memory experiment, etc.The two types were treated differently."Morning type" was regarded as "closer to success", while "Evening type" was regarded as "without self-control". We wonder why. Actually, through previous studies, we found that cognitive resource was related to individual circadian rhythm. Meanwhile, it was presented that cognitive resource was one of the determinants of self-control as a result of which, people with a high level of cognitive resource could better control themselves, and accordingly, regular their behaviors well.In this study, we attempted to further extend the topic above. First of all, we reconfirmed the conclusion of the effect of individual circadian rhythm on self-control, specifically, people would be better at controlling themselves when their peak condition of individual circadian rhythm matched the test time, which was called synchrony effect. We also refined the experiment, regarding the either-or choice making situation as a measurement of self-control effect. It was based on the study of Kidwell and Jewell, presenting that people who were at a low level of self-control would choose hedonic item rather than utilitarian one. Consequently, the choices made by participants were a reflection of self-control effect. Last but not least, we examined the intermediate effect of cognitive resource.This study enriched the previous theoretical model, and also with practical significance. First of all, to consumers, they could better control themselves when they knew more about themselves. To the merchants, they could target their customers accurately, made different marketing activities, or set different product series.