Cognitive Psychology and Tourism: Volume 27

This chapter introduces the cognitive paradigm. The concept of translation and associated problems is discussed. Several arguments for the adoption of a cognitive-based social sciences are provided. A brief history of the term cognition is provided and the origin of theory in tourism discussed. Justifications for the use of cognitive psychology in the field of tourism are provided. These include the (mostly) hedonic and hence emotional nature of tourism experiences, the novelty of travel outside one's usual environment, the importance of imagining, daydreams, emotions and desire for travel decisions and the importance of autobiographical memories because of travel.

This chapter discusses the main psychological paradigms used in the past 100 years, psychodynamism, behaviourism and cognitivism based on an information processing paradigm, and later cognitivism based on complex interactive mental processes. It briefly introduces the main concepts of later cognitive psychology: consciousness, sensation, perception, attention, emotion and memory. Each of these concepts will be discussed in detail in later chapters along with their application to tourism. One basic assumption of cognitive psychology is that the brain emerged through evolution and has survival value. However, this means that the brain is not a unified designed organ but has layers of development, one building on the others.

This chapter presents a case for updating the use and development of psychological theory in tourism through an examination of the psychological stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model. The historical development and the criticism of the model has been addressed. A revised version of the model is provided based on importing new theoretical knowledge from the original discipline. This chapter argues that with an explicit focus on tourism psychology, there is some evidence to suggest that tourism theory may benefit from adopting theory from the parental discipline rather than inventing its own. Future research can address other examples of imported theories and to further examine mechanisms for this knowledge transfer and update from original disciplines relevant to the study of tourism.

There is need for definitional clarity when using psychological concepts in tourism research. The same term used in ‘folk psychology’, or behavioural or cognitive psychology can have quite different definitions and associated paradigmatic assumptions. This chapter argues that an understanding of mainstream cognitive psychology is needed when using concepts that are within its explanatory scope. Emotion is one such concept that has been extensively studied in cognitive psychology. The chapter discusses emotion and related terms such as feelings, novelty, unexpectedness and surprise to provide conceptual clarity. This will benefit researchers studying psychology of tourism emotions, tourism behaviour and decision-making.

Sensory experiences and subjective perception serve as unique sources of tacit information that subconsciously influence people's cognition, emotions and behaviour. This chapter begins with an overview of key themes of sensation and perception in cognitive psychology, including tracing the history of perceptual processes, introducing different types of senses and perceptual processes and cognitivism-informed theories in this area. Following this, the discussion focuses on the application of sensation and perception within tourism field, discussing implications for research on sensescapes. This chapter concludes with an agenda for future research which delves into the role of multi-sensory and interaction of senses in touristscapes.

This chapter clarifies the definition and reviews recent theories of consciousness, such as the dual systems framework, global workplace theory, and higher-order theory. Aspects of conscious experiences are useful in studying tourism decisionmaking, memory, emotions, tourism behaviour, and other topics related to tourism psychology. For instance, studies on conscious experiences of decisionmaking are useful to better understand destination choice and tourists' emotions elicitation, unconscious biases help to understand tourism attitude formation, while explicit and implicit cognition research provides insights to destination image attributes. Future studies may consider using objective and subjective methods of studying consciousness in the tourism context.

Emotion is a key cognitive process that is central to being human. This chapter discusses various psychological approaches to understand emotions and introduces cognitive appraisal theory and its appraisal dimensions. By reviewing recent studies on emotions, this chapter recognises the theory as one of the most promising ones to advance research on emotions. The significance of appraisal theory for tourism is in the ability to explain why the same stimulus can generate different emotions in different people or in the same person at different times. Cognitive appraisal theory is able to assist in the prediction of emotions and subsequent behaviour. This chapter concludes by outlining potential topics where the theory can be particularly useful in tourism.

Goals play a critical role in everyday life and shape life and lifestyles. This chapter reviews and discusses the main approaches to the study of goals, addressing main theoretical endeavours that have emerged from psychological research, and emphasising the contributions from cognitive psychology to the topic. It also discusses literature on goals and motivation as found in tourism studies, highlighting the theoretical underpinnings used in this field. The discussion concludes with the need to update, in tourism studies, knowledge from cognitive psychology and propose how a better understanding of the cognitive foundations of goal-oriented behaviour can contribute to change tourism practice.

Novelty detection in the environment is an important mental ability for evolutionary survival. It is also critical for understanding emotional arousal and its effect on memories in tourism. Tourism takes place, by definition, in an unusual environment and therefore intimately involves this concept. This chapter discusses novelty definition, processing, and effects on attention, goals, memories and emotions, and role in tourist experiences. Theoretical and practical implications have been discussed, including the potential utilisation of aspects of novelty in tourism experience design and how its use can improve experiences. Future research should focus on its antecedents and consequences in tourism experiences, as well as the effect of degree of novelty on emotional arousal.

This chapter provides a holistic understanding of memory and the tourism-memory nexus. This chapter begins with an overview of what memory is and the history of research on it. Following this, the chapter outlines key memory-related themes in cognitive psychology. Next, the implications of the tourism-memory nexus for research on memorable tourism experiences are discussed. It provides a critical analysis of the research which examines tourism and memory from the viewpoint of cognitive psychology. The chapter concludes with an outline of key avenues for further research in order to delve into tourism-memory nexus.

A schema is a concept used to describe the organisation of memory about an object. Schema are perceptual prototypes abstracted from numerous episodic events based on their similarities or commonalities. In tourism, a schema may be termed a network, mental model, social schema, stereotype, social role, script, worldview, heuristics or archetype. A schema is flexible. New information may be either assimilated or accommodated based on its degree of congruity. Schema incongruent information requires more mental effort to process. The concept is used in research on destination brand image, storytelling, social relationships, attitude change and transformation during travel. The concept is useful in discussion of the change to a sustainable worldview.

When making decisions about their future dream holidays, tourists often spend significant time thinking about future scenarios. This is an example of ‘mental time travel’, a process called prospection. The concept of prospection refers to human ability of ‘pre-experience’ the future and hence how that future ‘feels’, which is why it is sometimes called affective forecasting. There is a large volume of psychological research on prospection, but in applied fields, the use of various terms makes the current literature complex, disconnected and hard to navigate. This chapter provides an introduction to prospection as an underlying mechanism explaining some of the effects of experiential marketing. It discusses tourism prospection-related terms, errors of prospection and mental biases and ways to better manage tourist experiences.

This chapter uses cognitive psychology to understand how individuals deal with negative emotions using coping strategies. It discusses the coping process and reviews three current debates about cognitive appraisal theory, coping and emotion regulation. The use of coping strategies in tourism, services and business management is presented to understand different stakeholders' responses to negative emotions. The literature discusses various elements (antecedents, coping strategies, coping consequence) for emotion coping process and the chapter summarises a synthesised conceptual framework for emotional coping based on the cognitive appraisal theory. The framework is used to examine coping in the context of COVID-19. The chapter concludes with future research opportunities in this subject area.

Effective experience design requires not only a knowledge of tourist goals, but an understanding of how these can be met in a particular tourism site. Research on experiences and experience design is supported by cognitive psychology concepts such as perception, attention, appraisal, emotion, consciousness, feelings and memory. However, these concepts are often used in a combination with others from sociology, social or environmental psychology in a manner that leads to confusion rather than clarity, without apparent understanding of the theoretical mechanisms by which these concepts are related. This chapter develops a series of propositions for potential application to tourism experience design. Future research should examine the efficacy of these propositions from cognitive psychology for tourism experience design.

Co-creation experiences are psychologically complex phenomena. This chapter discusses how cognitive psychology can add value to the co-creation of experiences. There are different meanings of co-creation and here the focus is on the customer's mental experience. This chapter analyses the theoretical underpinnings of co-creation and discusses key dimensions of the concept from a cognitive perspective, highlighting the importance of attention and active involvement. Furthermore, it discusses how technologies (augmented reality, robotics, intelligence systems) can prompt experience co-creation. Finally, this chapter examines the literature of co-creation and experiential learning overlap in knowledge building. Opportunities for future empirical research in this area are suggested.

Awe is a multidimensional emotional experience that has the potential to adjust one's beliefs and schema. Vastness is the core cognitive appraisal required to elicit awe. An appraisal of vastness can challenge an individual's present frame of reference. The cognitive process, need for accommodation, can be activated by the appraisal of vastness. Both an appraisal of vastness and the need for cognitive accommodation are essential to experiencing awe. This chapter presents an overview of the rapidly emerging research on awe through a cognitive appraisal lens. It highlights the importance of immersive experiences and nature contexts within tourism, illustrated by examining immersive, marine tourism activities on the Sunshine Coast, Australia. The case study discusses tourists' experiences of engaging scuba diving, swimming with whales, whale watching, and the elicitation and experience of awe and associated cognition.

Mindfulness, a kind of mental perception, has a long history in Buddhist spiritual traditions, but has also a well-developed use in clinical psychology as a mental health intervention. Meditative mindfulness provides therapeutic benefits in the treatment of mental trauma. Recently, an interest in the outcomes derived from meditative mindful experience has emerged in tourism studies. Tourists experiencing a mindful-like event may get a sense of peacefulness and a harmonic relationship between the self and the environment. This chapter discusses how meditative mindfulness can be integrated into tourism experiences and create subtle therapeutic-like effects. Theoretically, this study bridges the relationship between a meditative mindful tourist experience and its perceived consequences. Practically, it explains how to generate mental health outcomes from tourism experiences.

Stories are a part of being human. They are powerful tools to create social bonds, elicit emotions, and consolidate personal and shared memories. Their role, characteristics, and effects are studied in a variety of scientific fields. In tourism, they can enhance destination distinctiveness, as well as the tourist experience. However, the cognitive processes through which stories contribute to elicitation of emotions or memorability, the very reasons why they are considered important in tourism, are still little understood. This chapter discusses some of the cognitive processes involved in storytelling drawing insights from cognitive psychology and neuroscience, which may help in better understanding and managing the tourist experience.

Visual stimuli are integral for the destination selection process, as well as for the delivery of unique, novel and compelling tourist experiences. Emerging techniques, such as eye-tracking, are effective for mapping tourists' visual interests and paths, presenting an opportunity to identify patterns of visual attention, which provide insights into the underlying cognitive processes which underpin experiences. Building on a systematic review of the progress and development of eye-tracking in tourism field, this chapter summarises five main current research contexts for application and five future research directions. It also narrows the gap between eye-tracking and cognitive psychology by critically examining bottom-up and top-down attentional mechanisms.

There is an emerging interest in understanding the cognitive, emotional and motivational processes that drive tourists' behaviour using neuroscientific research methods. This chapter briefly reviews the main methods of interest to tourism researchers, to then focuses on electroencephalography, which reflects electrical activity from the brain. Event-related potentials or electroencephalography oscillations reflect cognitive and affective processes. Components of the former can index emotional brain responses, and alpha oscillations are related to attention and approach/withdrawal. Existing tourism literature/using electroencephalography are reviewed. This is a promising tool for studying a range of phenomena that are of interest to tourism scholars, but require careful use of methods and interpretation.

This chapter documents initial results of using skin conductance measures to compare the relative effectiveness of three commercials for destinations and one beer advertisement. Data were collected from 12 respondents in a laboratory-based study. Analysis of skin conductance data showed that the beer commercial evoked a greater intensity of emotional response than the three tourism commercials. Moreover, the time trace of the tourism commercials indicated a downward trend, and this is interpreted as a lack of overall emotional arousal. The results suggest that skin conductance measures may be used for testing tourism advertising effectiveness and also a need for further research to examine the emotional content of tourism advertising.

This volume has sought to identify the benefits of using cognitive psychology in understanding the tourist experience. It discusses areas where tourism researchers should be cautious in applying cognitive psychology. Certainly, t scholars must understand the assumptions, criticisms and limitations of cognitive theories and associated data collection techniques. Cognitive psychology is a dynamic field with alternative theoretical perspectives and emerging debates. This volume discusses particular mainstream ideas, such as cognitive appraisal theory and seeks to identify their relevance and identifies difficulties and perceived limitations scholars discover in exploring this new field.

This chapter provides concluding comments on a cognitive paradigm and related concepts applied to tourism, as well as in studies of social and environmental sustainability. Adopting a new paradigm is difficult but worthwhile as it allows researchers to move on from a behaviourist worldview and open the black-box, that is, the brain. The main points of each of the previous chapters are provided. A number of areas for future research are discussed, including schema change, wellness and the mind-body problem, new methodologies, motivation and goals for travel and the importance of further research on emotion in tourism experiences. The use of cognitive psychology is vital for further progress into a theory of experience design.