Can Consumers Calculate Best Buys?

W ithin the cognitive development literature, a sizeable body of evidence has accumulated indicating that logical reasoning ability undergoes developmental transformations, and, furthermore, that not all individuals develop to the most advanced level. As a result, there is considerable variation in level of logical reasoning within an adult population (Neimark 1975; Papalia and DelVento Bielby 1974). It is likely that an individual's level of logical reasoning ability significantly affects his/her functioning as a consumer, but such effects remain largely unstudied, inasmuch as assessment of logical reasoning ability typically has taken place only in formal psychological test situations (Kuhn 1979a), The present study investigates one such possible effect.