Reading Restaurant Facades

Abstract

A study was conducted to assess cognitive schemata for restaurant facades. Groups of college-student subjects were found to share detailed and accurate (compared with independent survey data) schemata that allowed them to differentiate among four common types by viewing photographs of the facades of five examples of each type. These schemata encompassed a comprehensive variety of conditions within the restaurants, including quality of food and service, cost, ambience, and characteristics of fellow diners. It is argued that the intensive approach followed in this study may be preferable for theoretical and practical reasons to studying environmental inference from one or a few summary judgments.