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Chapter 3 examines the attributes of an external stimulus, which the brain collects and models to construct a sensation. An important aspect of this process is the sensory system's filtering capacity, which removes extraneous and irrelevant information from the modeled information. The response mechanisms of all five senses are discussed to establish the practice of viewing the discipline (psychophysics) from multiple perspectives (senses). The differences in multiple perspectives on the same data is compiled into a model of the attributes to which the brain attends to engage with a sensation.

The authors broaden the scope of consumer identity by introducing individuals’ olfactory abilities and discussing its impact on perception of the self, consumption behaviors, and consumer well-being.

The authors took a mixed-method approach by embedding smell tests during in-depth interviews. A total of 36 interviews were conducted, involving individuals with varying olfactory sensitivity levels, from decreased sensitivity, normal sensitivity, to heightened sensitivity to smell.

Emergent themes from the interviews include compensation, perception of self and control under three key areas: levels of olfactory sensitivity, the impact of olfactory sensitivity, and the coping strategies used by participants and their families. These findings show that olfactory sensitivity can either enhance or detract from the consumption experience or trigger memories of people, locations or experiences, indirectly affecting consumer well-being and quality of life.

Findings reveal that olfactory abilities not only shape and form an individual’s identity but also have a profound impact on (1) consumption behavior: time spent browsing or lingering, purchase order, product choice, or shopping venue which has immense practical implications for marketers; and (2) consumer well-being: developing coping strategies at both the individual and family level to mitigate the issues faced in consumption.

Unlike the other senses, olfactory abilities are often overseen and neglected. The authors show that olfactory abilities are both relevant and salient. The paper is forefront in demonstrating how sensory abilities shape individuals’ identities and in turn influence consumption practices and experiences.

A defining aspect of humans is our self-consciousness; we experience ourselves as selves, and thus the self is a vital theme for information experience. A self can be conceptualized informationally, showing how the information and documents we deal with, and the practices by which we deal with them, constitute who we are. At root, a self is an encapsulation of an entity from its environment. To speak of human selves, this involves a biological encapsulation, a cognitive one, and a conscious one. The biological encapsulation is formed by chemical bonds; the cognitive by perceptual information processing; and the conscious by semantic bonds of narrative and self-awareness. Selves can change within all these encapsulations, and “being informed” simply is this change. Following this theory of the self as well as discussions of the extended mind, we can understand one's information and documents to also in part constitute a person's self. Among these, self-documents are a special case, those documents we create about ourselves (e.g., online profiles), which both represent and modulate who we are.

In this paper, we bridge the gap between imitation and creativity, as we examine whether and how it is possible to succeed in imitation, understood here as the intentional creation of alikeness and, at the same time, the production of something novel and valuable. By distinguishing processes of copying, echoing, and eluding, we scrutinize how different imitation processes intended to create alikeness lead to the emergence of novelty. Using empirical data from two distinct empirical fields, music and pharmaceuticals, we discuss if and how these processes may even lead to emulation and thus the emergence of novelty superseding the imitated original. We find that novelty emerges during processes of imitation from the interplay of a guiding structure obtained from existing originals and the performative variation embedded in processes of imitation. We thereby identify performance enactment, translations between an imitated core and surrounding opportunities as well as the generative effects of intellectual property regulation as key ingredients to foster emulative novelty.

Dreams and aspirations are at the core of what higher education is about. Students and scholars alike, the world over, are engaged in the realisation of dreams that bring forth new opportunities, new ways of seeing and being and of changing the world. Many Māori students dream of making a difference, and see the pursuit of higher education as a way to bring their dreams into reality. Often their dreams reflect family and community aspirations bringing with it a significant burden of responsibility and obligation. And for Māori academics and researchers like me, my dreams are not too different to those of my own students except that where students pursue a pathway towards becoming relevant, academics are challenged to remain so. In this chapter, I will share some of my/our hopes and experiences and how Māori went about dreaming ourselves into the staff make-up, curriculum and research activities in the School of Psychology at the University of Waikato.