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Predictions, desires, or intentions have recently shown to strongly influence behavior, adaptation, and learning. These anticipations influence behavior mediating decision making and action execution as well as attention. Although it is not the future itself that influences the present but the anticipated future states or future properties, the difference to purely stimulus‐driven behavior and learning is highly significant. Recent analyses investigate under which environmental properties which type of anticipatory mechanism is helpful to improve behavior. Vice versa, since anticipatory mechanisms also bias attention, future sensory processing and thus future learning capabilities are immediately influenced by current anticipations. The impact on the understanding of the world, social systems, human learning and understanding, as well as education principles might be immense. The perspective of expectation and purpose as part of the cause in the general case might have been underestimated and requires further investigations and considerations.

Purpose – To explore lines of inquiry by Hayek and C. S. Peirce on sensation and cognition and Hayek's interest in Peirce.

Methodology – To compare Hayek and Peirce's relational interpretations of sensation and cognition.

Research limitations – The theories of both Hayek and Peirce on sensation and cognition are more extensive than can be addressed here. This exploration is more suggestive than comprehensive.

Findings – Both Hayek and Peirce emphasized the relational and abstract nature of human mental processes. Hayek viewed his contribution as overlapping with psychology while Peirce viewed his theory as being logically before psychology.

Social implications – The ideas of Peirce and Hayek imply that the traditional empiricist and rationalist epistemologies of cognition and sensation are limited and incomplete and thus embrace cognitive inefficiencies.

Originality/value of paper – Hayek's brief references and interest in the ideas of C. S. Peirce have not yet been explored to date.

Purpose – Recent findings in neurobiology, cognitive psychology, and brain evolution are interpreted in light of Hayek's construction of the sensory order as a spontaneously emergent evolutionary adaptation. The sensory order is an experimental view of reality ordered by experience.

Approach – Natural selection of behavioral and cognitive adaptations is shown to result in structural change within the brain. Individual brains grow, and species brains evolve, through the construction and evaluation of hypothetical classification schemata. This process both results in the construction of the sensory order, as well as results from the particular models of objective reality that individuals have constructed, their evaluation of these models, and the comparison of our own models with those of others.

Findings – Cognitive adaptations, such as belief in agency, causal reasoning, and theory of mind, are inherited because they enhance survival and reproductive opportunities. In addition, behavioral adaptations including empathy, reciprocity, social hierarchy, and peacemaking are also inherited. Socialization in larger groups required the evolution of enhanced brain connectivity permitting a greater degree and sophistication of social intercourse.

Research Implications – Recent findings in neurobiology can be better related to one another in terms of how they contribute to the sensory order. Literary Darwinism, a school of literary theory, can also be understood more fully.

Originality/Value of Paper – Varied developments in modern neurobiology and cognitive psychology are shown to lead to spontaneously emergent institutional structures, such as behavioral regularities and rules of morality, which further enhance the survival benefits of inherited brain structure and the sensory order.

Purpose – To comment on how The Sensory Order by F. A. Hayek is understood within the context of Hayek's broader research program.

Methodology/approach – Earlier and current perspectives on The Sensory Order are surveyed, quoted extensively, and commented upon. An alternative framework for understanding The Sensory Order is offered and compared to the existing perspectives. Some textual and archival evidence are combined with insights from the history of thought literature to present how Hayek himself may have viewed the role of The Sensory Order in his broader research project.

Findings – Earlier and current perspectives on The Sensory Order are found wanting. The available alternative hypothesis – that Hayek's economics is foundational to his theory of mind – is presented as a more fruitful approach to motivate modern Austrian economics as a progressive research program.

Research limitations/implications – There is limited archival and source material available on this topic and apparently competing versions circulating. Such a discussion has a relatively small and narrow field of interest among scholars intimately familiar with one another's work.

Originality/value of paper – If correct, this chapter offers a unique and original perspective on how to perceive the insights from Hayek's The Sensory Order. It also reaffirms the role of methodological pluralism in progressing contemporary political economy.

Previous research has provided limited evidence on whether and how demographic factors associate with sensory processing patterns (SPP) in adults. This paper aims to examine relationships between SPPs and sociodemographic factors of age, sex, education and ethnicity in healthy adults.

A cross-sectional study design was used. A total of 71 adult participants was recruited from the community, using convenience sampling. Each participant completed the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile (AASP) and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales – short version (DASS-21). Demographic information on age, sex, education and ethnicity was collected. Results were analysed using descriptive statistics and multivariate analyses of covariance (MANCOVA).

SPPs, as measured by the AASP, were significantly correlated to demographic factors of age and education after controlling for emotional distress using the DASS-21. A statistically significant multivariate effect was found across the four dependent variables (low registration, seeking, sensitivity and avoiding) for the age category, F = 6.922, p = 0.009, ηp2 = 0.145, in the presence of a covariate DASS. The education category showed significance only in the seeking domain (p = 0.008, ηp2 = 0.10) after controlling for DASS. There was no significant correlation between SPPs and gender or ethnicity. Results also indicated that mean scores of participants in this study were “similar to most people” as standardised in the AASP.

This was a cross-sectional study with limitations including that the study used a relatively small sample and was based on self-reported healthy participants.

SPPs may correlate with healthy adults’ age and to a lesser extent education. This suggests that it might be helpful to consider such demographic factors when interpreting SPPs in clinical populations, although further research in larger samples is needed to reach firmer conclusions about possible implications of demographic variables.

The findings in this paper add to the growing evidence that suggest that SPPs vary with sociodemographic factors.

This paper aims to develop an integrative framework based on a convergence of embodiment, ecological and phenomenological theoretical perspectives to explain the multiple processes involved in the consumers’ mining, processing and application of brand-related sensory data through a sensory brand experience (SBE).

This research adopts a qualitative method by using face-to-face in-depth interviews (retail managers and customers) and focus group interviews (actual customers) with 34 respondents to investigate SBEs in the context of Chinese shopping malls.

Results show that the brand data mined through multisensory cues (visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile and taste) in a brand setting are processed internally as SBEs (involving sensory impressions, fun, interesting, extraordinary, comforting, caring, innovative, pleasant, appealing and convenient), which influence key variables in customer–brand relationships including customer satisfaction, brand attachment and customer lovemarks.

This study has implications for current theory on experiential marketing, branding, consumer–brand relationships, consumer psychology and customer experience management.

Sensory experience profoundly impacts consumer cognition and behavior. This paper aims to illuminate the structure and development of sensory and experiential marketing research, to condense knowledge and to stimulate future research.

In all, 156 articles with 9,670 references serve as this paper’s database. The factor analysis on co-citation patterns of the top-cited 148 articles reveals the main research streams. The social network analysis unveils the degree of intellectual exchange between and within these schools of thought. The authors also map the temporal emergence of research streams and condense insights into an overarching framework that guides future research.

Early research in experiential marketing and store atmospherics emphasized the importance of affective reactions. Grounded and embodied cognition revised the understanding of the role perception plays in cognition. These developments culminated in the now most central research stream of sensory marketing, which bridges other research streams.

Although the research field is strongly interconnected, integration with other marketing disciplines potentially enriches the discourse.

This paper is useful for any reader who wants to gain a synthesized overview of the research field of sensory marketing. The framework presented in this paper can serve as a starting point for new sensory marketing research.

This paper offers a structured and unbiased account of sensory marketing and merges findings from diverse research backgrounds.

Purpose – To present the argument that the paradigm of spontaneously self-ordering open adaptation is common to Hayek's thesis on the mind (The Sensory Order) and to his presentations of social science (the social order).

Methodology/approach – To show how Hayek's methodological stance for social science interrelates with his theoretical work in neuroscience and psychology, where the ‘connectionist’ paradigm is relevant to extensive writings upon the human condition.

Findings – •close parallels across biological, psychological and social adaptations give a basis for determining which methods are appropriate to gain knowledge about knowledge;•broad confirmation is evident that methods of proven worth to physical science have little relevance for the analysis of psychological and social phenomena, which are more complex than the phenomena of the material world.

Research limitations/implications – •that the social order rests upon common beliefs;•that no simple distinction separates subjective and objective knowledge;•that any drive for social science to match the precision of physical science is misguided;•that in seeking an objective focus, behaviourism eliminates crucial introspective insights upon motivation and goals.

Originality/value of paper – The presentation is one of exegesis showing the relevance of Hayek's seminal work in theoretical psychology to the broadest themes of human understanding and social adaptation.

Cognition and psychology have become central issues in economics. While this interest represents a radical change in economic theory, it does have a useful history that we believe is only partially recognized by contemporary economists. Although it is customary to cite Herbert Simon's important work in this regard,¹ we suggest Hayek's earlier work The Sensory Order (1952) should enjoy similar billing.