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Influences from external factors can affect decision-makers, preventing them from making decisions in a fully rational manner. Music may serve as one such influential factor in this context. Music is part of our daily lives, and we are exposed to music in numerous places. We designed a field experiment to study the influence of background music on patrons’ behavior in restaurants. Specifically, we examine the effect of the music’s tempo (slow or fast) on time spent in the restaurant, the bill amount, and the tip size. The results show that patrons in the slow tempo group spent the most time in the restaurant, those in the control group followed next, and the patrons in the fast tempo group were the quickest to leave. However, there are no differences between the groups in bill size. The tips in the fast tempo group were higher than in the control group when controlling for several independent variables. The findings have practical implications for restaurant owners and managers. In busy periods, the restaurant can use fast-tempo music to increase the turnover of tables, because then tables become available for new diners more quickly, contributing more to the restaurant’s income compared to tables that occupy the space for a longer duration.

We study how the buying purpose affects the trade-off between time and money. We consider the case of buying something for ourselves versus buying a gift and the decision whether to spend time traveling to a cheaper store to save money. We hypothesized that when purchasing a gift, people make less effort to save money, and therefore will be less willing to spend time traveling to a cheaper store when they buy a gift. In experiments with several scenarios, we fail to find support for this hypothesis. We also explore the impact of telling subjects that the purchase is made abroad. This is hypothesized to increase the valuation of the buyer’s time. We also hypothesize that the interaction of being abroad and buying a gift will be negative. The data support both hypotheses. Subjects answered 15 questions about their decision-making style (rational, intuitive, and spontaneous). Subjects with more rational decision-making exhibit lower time value, which is likely to be closer to the real one. Subjects with more rational decision-making also show more strongly that time abroad is more valuable. These results suggest that questions about decision-making style are correlated with decision-making in scenarios of realistic purchase decisions.

We review some topics in which soccer penalty kicks are related to phenomena in game theory, decision making and psychology. In particular, we discuss the game theoretic analysis of the kicker's and goalkeeper's behavior and its relation to the concept of mixed strategy Nash Equilibrium. The main idea is that both players should not follow a predictable strategy, and therefore should choose different strategies over time. We also review the action bias of goalkeepers in penalty kicks, which results in them almost always jumping to one of the sides although staying in the goal's center is in fact a good strategy given the empirical distribution of kicks. We then turn to the order effect in penalty shootouts, and the debate to what extent kicking first gives the team an advantage in the shootout. These topics illustrate the opportunities offered by interdisciplinary research that combines sports with social sciences such as economics and psychology. While this interdisciplinary literature has grown significantly in recent years, research opportunities in this area abound and we hope that this article will encourage the readers to contribute to it.

We examine the effect of an irrelevant task that may become a reference point on subjects’ effort, feelings and perceptions. All subjects complete up to 25 tasks and are paid $0.10 per task solved correctly. However, some subjects have an easy task of finding one letter and others have a hard task of finding two letters. In the irrelevant-task treatment conditions subjects are told about the two types of tasks and are then assigned randomly to one. In addition, there are two control conditions, and in each control condition subjects are assigned to a specific task without the other task being possible or mentioned. Subjects in the irrelevant-task treatments express more positive (negative) feelings when assigned to the easy (hard) task. The control conditions that have no reference point of another task are in between the two irrelevant-task treatments in the feeling ratings. We hypothesized that for a given task, the subjects in the experimental conditions that have more positive feelings will also solve more tasks, but this hypothesis was not supported by the data. Finally, subjects who receive the easy task complete more tasks than the ones with the hard task.

Influences from external factors can affect decision-makers, preventing them from making decisions in a fully rational manner. Music may serve as one such influential factor in this context. Music is part of our daily lives, and we are exposed to music in numerous places. We designed a field experiment to study the influence of background music on patrons' behavior in restaurants. Specifically, we examine the effect of the music's tempo (slow or fast) on time spent in the restaurant, the bill amount, and the tip size. The results show that patrons in the slow tempo group spent the most time in the restaurant, those in the control group followed next, and the patrons in the fast tempo group were the quickest to leave. However, there are no differences between the groups in bill size. The tips in the fast tempo group were higher than in the control group when controlling for several independent variables. The findings have practical implications for restaurant owners and managers. In busy periods, the restaurant can use fast-tempo music to increase the turnover of tables, because then tables become available for new diners more quickly, contributing more to the restaurant's income compared to tables that occupy the space for a longer duration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study how the buying purpose affects the trade-off between time and money. We consider the case of buying something for ourselves versus buying a gift and the decision whether to spend time traveling to a cheaper store to save money. We hypothesized that when purchasing a gift, people make less effort to save money, and therefore will be less willing to spend time traveling to a cheaper store when they buy a gift. In experiments with several scenarios, we fail to find support for this hypothesis. We also explore the impact of telling subjects that the purchase is made abroad. This is hypothesized to increase the valuation of the buyer's time. We also hypothesize that the interaction of being abroad and buying a gift will be negative. The data support both hypotheses. Subjects answered 15 questions about their decision-making style (rational, intuitive, and spontaneous). Subjects with more rational decision-making exhibit lower time value, which is likely to be closer to the real one. Subjects with more rational decision-making also show more strongly that time abroad is more valuable. These results suggest that questions about decision-making style are correlated with decision-making in scenarios of realistic purchase decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a modified ultimatum game, in which the proposer gives two offers, and the responder selects one offer out of the two without seeing them. Then, the selected offer becomes the relevant offer, and the unselected offer becomes the irrelevant one. Finally, the responder evaluates the fairness of the pair of offers and makes a hypothetical decision whether to accept or reject the relevant offer. For most of our subjects, the level of the irrelevant offer positively affects fairness perceptions and willingness to accept, even though the irrelevant offer cannot be accepted. The reason is that the irrelevant offer does signal the proposer’s intentions. Most responders give more weight to the relevant offer than to the irrelevant offer in evaluating fairness and in the willingness to accept. We call this effect the relevance effect. This effect is expected when considering the willingness to accept. However, it is unclear why the relevant offer should carry more weight when evaluating fairness, because the proposer makes the two offers together without knowing which one will become the relevant one. Therefore, this behavior can be considered a bias in fairness evaluations.

Momentum is often cited in the media and in other sources as an important factor in performance over time in business, politics, sports and other areas. Yet, academic research on whether momentum actually exists is mixed. This study aims to assess momentum perceptions in a context in which momentum could be relevant, but where empirical data have shown that no momentum exists. In particular, we take the scenario of a basketball game that is tied at the end of regulation time. We designed questionnaires where one of the teams closed a moderate or a large score gap during the last few minutes of the fourth quarter (and in a control treatment, the score was balanced during these minutes). In the first study, 107 fans and 73 practitioners answered these questionnaires. Then, in the second study, 250 additional respondents completed questionnaires containing the same game scenarios but with additional ``opposite-framing'' versions and a set of questions regarding the reasons for momentum-based beliefs. The respondents also answered several questions about their level of knowledge and interest in basketball, which allowed us to categorize them to fans and laymen. The responses revealed that coming back into the game by reducing a significant score gap during the final minutes of regular time was perceived to increase the teams' chances to win in overtime (which can be interpreted as a positive momentum). Fans exhibit stronger momentum beliefs compared to laymen. Overall, respondents' perceptions contradict the existing empirical evidence that shows that the comeback team does not have higher chances to win the game in overtime. We discuss possible reasons for the discrepancy between the perceptions we observed and the empirical data.

Previous research has reported that the gambler's fallacy could be detected in goalkeepers' behavior during penalty shootouts. Following repeated kicks in the same direction, goalkeepers were more likely to dive in the opposite direction on the next kick. We employ here a unique data collection approach and accurately measure the exact location of each ball when crossing the goal plane. This allows us to analyze how different definitions of the goal center width affect the results, and we show that this width indeed affects whether a gambler's fallacy in goalkeepers' diving behavior exists. We further augment the data with additional kicks from top international competitions and analyze the extended dataset. We also question whether previous treatments of kicking sequences adequately represent what goalkeepers consider as a run of consecutive kicks to the same side. A different representation of kicking sequences is provided and applied to the data. Overall, we find some evidence for the gambler's fallacy after sequences of two or three kicks to the same side.

An attacking basketball player initiating significant physical contact with a defender who has already established a legal and stationary position, should be called with an offensive foul. Offensive foul situations are particularly ambiguous and complex, making the referee’s task a difficult one. In such conditions of complexity and constraints of time, the referee is likely to be prone to systematic biases, as has been documented by previous research in other sport settings. We analyzed the referees’ decisions in 250 instances of collisions between an attacking player and a defender. In these collisions the defender fell, and potentially an offensive foul could be called. We found no evidence of favoritism granted to the home team, to star players, or to high-reputation teams, or of small players being tackled by significantly larger opponents. The findings suggest that these biases are not very robust, and are sensitive to the context, and that proper training of referees and enhanced awareness can help to alleviate referees’ biases.

We review some topics in which soccer penalty kicks are related to phenomena in game theory, decision making and psychology. In particular, we discuss the game theoretic analysis of the kicker's and goalkeeper's behavior and its relation to the concept of mixed strategy Nash Equilibrium. The main idea is that both players should not follow a predictable strategy, and therefore should choose different strategies over time. We also review the action bias of goalkeepers in penalty kicks, which results in them almost always jumping to one of the sides although staying in the goal's center is in fact a good strategy given the empirical distribution of kicks. We then turn to the order effect in penalty shootouts, and the debate to what extent kicking first gives the team an advantage in the shootout. These topics illustrate the opportunities offered by interdisciplinary research that combines sports with social sciences such as economics and psychology. While this interdisciplinary literature has grown significantly in recent years, research opportunities in this area abound and we hope that this article will encourage the readers to contribute to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article shows that when people consider differentiated goods or services that differ in price and quality, they exhibit a decision-making bias of ``relative thinking'': relative price differences affect them even when economic theory suggests that only absolute price differences matter. This result is obtained in four different consumption categories. Sometimes subjects are affected only by relative price differences (``full relative thinking'') and sometimes also by absolute price differences (``partial relative thinking''). This behavior has implications for various disciplines, and it is particularly relevant in models dealing with horizontal or vertical differentiation, optimal pricing, competitive strategy, or advertising.