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During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, data regarding new infections were commonly presented and used to guide policy decisions (e.g., whether to close schools) and personal choices (e.g., whether to dine at a restaurant). In this manuscript, we highlight a critical aspect of pandemic data that can pose a challenge for people trying to reason about it. Data on infections-like much time series data-can be presented as either stocks (the total number of cases) or flows (the number of new cases over some interval). We show that seeing the same data presented in one format versus the other can shift judgments of risk and behavioral intentions. Specifically, when participants were shown data that depicted the number of new cases each day (flow) decreasing, they judged the current risk of COVID-19 to be lower than participants who were shown the same data as the total (cumulative) number of cases (stock), which-by its nature-continued to increase. Risk appraisal, in turn, predicted a wide array of behavioral intentions (e.g., likelihood of dining indoors at a restaurant). Thus, the choice of how to present pandemic data can lead people to different conclusions about risk and can have practical consequences for risky behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Every decision regarding a course of action incurs an opportunity cost. Such costs are relevant to the decision but often neglected. Opportunity costs are more likely to be considered when alternatives are top-of-mind or when the decision maker faces severe resource constraints. Considering opportunity costs of time may differ from that of money because people are less likely to mentally account for their time and more likely to have specific plans for specific units of time. The benefit from a course of action may be realized at a different point in time than its opportunity cost. Such opportunity costs that arise in the context of intertemporal choice are more likely to be spontaneously considered for now than for later., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

We explore how preferences for attributes are constructed when people choose between multiattribute options. As found in prior research, we observed that while people make decisions, their preferences for the attributes in question shift to support the emerging choice, thus enabling confident decisions. The novelty of the studies reported here is that participants repeated the same task 6 to 8 weeks later. We found that between tasks, preferences returned to near their original levels, only to shift again to support the second choice, regardless of which choice participants made. Similar patterns were observed in a free-choice task (Study 1) and when the favorableness of options was manipulated (Study 2). It follows that preferences behave in an elastic manner: In the absence of situational pressures, they rest at baseline levels, but during the process of reaching a decision, they morph to support the chosen options. This elasticity appears to facilitate confident decision making in the face of decisional conflict.

The idea that choices alter preferences has been widely studied in psychology, yet prior research has focused primarily on choices for which all alternatives were salient at the time of choice. Opportunity costs capture the value of the best forgone alternative and should be considered as part of any decision process, yet people often neglect them. How does the salience of opportunity costs at the time of choice influence subsequent evaluations of chosen and forgone options? In three experiments, we found that there was a larger postchoice spread between evaluations of focal options and opportunity costs when opportunity costs were explicit at the time of choice than when they remained implicit., (© The Author(s) 2015.)