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Firms like Uber, Amazon, and TripAdvisor have popularized the rating of people, goods, and services. These entities receive scores (e.g., through online reviews) in a variety of presentation formats: incremental (a raw score per episode; e.g., 5–5–2), cumulative (updated average scores; e.g., 5–5–4), or a combination thereof. This article focuses on prevalent situations in which a score deviates from prior scores and examines how the presentation format of the scores impacts decision makers' (e.g., consumers, managers) evaluations of the entity scored. Across a wide variety of settings, nine experiments document that when a generally well-performing (poorly performing) entity suddenly receives a negative (positive) score, overall performance will be perceived as less negative (positive) when shown in a cumulative format compared with an incremental or combined format. This effect appears to be stronger when the deviating episode is more representative (e.g., due to higher recency or internal attribution). The authors also find evidence for their proposed explanation: a cumulative format distorts individuals' perceptions of the underlying raw score of the deviating episode. These findings imply that presenting scores in alternative formats may affect marketing outcomes (e.g., customer churn, product choice, technology adoption, new product success, and user engagement on peer-to-peer platforms). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Countless policies are crafted with the intention of punishing all who do wrong or rewarding only those who do right. However, this requires accommodating certain mistakes: some who do not deserve to be punished might be, and some who deserve to be rewarded might not be. Six preregistered experiments (N = 3,484 U.S. adults) reveal that people are more willing to accept this trade-off in principle, before errors occur, than in practice, after errors occur. The result is an asymmetry such that for punishments, people believe it is more important to prevent false negatives (e.g., criminals escaping justice) than to fix them, and more important to fix false positives (e.g., wrongful convictions) than to prevent them. For rewards, people believe it is more important to prevent false positives (e.g., welfare fraud) than to fix them and more important to fix false negatives (e.g., improperly denied benefits) than to prevent them.

Consumers often make decisions for multiple‐others when they do not know each one's true preferences. Under such circumstances, we demonstrate perceptions of enhanced preference heterogeneity for multiple‐others, relative to the perceived preference of single‐others. As a result, choices for multiple‐others are more diversified than those for single‐others. We attribute this effect to the perceived uniqueness of others in the multiple‐other setting. Notably, when others are perceived as particularly unique, the inclination toward over‐diversification intensifies. However, this diversification often leads to choices that do not align with the true preferences of the individuals, causing potential mismatches in demand and supply. We conclude with a discussion on the implications of these findings for managers and suggest avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms often ask consumers to either spend time to save money (e.g., Lyft's “Wait & Save”) or spend money to save time (e.g., Uber's “Priority Pickup”). Across six preregistered studies (N = 3631), including seven reported in Appendix S1 (N = 2930), we find that asking consumers to spend time to save money is perceived as fairer than asking them to spend money to save time (all else equal), with downstream consequences for word‐of‐mouth, purchase intentions, willingness‐to‐pay (WTP), and incentive‐compatible choice. This is because spend‐time‐to‐save‐money offers reduce concerns about firms' profit‐seeking motives, which consumers find aversive and unfair. The effect is thus mediated by inferences about profit‐seeking and attenuates when concerns about those motives are less salient (e.g., for non‐profits). At the same time, we find that spend‐money‐to‐save‐time offers (e.g., expedited shipping) are more common in the marketplace. This research reveals how normatively equivalent trade‐offs can nevertheless yield contradictory fairness judgments, with meaningful implications for marketing theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People's concern with maintaining their individual reputation powerfully drives judgment and decision making. But humans also identify strongly with groups. Concerns about group-based reputation may similarly shape people's psychology, perhaps especially in contexts where shifts in group reputation can have strategic consequences. Do individuals allow their concern with their group's reputation to shape their reactions to even large-scale societal suffering versus benefits? Examining both affective responses and financially incentivized behavior of partisans in the United States, five preregistered experiments (N = 7,534) demonstrate that group-based reputational incentives can weaken—and sometimes nearly eliminate—affective differentiation between present-term societal harms and benefits. This can occur even when these societal harms and benefits are substantial—including economic devastation and national security threats—and when the consequences impact ingroup members. Individuals' sensitivity to group-based reputation can even cause them to divert resources from more effective to less effective charities. We provide evidence that partisans care about group-based reputation in part because it holds strategic value, positioning their group to improve its standing vis-a-vis the outgroup. By allowing group-based reputational incentives to reduce their sensitivity to societal outcomes, partisans may play into the other side's cynical narratives about their disregard for human suffering, damaging bridges to cooperation. Public Significance Statement: When groups get locked into competition, they can become highly focused on outcompeting the other side, with costly societal ramifications. In the context of Democrats and Republicans in the United States, we find that partisans are sometimes so attentive to how events make their group look vis-a-vis the outgroup (i.e., their group-based reputation) that they become less sensitive to how events impinge on present-term societal harms and benefits. This can include economic devastation, national security threats, and health care emergencies that harm the ingroup. This occurs at least partly because group-based reputational incentives hold strategic value for gaining power. Concerns with group-based reputation can even cause individuals to act in ways that bring about suboptimal societal impact if doing so avoids burnishing the outgroup's reputation. When two sides are focused on looking good rather than seeking good, prospects for cooperation diminish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The popularity of Internet usage and the diverse and rich information available online make it easier for students to engage in academic misconduct, especially Internet plagiarism (IP). Therefore, this study investigated the IP intention of Chinese students and analyzed the influence of gender, educational level, achievement goals (AG), low self-control, acceptance, and plagiarism experience on it. A total of 551 students from high school to university participated in this study. It was found that male students had more IP experience than female students, and college students had more IP experience and higher IP intentions than high school students. Correlation analysis showed that all variables in this study were related to each other. Regression analysis showed that AG, low self-control, plagiarism acceptance, and past experience jointly predicted IP intention with a high level of predictive explanatory power (64%). Specifically, students with a dominant mastery approach had lower IP intentions, whereas students with a more impulsive personality, more acceptance of IP, and more IP experience had higher IP intentions. Considering these findings, this article puts forward suggestions to reduce IP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial reporting quality can benefit from companies and auditors using artificial intelligence (AI) in complex and subjective financial reporting areas. However, benefits will only accrue if managers incorporate AI-based information into their financial reporting decisions, which the popular press and academic literature suggest is uncertain. We use a multi-method approach to examine how financial executives view and respond to AI. In a survey, respondents describe various uses of AI at their companies, spanning from simple to complex functions. While managers are not averse to the use of AI by their companies or their auditors, they appear to be uncertain about how auditors' use of AI will directly benefit their companies. In an experiment that manipulates whether a company and/or its auditor use AI, managers whose companies use AI record larger audit adjustments for a complex accounting estimate when the auditor uses AI. Auditor AI use does not affect managers' adjustment decisions in the absence of company AI. This study highlights the importance of considering the effects of AI use by both companies and their auditors when evaluating how AI influences auditing and financial reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mysterious consumption items represent products that are chosen or purchased without knowing the exact nature of the product(s). In contrast to the widely accepted notion of uncertainty aversion, the present research shows that consumers prefer uncertainty over certainty in the context of mysterious consumption. Across a variety of products (stress balls, ice cream, songs, teas, snacks, hotel rooms, masks, rental cars), participants preferred mysterious consumption items over non-mysterious consumption items of equal expected value. The value of mysterious consumption lies at least in part in the uncertainty about the nature of the outcome among objectively similar outcomes. Specifically, the uncertainty around horizontally differentiated outcomes (i.e. outcomes that differ as a matter of taste) in the case of mysterious consumption focuses consumers on the positive side of uncertainty: the opportunity to be surprised. The preference for uncertainty is not observed when the possible outcomes are vertically differentiated (i.e. outcomes that differ in objective superiority, as is the case in existing demonstrations of uncertainty) or when horizontal uncertainty is reduced to a degree that diminishes the ability to be surprised. The findings reconcile literatures on surprise and uncertainty aversion and help explain mysterious consumption as a substantive phenomenon in the marketplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When making talent-selection decisions in sport, coaches, scouts, program directors, and policymakers typically adopt two approaches: The subjective approach, also known as the coach's eye, where these professionals select or de-select athletes based on their personal observations and impressions; and the objective approach, where they apply a multi-faceted formula for awarding scores to the athletes' motor skills (such as agility and coordination) and psychological capabilities (such as leadership and motivation) – as a mean for predicting their future success. These two approaches are often perceived as complementary in the strive to reach optimal selection decisions in sport. In this conceptualized article, we examine challenges associated with such talent-selection decisions, and address the coach's eye as an example of a subjective assessment approach. We also address the concept of fast and frugal heuristics for making selection decisions in sport, while elaborating on bounded rationality and the human machine paradigm. Finally, in addition to discussing certain ''built-in'' limitations in sport-selection decisions, based on judgment and decision-making models, we provide a rationale for adding the big-data approach, as a mean for enhancing links between the subjective and objective assessments currently used in talent-selection decisions in sport.

We examined how different ways of presenting time‐series data affect consumer judgments and behaviors. Specifically, we compared the use of absolute terms (e.g., actual dollar change) versus relative terms (e.g., annual percentage change) in charts. Our findings revealed that absolute charts tend to have a more positive visual slope than relative charts, leading consumers to extrapolate these trends and expect faster growth in quantities. In Study 1, participants who viewed COVID‐19 data in absolute charts, as opposed to relative charts, donated more money to a COVID‐19‐related charity and were less inclined to challenge quarantine advisories throughout the day. In Study 2, we observed that participants preferred investing in a country when its GDP was presented in an absolute chart, and visual trends were found to drive this effect. Study 3 demonstrated that individuals placed greater emphasis on absolute charts depicting population growth, particularly when the unit of measurement was more meaningful. Overall, the choice to represent data in absolute versus relative terms has a far reaching impact on judgments and choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People tasked with replacing a departing group member are disproportionately likely to choose a replacement with the same demographic identity, leading to demographic "stickiness" in group composition. We examine this effect in 2,163 U.S. federal judge appointments over 75 years, in the selection of 5,616 S&P 1500 board directors from 2014 to 2019, and in four preregistered experiments (n = 2,900). The patterns we document are generally consistent with both impact aversion (desires to minimize changes to group composition and dynamics) and diversity loss aversion (outsized concerns about losing ground on demographic diversity relative to interests in gaining ground). Ultimately, our results suggest that replacement decisions are influenced by loss-averse preferences regarding the demographic identities of departing group members. The propensity to choose new group members based on whether they demographically resemble their predecessors suggests that once progress toward diversification has occurred, it should be "sticky," so backsliding is less likely than might otherwise be expected. An optimistic outlook is that one-time interventions to change group composition may have a lasting impact, and change agents committed to diversification may have enduring effects on equality beyond their tenure. This paper was accepted by Yuval Rottenstreich, behavioral economics and decision analysis. Supplemental Material: The data files and online supplement are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4897. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authoritative standards encourage external auditors to coordinate their efforts with the client's internal audit function (IAF) as part of a financial statement audit. Academic research on this relationship finds that it has the potential to improve audit quality and efficiency. The objective of this research is to better understand how coordination can impact the external auditor's decision to rely on the IAF. Prior research has shown that the reliance decision is complex and involves several factors that must be considered simultaneously. In this study, we surveyed external auditors to better understand the benefits of coordinating efforts, the antecedents to successful coordination, and the elements that potentially inhibit external auditors from relying on the work of internal auditors. We find that external auditors are coordinating with the IAF to achieve more efficient and effective audits. The degree of this reliance, however, does vary between audits and is largely dependent upon the perceived competence and objectivity of the IAF as well as effective communication. Our findings are informative to external audit practitioners and their decision to rely on IAFs and work towards a successful arrangement where the integrated audit is applied more efficiently and effectively. This additional insight also helps inform and direct future research into external auditors' coordination decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People are frequently invited to join others for fun social activities. They may be invited to lunch, to attend a sporting event, to watch the season finale of a television show, and so forth. Invitees—those who are on the receiving ends of invitations—sometimes accept invitations from inviters—those who extend invitations—but other times, invitees decline. Unfortunately, saying no can be hard, leading invitees to accept invitations when they would rather not. The present work sheds light on one factor that makes it so hard to decline invitations. We demonstrate that invitees overestimate the negative ramifications that arise in the eyes of inviters following an invitation decline. Invitees have exaggerated concerns about how much the decline will anger the inviter, signal that the invitee does not care about the inviter, make the inviter unlikely to offer another invitation in the future, and so forth. We also demonstrate that this asymmetry emerges in part because invitees exaggerate the degree to which inviters focus on the decline itself, as opposed to the thoughts ran through the invitee's head before deciding. Indeed, across multiple studies, we find support for this process through mediation and moderation, while simultaneously finding evidence against multiple alternative accounts. We conclude with a discussion of the contributions and limitations of this research, along with directions for future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When making talent-selection decisions in sport, coaches, scouts, program directors, and policymakers typically adopt two approaches: The subjective approach, also known as the coach's eye, where these professionals select or de-select athletes based on their personal observations and impressions; and the objective approach, where they apply a multi-faceted formula for awarding scores to the athletes' motor skills (such as agility and coordination) and psychological capabilities (such as leadership and motivation) - as a mean for predicting their future success. These two approaches are often perceived as complementary in the strive to reach optimal selection decisions in sport. In this conceptualized article, we examine challenges associated with such talent-selection decisions, and address the coach's eye as an example of a subjective assessment approach. We also address the concept of fast and frugal heuristics for making selection decisions in sport, while elaborating on bounded rationality and the human machine paradigm. Finally, in addition to discussing certain "built-in" limitations in sport-selection decisions, based on judgment and decision-making models, we provide a rationale for adding the big-data approach, as a mean for enhancing links between the subjective and objective assessments currently used in talent-selection decisions in sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Countless policies are crafted with the intention of punishing all who do wrong or rewarding only those who do right. However, this requires accommodating certain mistakes: some who do not deserve to be punished might be, and some who deserve to be rewarded might not be. Six preregistered experiments (N = 3,484 U.S. adults) reveal that people are more willing to accept this trade-off in principle, before errors occur, than in practice, after errors occur. The result is an asymmetry such that for punishments, people believe it is more important to prevent false negatives (e.g., criminals escaping justice) than to fix them, and more important to fix false positives (e.g., wrongful convictions) than to prevent them. For rewards, people believe it is more important to prevent false positives (e.g., welfare fraud) than to fix them and more important to fix false negatives (e.g., improperly denied benefits) than to prevent them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can the sensation of moving fast versus slow systematically influence consumer behavior? With recent technological innovations, people increasingly experience speed during decision making. They can be physically on the move with their devices or virtually immersed in speed simulated through their devices. Through seven experiments, we provide evidence for a speed-abstraction effect , where the perception of moving faster (vs. slower) leads people to rely on more abstract (vs. concrete) mental representations during decision making. This effect manifests for virtually simulated (experiment 1) and physically experienced (experiment 2) movement on moving trains. We suggest that it stems from an underlying speed-abstraction schema where people associate faster speed with abstraction and slower speed with concreteness (experiments 3a–3c). Weakening this schema attenuates the effect (experiment 4). Through a field study, experiment 5 demonstrates that video ads placed on Facebook are more engaging when virtually simulated speed matches the linguistic abstraction level of the message. Dimensions of psychological distance (time, space) and factors influencing mental representation (affect, fluency, spatial orientation) are addressed as possible alternative explanations that cannot account for the effect. We propose a framework for understanding how experiencing speed—both physical and virtual—can influence decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The exercise of audit judgment is essential because it is impractical to perform an audit on all types of evidence. These types of evidence are considered in forming an opinion on audited financial statements, making audit judgment a determinant of the audit's outcome. The objective of this research is to analyze the factors that affect an auditor's judgment and decision making (JDM) during an audit. This study used an exploratory research design, with the factor analysis approach as its methodology. However, the data were collected using the questionnaire method. The questionnaire was sent to all member auditors of the Lebanese Association of Certified Public Accountants (LACPA). A total of 310 completed questionnaires were collected and analyzed. The data analysis findings indicate that the auditor's JDM throughout the audit process is affected by three factors: personal, task, and environmental factors. The auditor's personal factor becomes the dominant factor because it has the largest eigenvalue of 7.949. These findings demonstrate the complex and diverse nature of auditor judgment, highlighting the significance of considering audit JDM factors. Therefore, auditors may improve their abilities to make informed and effective judgments throughout the audit process by acknowledging the importance of personal, task, and environmental factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the influence of instructional interventions in mitigating mental accounting bias during capital investment decisions. Initially, we investigate the potential costly errors resulting from mental accounting. Subsequently, we employ instructional strategies to reduce this cognitive bias. Employing an experimental methodology, we employ an 8x2 mixed factorial design to examine the impact of financing sources on mental accounting and the effectiveness of instructional interventions. The findings reveal that managers prone to mental accounting tend to retain debt-financed assets over equity-financed assets. Importantly, instruction proves effective in alleviating this cognitive bias. This research holds significance for both academic scholars and practitioners. It sheds light on the deficiency of instructional resources in accounting education for fostering essential professional judgment skills among students. It is recommended that Finance, Business, and Accounting faculties incorporate modules on mental accounting and related cognitive biases in postgraduate programs. Furthermore, manufacturing industries can benefit from employee training programs to reduce cognitive biases associated with mental accounting in capital budgeting.

This article details a correction to: Röseler, L., Weber, L., Helgerth, K., Stich, E., Günther, M., Tegethoff, P., … Schütz, A. (2022). The Open Anchoring Quest Dataset: Anchored Estimates from 96 Studies on Anchoring Effects. Journal of Open Psychology Data, 10(1), 16. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/jopd.67

Nine studies investigate when and why people may paradoxically prefer bad news—for example, hoping for an objectively worse injury or a higher-risk diagnosis over explicitly better alternatives. Using a combination of field surveys and randomized experiments, the research demonstrates that people may hope for relatively worse (vs. better) news in an effort to preemptively avoid subjectively difficult decisions (studies 1 and 2). This is because when worse news avoids a choice (study 3A)—for example, by "forcing one's hand" or creating one dominant option that circumvents a fraught decision (study 3B)—it can relieve the decision-maker's experience of personal responsibility (study 3C). However, because not all decisions warrant avoidance, not all decisions will elicit a preference for worse news; fewer people hope for worse news when facing subjectively easier (vs. harder) choices (studies 4A and B). Finally, this preference for worse news is not without consequence and may create perverse incentives for decision-makers, such as the tendency to forgo opportunities for improvement (studies 5A and B). The work contributes to the literature on decision avoidance and elucidates another strategy people use to circumvent difficult decisions: a propensity to hope for the worst. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the influence of instructional interventions in mitigating mental accounting bias during capital investment decisions. Initially, we investigate the potential costly errors resulting from mental accounting. Subsequently, we employ instructional strategies to reduce this cognitive bias. Employing an experimental methodology, we employ an 8x2 mixed factorial design to examine the impact of financing sources on mental accounting and the effectiveness of instructional interventions. The findings reveal that managers prone to mental accounting tend to retain debt-financed assets over equity-financed assets. Importantly, instruction proves effective in alleviating this cognitive bias. This research holds significance for both academic scholars and practitioners. It sheds light on the deficiency of instructional resources in accounting education for fostering essential professional judgment skills among students. It is recommended that Finance, Business, and Accounting faculties incorporate modules on mental accounting and related cognitive biases in postgraduate programs. Furthermore, manufacturing industries can benefit from employee training programs to reduce cognitive biases associated with mental accounting in capital budgeting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selfish incentives typically outperform prosocial incentives, and customer referral programs frequently use such "selfish" (i.e., sender-benefiting) incentives to incentivize current customers to recruit new customers. However, in two field experiments and a fully incentivized lab experiment, this research finds that "prosocial" (i.e., recipient-benefiting) referral incentives recruit more new customers. Five subsequent experiments test a process account for this effect, identifying two key psychological mechanisms: reputational benefits and action costs. First, at the referral stage, senders (existing customers) anticipate reputational benefits for referring recipients (potential new customers), who receive a reward for signing up. These reputational benefits render recipient-benefiting referrals just as effective as sender-benefiting referrals at the relatively low-cost referral stage. Second, at the uptake stage, recipient-benefiting referrals are more effective than sender-benefiting referrals: recipient-benefiting referrals directly incentivize recipients to sign up, providing a clear reward for an otherwise costly uptake decision. The preponderance of selfish, or sender-benefiting, referral incentives in the marketplace suggests these effects are unanticipated by marketers who design incentive schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In three experiments, we conceptually replicated and extended the spillover bias in judgments of diversity that was first reported by Daniels et al. (2017, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 139, 92–105). In the first experiment, we showed that judgments of the ethnoracial diversity of groups of people were affected by the gender diversity of those people. In the second experiment, we extended this result to nonsocial stimuli by showing that judgments of the size diversity and size variability of groups of circles were affected by the color diversity of those circles. In the third experiment, we showed that judgments of the ethnoracial diversity of groups of people were affected by the color diversity of a group of circles in the background. These results suggest that diversity spillover bias is an extremely general phenomenon that occurs for both social and nonsocial judgments of diversity and variability. We propose that it occurs because people use the overall perceived diversity in a set of stimuli as a cue to judge diversity on any specific dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People exhibit scope insensitivity: Their expressed valuation of a problem is not proportionate with its scope or size. To address scope insensitivity in charitable giving, Hsee et al. (2013) developed the (Classical) Unit Asking technique, where people are first asked how much they are willing to donate to support a single individual, followed by how much they are willing to donate to support a group of individuals. In this paper, we explored the mechanisms, extensions, and limitations of the technique. In particular, we investigated an extension of the technique, which we call Sequential Unit Asking (SUA). SUA asks people a series of willingness‐to‐donate questions, in which the number of individuals to be helped increases in a stepwise manner until it reaches the total group size. Across four studies investigating donation judgments (total N=2045), we did not find evidence that willingness to donate (WTD) judgments to the total group increased with larger groups. Instead, our results suggest that Unit Asking (sequential or classical) increases donation amounts only through a single one‐off boost. Further, we find evidence in three out of four studies that the SUA extension increases WTD judgments over Classical Unit Asking. In a fifth study (N=537) using a contingent valuation design (instead of donation judgments), we find scope sensitivity using all asking techniques. We conclude that, while it is difficult to create scope sensitivity in WTD judgments, SUA should be considered a promising approach to increase charitable donations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Consumers often fail to utilize desirable offers they had originally selected and planned to use and thus later regret missing out on them. This failure to follow through induces an opportunity cost. In contrast to prior research findings that opportunity costs tend to be underestimated, the authors propose that in situations where the need to choose arises from external rather than internal constraints, opportunity costs may actually be overestimated. Consumers view choice constraints as external when the necessity to trade off one option for another relates to extraneous resource limitations (e.g., whenever time, budget, or space constraints necessitate choosing between two desirable offers). Conversely, consumers perceive choice constraints as internal when that trade-off is "built-in" (e.g., when a marketing incentive requires choosing between two desirable offers). Five studies demonstrate that choosing on the basis of an external constraint induces consumers to imagine ways in which they can utilize all of the competing options in the choice set. Consequently, consumers feel that by failing to utilize their chosen option, they simultaneously miss out on all options (although in actuality they could have realized only one of those options). Consistent with this conceptualization, only consumers who want to use all of the choice set options simultaneously demonstrate opportunity cost overestimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumers typically infer greater quantity from larger numbers. For instance, a 500 gram box of chocolates appears heavier than a.5 kilogram box. By expressing quantities in alternative units or attribute dimensions, one can represent an otherwise identical quantity in a more versus less discretized manner (e.g. a box containing 25 chocolates vs. a box weighing 500 grams). Seven experimental studies show that a difference between more discretized quantities (e.g. 25 vs. 50 chocolates) appears larger relative to a difference between less discretized quantities (e.g. 500 grams vs. 1,000 grams), above and beyond effects of number magnitude. More discretized quantity expressions enhance the consumers' ability to discriminate between choice options and can also nudge consumers to more favorable choices. Because more discretized quantities are more evaluable, expressing a quantity in terms of a collection of elements particularly helps individuals who are less numerically proficient. By identifying how discretization functions as a novel antecedent of evaluability and by distinguishing two different conceptualizations of numerosity (i.e. symbolic and perceptual numerosity), this article draws important connections between the numerical cognition literature and General Evaluability Theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contagion is the belief that an entity's invisible or essential qualities can be transferred to a target. Researchers studying contagion have often distinguished between physical contagion (the perceived transfer of germs, toxins, and pathogens) and spiritual contagion (the perceived transfer of metaphysical properties such as spirits, essence, and moral characteristics). While sensitivity to physical contagion is a component of several existing scales, to date, there are no scales that measure sensitivity to spiritual contagion. Here, we develop and validate a measure of Spiritual Contagion Sensitivity (SCS), which considers positive, negative, and neutral aspects of spiritual contagion. We demonstrate discriminant validity from existing measures of physical contagion sensitivity, such as perceived vulnerability to disease and disgust sensitivity (Study 1). We demonstrate construct validity by showing the correlation between SCS and a variety of published findings in the literature for which spiritual contagion beliefs have been hypothesized to play a role (Study 2). Finally, we demonstrate predictive utility of the SCS scale by showing significant moderation of spiritual contagion effects from the literature (Studies 3A–3C). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marketers have long used celebrity endorsement to help viewers build strong brand‐product associations. Celebrity endorsements increase brand awareness and recall, but how celebrity endorsements shape the decision process remains unclear. A wealth of research indicates that people tend to follow someone else's gaze, yet its effects in advertisements have been largely unexplored. We recruited 77 participants to investigate the effect of celebrities and gaze‐cueing in advertisements on both gaze behavior and binary choices. We combined computational modeling with eye‐tracking and pupillometry to identify which internal components of processing are affected by celebrity endorsement. We found that gaze‐cueing and celebrity endorsement influence gaze allocation and option selection. Further, results from computational modeling, eye‐tracking, and pupillometry revealed that the effect of celebrity endorsement on decisions can be explained as an offset in the starting point of an evidence accumulation process as well as changes in the rate of accumulation, thereby biasing choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental monitoring should be minimally disruptive to the ecosystems that it is embedded in. Therefore, the project Robocoenosis suggests using biohybrids that blend into ecosystems and use life forms as sensors. However, such a biohybrid has limitations regarding memory—as well as power—capacities, and can only sample a limited number of organisms. We model the biohybrid and study the degree of accuracy that can be achieved by using a limited sample. Importantly, we consider potential misclassification errors (false positives and false negatives) that lower accuracy. We suggest the method of using two algorithms and pooling their estimations as a possible way of increasing the accuracy of the biohybrid. We show in simulation that a biohybrid could improve the accuracy of its diagnosis by doing so. The model suggests that for the estimation of the population rate of spinning Daphnia, two suboptimal algorithms for spinning detection outperform one qualitatively better algorithm. Further, the method of combining two estimations reduces the number of false negatives reported by the biohybrid, which we consider important in the context of detecting environmental catastrophes. Our method could improve environmental modeling in and outside of projects such as Robocoenosis and may find use in other fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many important managerial outcomes hinge on the co-occurrence of multiple uncertain events, a situation termed conjunctive risk. Whereas past literature has addressed the psychology of choosing to enter situations with conjunctive risk, this article elucidates a novel way in which the psychology of managing conjunctive risk is importantly distinct. We examine a case in which there are two independent events, one is currently less likely than the other, both are required for overall success, and the decision maker must evaluate opportunities to increase the chance of the less-likely or more-likely requirement. We introduce the hypothesis of a worst-first heuristic. Decision makers intuitively evaluate improvements in conjunctive risk according to their impact on the biggest barrier to success, the least likely of the required events. We find evidence for such a worst-first heuristic across nine experiments (n = 3,653, including samples from the United States and United Kingdom in Studies 1–5 and Studies S1–S3 in the online supplement, as well as a sample of managers in Study 6). Participants invest more to improve chances of less-likely requirements than more-likely requirements, even when the latter improvements have at least as much impact on the aggregate chance of success. Moreover, we find that decision makers exhibit this behavior particularly when managing conjunctive risk, as doing so makes them attend to which threat is the worst. Conversely, they do not appear to exhibit the behavior when making formally equivalent decisions about choosing between conjunctive risks. This bias toward underinvesting in stronger-links holds important implications for decision making in contexts subject to conjunctive risk—both managerial and societal. This paper was accepted by Yuval Rottenstreich, behavioral economics and decision analysis. Supplemental Material: Data and the e-companion are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4411. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How strongly do higher investment premiums tempt people to invest in unethical assets, such as harmful 'sin stocks'? We present two experimental studies (N total = 1260) examining baseline willingness to invest in 'sin stocks' (without a premium), changes in investments as premiums increase, and how individual differences in deontological and utilitarian inclinations and dark personality traits impact baseline and changes to investments. We compare results to hypothetical models of sensitivity to higher returns: a) full resilience (to moral decay), where people increase investment in regular but not sin stocks with increasing premiums, b) partial resilience, where increasing premiums increases investment more slowly for sin than regular stocks, c) sin deduction: a flat baseline penalty for sin versus regular stocks resulting in similar sensitivity to increasing premiums, and d) decay, where investment differences in sin versus regular stocks reduce as premiums increase. On average, responses aligned best with the partial resilience model. Individual differences in morally-relevant traits moderated effects: most notably, people with higher deontological inclinations and lower dark traits showed greater resilience. However, 21–33% of participants exhibited full resilience, refusing to invest more in sin stocks even as premiums increased, which was more common in people with higher deontological inclinations and lower dark traits. These findings suggest that decisions to invest in sin stocks reflect the sensitivity to the sinfulness of the stock, which remains strong even after unethical investments are made more attractive. We conclude that increasing the economic reward of unethical investments does not crowd out moral concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Time is fundamentally abstract, making it difficult to conceptualize and vulnerable to mental distortions. Nine preregistered experiments identify temporal illusions that characterize prospective time judgments and corresponding consequences for decision making in a variety of domains. Using visual illusions as a grounding metaphor, studies 1–4 demonstrated that the temporal distance between two dates was perceived as closer together as those two dates were imagined further into the future (e.g., Vanishing Point); the length of a single day whether negative (e.g., a 12 h illness—Study 2a) or positive (e.g., 12 h with a good friend—Study 2b) was estimated to feel longer when embedded within a short versus long trip (e.g., the Delbouef Illusion); a 60 min activity was expected to go by more quickly when adjacent activities were 90 (vs. 30) min (e.g., Ebbinghaus Illusion); and a 9 + 1 day vacation was expected to be considerably lengthier than an 11–1 day vacation (e.g., Representational Momentum). Four additional studies explored moderating factors (Studies 5 and 6) and the impact of distortions on downstream non-time judgments including the forecasted emotional intensity of a negative event (Study 6), estimations of fair monetary compensation for lost time (Study 7), and willingness to make prosocial time commitments (Study 8). Implications for uncovering additional temporal illusions as well as practical applications for leveraging the relativity of prospective time to achieve desired cognitive and behavioral outcomes are discussed.

We conducted a preregistered close replication and extension of Studies 1, 2, and 4 in Hsee (1998). Hsee found that when evaluating choices jointly, people compare and judge the option higher on desirable attributes as better ("more is better"). However, when people evaluate options separately, they rely on contextual cues and reference points, sometimes resulting in evaluating the option with less as being better ("less is better"). We found support for "less is better" across all studies (N = 403; Study 1 original d = 0.70 [0.24,1.15], replication d = 0.99 [0.72,1.26]; Study 2 original d = 0.74 [0.12,1.35], replication d = 0.32 [0.07,0.56]; Study 4 original d = 0.97 [0.43,1.50], replication d = 0.76 [0.50,1.02]), with weaker support for "more is better" (Study 2 original d = 0.92 [0.42,1.40], replication dz = 0.33 [.23,.43]; Study 4 original d = 0.37 [0.02,0.72], replication dz = 0.09 [-0.05,0.23]). Some results of our exploratory extensions were surprising, leading to open questions. We discuss remaining implications and directions for theory and measurement relating to economic rationality and the evaluability hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numeracy is individuals' capacity to understand and process basic probability and numerical information required to make decisions. We conducted a Replication Registered Report of Peters et al. (2006) examining numeracy as a predictor of positive-negative framing effect (Study 1), frequency-percentage effect (Study 2), ratio effect (Study 3), and bets effect (Study 4). With an online US American Amazon Mechanical Turk sample (N = 860), our replication using the target's dichotomizing of the numeracy measure found support for the original findings regarding interactions between numeracy and three decision-making effects. Numeracy was associated with weaker framing effect (χ2 p = 0.01, 90% CI [0.00, 0.02]), weaker ratio bias (Cramer's V = 0.17, 95% CI [0.10, 0.24]), and stronger bets effect (χ2 p = 0.02, 90% CI [0.01, 0.04]), yet we found no support for the frequency-percentage effect (χ2 p = 0.00, 90% CI [0.00, 0.01]). However, we found support for associations with all four studies when treating numeracy as a continuous variable. We extended the replication to examine confidence, yet the results were mixed with support found for only three conditions (Study 1 positive framing condition: r = -0.11, 95% CI [-0.20, -0.02]; Study 3: r = 0.15, 95% CI [0.08, 0.21]; Study 4 no-loss bet condition: r = 0.10, 95% CI [0.01, 0.20]), suggesting a much weaker and more complex relationship than anticipated. Materials, data, and code are available on: https://osf.io/4hjck/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carter and Gilovich (2012) investigated the centrality of experiential and material purchases to the self and concluded people have stronger associations with their experiential than their material purchases. In a pre-registered experiment with a US American Amazon Mechanical Turk sample, (N=743), we successfully replicated their Studies 3A, 3B, 3C, and 5. Experiential purchases were perceived as more reflective of true-self than material purchases for both self (d=0.65[0.57,0.73]) and for strangers (d=0.88[0.80,0.96]), and that when meeting a new person, information about experiential purchases was considered to be more insightful (d=1.13[1.04,1.22]), useful (d=1.14[1.05,1.23]), and fun to talk about (d=1.96[1.83,2.08]) than material purchases. Self-concept was more strongly associated with experiential purchases than with material purchases (d=0.39[0.25,0.54]), and that there was a negative association between experiential purchase satisfaction and the willingness to exchange memory (r=-.34[-.43,-.24]) (all effects above were p<.001). We added an extension examining change in evaluations of material and experiential purchases over time and found that current evaluations were more negative than past evaluations, yet to a lesser extent for experiential compared to material purchases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary discussions on law, the concept of the rule of law has gained significant attention and has become a widely used term. The concept has been particularly prominent in the Polish public discourse due to the ongoing dispute over judicial reform between Brussels and Warsaw, as well as the primacy of EU law over national law. The rule of law is often discussed in relation to the judiciary's independence and its role in upholding principles of European, international, and Polish constitutional law. However, the multitude of definitions and the ideological abuse of the concept have raised concerns about its overuse and lack of value. This article explores the essential contestability of the concept of the rule of law and its association with political assumptions. It also examines the instrumentalization of the rule of law and the potential implications of promoting a universalistic interpretation. The article concludes by emphasizing the need for a critical examination of the concept and its application in legal discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Goods and services are often allocated to those who spend the most resources. In many cases, this results in allocation to people who spend the most money. But people can use a variety of other resources to acquire things (e.g. time, effort, social capital). Why might some resources seem fairer to use than others? In this research, we show that people believe resources systematically differ according to how well they signal preferences (e.g. money spent seems like a worse signal of want or need than does time or effort spent) and that allocation policies seem fairer if they are based on resources that clearly signal preferences. We explore several factors that influence beliefs about preference signaling, and we explain how these intuitions shape support for business practices and public policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many studies have highlighted the existence of the anchoring effect in a wide variety of domains, no study to date has investigated its impact on memory. The present study aimed to test whether an irrelevant numerical anchor not only influences an estimate but also modifies the memory of the associated event. Two experiments (total N = 259) were conducted, combining the methodology used by Loftus and Palmer (Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13, 585–589, 1974) and a classic anchoring paradigm. The results show that an irrelevant numerical anchor can modify the estimate of a car's speed and produce false memories of the event. We discuss the link between the processes underlying the anchoring effect and the false memory phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decisions about future behaviors are clearly shaped by the content of past experiences, but whether the order of past experiences matters remains controversial. By analyzing the largest field experiment about prosocial behavior to date, a natural field experiment involving 14,383 volunteer crisis counselors over five years, we examine how the content and order of past experiences causally influence decisions about future behaviors — whether individuals continue volunteering or quit. Volunteers were repeatedly and randomly assigned to perform 1,976,649 prosocial behaviors that were either harder (suicide conversations) or easier (non-suicide conversations). We found that the content of past experiences mattered: Harder (versus easier) behaviors encouraged quitting. However, the order of past experiences mattered far beyond their content alone: Harder behaviors caused disproportionately more quitting if they came in long 'streaks' or at the 'end.' These 'streak'/'end' effects reveal important practical insights for leaders and policymakers seeking to boost prosocial behavior. For instance, a reordering intervention — assigning behaviors so as to avoid creating hard 'streaks' — would reduce volunteer quitting rates by at least 22%, boosting prosocial behavior and likely saving lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of how people make judgments and decisions

People's decisions and judgments are disproportionately swayed by improbable but extreme eventualities, such as terrorism, that come to mind easily. This article explores whether such availability biases can be reconciled with rational information processing by taking into account the fact that decision makers value their time and have limited cognitive resources. Our analysis suggests that to make optimal use of their finite time decision makers should overrepresent the most important potential consequences relative to less important, put potentially more probable, outcomes. To evaluate this account, we derive and test a model we call utility-weighted sampling. Utility-weighted sampling estimates the expected utility of potential actions by simulating their outcomes. Critically, outcomes with more extreme utilities have a higher probability of being simulated. We demonstrate that this model can explain not only people's availability bias in judging the frequency of extreme events but also a wide range of cognitive biases in decisions from experience, decisions from description, and memory recall. (PsycINFO Database Record

People’s estimates are biased toward previously considered numbers (anchoring). We have aggregated all available data from anchoring studies that included at least two anchors into one large dataset. Data were standardized to comprise one estimate per row, coded according to a wide range of variables, and are available for download and analyses online (https://metaanalyses.shinyapps.io/OpAQ/). Because the dataset includes both original and meta-data it allows for fine-grained analyses (e.g., correlations of estimates for different tasks) but also for meta-analyses (e.g., effect sizes for anchoring effects).

Validity information (effect sizes) for selection tests can be difficult for people to understand without some additional context. This study examined how manipulation of the immediate context influenced impressions of the validity of a sales ability selection test. We found that lay people (n = 350) were more favorable toward the test when a set of test validity coefficients was presented after inferior validity coefficients for medical/health treatments, versus a control condition where only the set of test validity coefficients was presented (d =.68). Although we predicted this result based on the presumed inferior status accorded to psychological findings compared with medical/health ones, a third condition where participants were first presented inferior absurd or nonsensical validity coefficients was equally as effective as the medical/health condition. We explain our findings as possibly due to an anchoring and adjustment process and/or a stimulus frequency effect caused by the global (rather than local) context. Practitioner points: Past research shows that lay people have a difficult time evaluating validity coefficients in a vacuum.We tested whether providing validity coefficients from medical/health research might improve the degree to which people were impressed by the validity of a sales test.Although the contrast with medical/health validity coefficients improved evaluations of the validity of the target, so did contrasting completely nonsensical correlations.It seems that simply showing people validity coefficients that were lower than the sales test coefficients improved impressions of the sales test's validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When making decisions under uncertainty, human subjects do not always act as rational decision makers, but often resort to one or more mental "shortcuts", or heuristics, to arrive at a decision. How do such "top-down" processes affect real-world decisions that must take into account empirical, "bottom-up" sensory evidence? Here we use recognition of camouflaged objects by expert viewers as an exemplar case to demonstrate that the effect of heuristics can be so strong as to override the empirical evidence in favor of heuristic information, even though the latter is random. We provided the viewers a random number that we told them was the estimate of a drone reconnaissance system of the probability that the visual image they were about to see contained a camouflaged target. We then showed them the image. We found that the subjects' own estimates of the probability of the target in the image reflected the random information they were provided, and ignored the actual evidence in the image. However, when the heuristic information was not provided, the same subjects were highly successful in finding the target in the same set of images, indicating that the effect was solely attributable to the availability of heuristic information. Two additional experiments confirmed that this effect was not idiosyncratic to camouflage images, visual search task, or the subjects' prior training or expertise. Together, these results demonstrate a novel aspect of the interaction between heuristics and sensory information during real-world decision making, where the former can be strong enough to veto the latter. This 'heuristic vetoing' is distinct from the vetoing of sensory information that occurs in certain visual illusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]