21 research outputs found

    Pain and Preferences: Observed Decisional Conflict and the Convergence of Preferences

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    Decision making often entails conflict. In many situations, the symptoms of such decisional conflict are conspicuous. This article explores an important and unexamined question: How does observing someone else experiencing decisional conflict impact our own preferences? The authors show that observing others\u27 emotional conflict and agony over an impending decision makes the observer\u27s preferences converge to those of the conflicted actor (i.e., choose similarly). Thus this article contributes to the social influence literature by demonstrating that observers\u27 preferences are not only influenced by an actor\u27s ultimate choice, but also by the process leading to this choice. For example, in one experiment, participants\u27 real monetary donations to one of two charities converged to those of a paid confederate who agonized over the decision. Six studies demonstrate this effect and show that it is triggered by empathy and a greater sense of shared identity with the conflicted actor. Accordingly, the studies show the effect is more pronounced for individuals with a greater tendency to empathize with others, and that convergence occurs only if participants deem the actor\u27s conflict warranted given the decision at hand. The authors also demonstrate important implications of this effect in contexts of group decision making

    The perceived vulnerability to disease scale: Cross‐cultural measurement invariance and associations with fear of COVID‐19 across 16 countries

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    Using cross‐sectional data from N = 4274 young adults across 16 countries during the COVID‐19 pandemic, we examined the cross‐cultural measurement invariance of the perceived vulnerability to disease (PVD) scale and tested the hypothesis that the association between PVD and fear of COVID‐19 is stronger under high disease threat [that is, absence of COVID‐19 vaccination, living in a country with lower Human Development Index (HDI) or higher COVID‐19 mortality]. Results supported a bi‐factor Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling model where items loaded on a global PVD factor, and on the sub‐factors of Perceived Infectability and Germ Aversion. However, cross‐national invariance could only be obtained on the configural level with a reduced version of the PVD scale (PVD‐r), suggesting that the concept of PVD may vary across nations. Moreover, higher PVD‐r was consistently associated with greater fear of COVID‐19 across all levels of disease threat, but this association was especially pronounced among individuals with a COVID‐19 vaccine, and in contexts where COVID‐19 mortality was high. The present research brought clarity into the dimensionality of the PVD measure, discussed its suitability and limitations for cross‐cultural research, and highlighted the pandemic‐related conditions under which higher PVD is most likely to go along with psychologically maladaptive outcomes, such as fear of COVID‐19

    Visual Size Matters: The Effect of Product Depiction Size on Calorie Estimates

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    Consumers’ calorie estimates are often biased and inaccurate. Even the presence of relevant nutritional information may not suffice to prevent consumer biases in calorie estimation. The current work demonstrates across two studies that visual cues given by larger product depictions lead to increased calorie estimates. Further, it demonstrates that these effects occur even when consumers are given, and notice, information about product quantity. The findings thus shed light on a novel biasing effect on consumer calorie evaluation, and, more generally, the findings provide evidence for the importance of visual inputs over textual ones in consumers’ nutritional assessment of food products. In this, the current research provides insights relevant to helping nutritional literacy via awareness of biasing influences on caloric assessment. In the same manner, the research also provides insights that may assist the regulator protecting consumers by highlighting factors biasing nutritional assessment

    The Psychology of Task Management: The Smaller Tasks Trap

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    We show that people consistently choose to address smaller (involving less work) tasks first, and continue to focus on smaller tasks, even when this strategy emerges as less efficient, a phenomenon we term the "smaller tasks trap”

    Predicting World Cup Results: Do Goals Seem More Likely When They Pay Off?

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    Bar-Hillel and Budescu (1995) failed to find a desirability bias in probability estimation. The World Cup soccer tournament provided an opportunity to revisit the phenomenon in a context in which desirability biases are notoriously rampant. Participants estimated the probabilities of various teams’ winning their upcoming games. They were promised money if one team—randomly designated by the experimenter—won its upcoming game. Participants assigned a higher probability to a victory by their target team than did other participants, whose promised monetary reward was contingent on the victory of its opponent. Prima facie, this seems to be a desirability bias. However, in a follow-up study that made one team salient, without promising monetary rewards, participants also judged their target team to be more likely to win. On grounds of parsimony, we conclude that what appears to be a desirability bias may just be a salience/marking effect, and—although optimism is a robust and ubiquitous human phenomenon—that wishful thinking still remains elusive

    Listening and loneliness

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    Predicting World Cup results: Do goals seem more likely when they pay off?

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    In a series of experiments, Bar-Hillel and Budescu (1995) failed to find a desirability bias in probability estimation. The World Cup soccer tournament (of 2002 and 2006) provided an opportunity to revisit the phenomenon, in a context where wishful thinking and desirability bias are notoriously rampant (e.g., Babad, 1991). Participants estimated the probabilities of various teams to win their upcoming games. They were promised money if one particular team, randomly designated by the experimenter, would win its upcoming game. Participants judged their target team more likely to win than other participants, whose promised monetary reward was contingent on the victory of its rival team. Prima facie this seems to be a desirability bias. However, in a follow-up study we made one team salient, without promising monetary rewards, by simply stating that it is "of special interest". Again participants judged their target team more likely to win than other participants, whose "team of special interest" was the rival team. Moreover, the magnitude of the two effects was very similar. On grounds of parsimony, we conclude that what seemed like a desirability bias may just be a salience/marking effect, and -- though optimism is a robust and ubiquitous human phenomenon -- wishful thinking still remains elusive.
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