In this work we suggest absolute and relative measures for the psychological features called attractiveness and discriminability. In 1999, Richard Gonzalez and George Wu defined these psychological factors in a relative sense and in the context of probability weighting functions. Based on their...

Social comparison theories typically assume a comparable degree of competition between commensurate rivals on a mutually important dimension. In contrast, however, the following set of studies reveals that the degree of competition between such rivals depends on their proximity to a standard....

'High quality user requirements are positively correlated with successful design outcomes, but engaging stakeholders within low-income contexts can present financial and time-related challenges to product developers from non-local industrial and academic institutions with limited knowledge of...

Models of reference-dependent preferences propose that individuals evaluate outcomes as gains or losses relative to a neutral reference point. We test for reference dependence in a large dataset of marathon finishing times (n = 9,524,071). Models of reference-dependent preferences such as...

People, across a wide range of personal and professional domains, need to detect change accurately. Previous research has documented systematic shortcomings in doing so, in particular, a pattern of over- and under-reaction to indications of change, resulting from a tendency to overweight signals...

Going to the gym is likely to be judged more positively if it is known that the gym-goer is vaccinated against COVID-19 than unvaccinated. We investigate how people make sense of vaccination-contingent behaviors --- behaviors, such as going to the gym or a bar, which are judged differently...

Although many empirical investigations have documented reference-dependent preferences, most studies of reference dependence have considered only status quo reference points. In a large-scale field study of marathon runners, we test whether goals, a non-status quo reference point, act similarly...