Prior research suggests that consumers make trade-offs between two products by focusing more on alignable differences (i.e., the values of the options on the same attributes are different) than on nonalignable differences (i.e., the options have different attributes). The present research...

This research proposes that consumers hold "lay theories of medicine" that guide their preferences and behaviors in the health domain. Lay theories of medicine incorporate lay beliefs about illnesses and symptoms (i.e., a form of lay diagnosis that may feature causal [un]certainty) and lay...