This dissertation comprises of three independent essays which introduce novel psychologically inspired process models and examine their implications for individual, collective or market behavior. The first essay studies multi-attribute choice as a guided process of search. It puts forward a...

Part I How can we know who is happy? Conceptual and methodological issues -- Objective happiness / Daniel Kahneman -- Ecological momentary assessment / Arthur A. Stone, Sual S. Shiffman, Marten W. DeVries -- Measurement issues in emotion research / Randy J. Larsen and Barbara L. Fredrickson --...

The present dissertation focuses on trust and comprises three empirical essays on the concept itself and its foundations. All three essays investigate trust as an expectation and rely on selfreport measures of trust. Whereas the first two chapters investigate social trust, the third chapter...