Three studies investigated how an extremely positive exemplar (star) influences the evaluation of more moderate exemplars. In Study 1, which was set in the political domain, a star elicited contrast in the evaluation of other, more moderate exemplars. However, the contrast effect was eliminated...

Two studies show that an extreme context stimulus may elicit assimilation rather than contrast in the evaluation of an ambivalent target stimulus by increasing the salience of the features the target shares with the context stimulus. Holding the descriptions of target and context constant,...

Previous research has demonstrated that people are not accurate in predicting affective states that result from decisions or events. Recent studies (e.g., Gilbert, Pinel, Wilson, Blumberg & Wheatley, 1998) suggest that individuals overestimate the duration of affective responses. We assume that...

Participants were exposed to the "asian disease" problem (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981). When the problem was subtly framed as a medical decision problem previous findings replicated: Participants avoided the risky option when the problem was framed positively, but preferred the risky option when...

Three studies investigated the interplay between processing capacity and reliance on accessibility experiences versus reliance on accessible content. Participants low in processing capacity were more likely to rely on the experience of ease versus difficulty, whereas participants high in...

In strategic decision situations, as they are modeled in games, the outcome of decisions depend on all decision-makers involved. In such situations people make different decisions when moving simultaneously compared to moving sequentially without knowledge of earlier moves. This is called the...

This paper presents empirical evidence corroborating the idea that procedural justice judgments are not only based on the accessible content information about the procedure, but also on accessibility experiences that accompany the accession of content about the procedure. Four experiments...