I argue that four sources of utility that have rarely been incorporated into economic analyses--self-signaling (self-esteem), goal completion, mastery, and meaning--constitute extremely important motives in human behavior. I illustrate the importance of these motives by drawing upon the...

Many economists are becoming supportive of 'soft' paternalistic interventions that help people to avoid common decision errors without curtailing individual autonomy. To identify when such interventions could be beneficial, and to assess their success, requires a welfare criterion. However,...

Attention is a pivotal resource in the modern economy and plays an increasingly prominent role in economic analysis. We summarize research on attention from both psychology and economics, placing a particular emphasis on its capacity to explain numerous documented violations of classical...

While the significance of narrative thinking has been increasingly recognized by social scientists, very little empirical research has documented its consequences for economically significant outcomes. The current paper addresses this gap in one important domain: valuations. In three...