In this paper, we challenge the conventional view that pain-and-suffering awards should be interpreted literally as a compensation for feelings of pain and suffering. People adapt to conditions as serious as paraplegia and blindness, returning rapidly to near-normal levels of happiness, which...

Most upper-management and sales force personnel, as well as workers in many other jobs, are paid based on performance, which is widely perceived as motivating effort and enhancing productivity relative to non-contingent pay schemes. However, psychological research suggests that excessive rewards...

This paper challenges the common assumption that economic agents know their tastes. After reviewing previous research showing that valuation of ordinary products and experiences can be manipulated by non-normative cues, we present three studies showing that in some cases people do not even have...

Recent research has documented an 'endowment effect' whereby people become more attached to objects they receive than would be predicted from their prior desire to possess the object. In two experiments, the authors test whether people are aware of the effect--whether they realize that they will...