Suppose an individual loses an irreplaceable object and someone else is at fault. How much should he be compensated? Normatively, compensation should equal the value (utility) to the victim. Our experiments demonstrate that compensation decisions often ignore value and are instead based on cost...

In this research, it is proposed that, when making a choice between consumption goods, people do not just think about which option will deliver the highest consumption utility but also think about which choice is most consistent with rationales-beliefs about how they should make decisions. The...

Charity marketers face the challenge of understanding how pro-social decisions are made. Are all solicitations made equal? The authors found that a helping opportunity and a giving opportunity reveal different pro-social preferences. In a series of four studies, involving hypothetical and real...

This research is concerned with task-oriented decision situations where the decision maker faces two options, one superior on a factor directly related to the given task(called the A factor) and the other superior on a factor not central to the accomplishment of the task but tempting to the...

This research examines whether each of two different options of comparable overall quality will be perceived more positively when presented in isolation and evaluated separately(separate evaluation) or when juxtaposed and evaluated side by side (joint evaluation).Six studies, involving either...

This research demonstrates a less-is-better effect in three contexts: (1) a person giving a $45 scarf as a gift was perceived to be more generous than one giving a $55 coat; (2) an overfilled ice cream serving with 7 oz of ice cream was valued more than an underfilled serving with 8 oz of ice...