Despite the very long history of research on heritable traits, we still know very little about genetic effects on judgment and choice, including consumer decision making. Building on recent advances in epigenetics, we hypothesize that people inherit a general prudence tendency, which affects...

The authors propose that preference construction is influenced by a transient “feeling of preference” – the perception that one has or should be able to form a preference in a given domain even before seeing the specific options in the choice-set and in the absence of any stored...

We propose that choice constructions strategies often meet the criteria for “habits.” As an example of a constructed preference habit, we focus on extremeness aversion, or the tendency to prefer a middle or “compromise” option versus an “extreme” option from a given options set. We...

We propose that the variety a brand offers can influence brand quality perceptions, and consequently, affect brand choice, even when the available option set is held constant. Specifically, brands that offer greater variety of compatible (i.e., focused and internally consistent) options are...

To explain trade-offs in choice, researchers have proposed myriad phenomena and decision rules, each paired with separate theories and idiosyncratic vocabularies. Yet most choice problems are ultimately resolved with one of just two types of solutions: mixed or extreme. For example, people adopt...