Most would agree that the decision to purchase a new book should not be influenced by a previous decision over hand-soap. Most would be wrong. We show that the decision to accept an offer depends on the outcome of previous, seemingly unrelated decisions in a systematic manner, with prior...

Incentives are an increasingly common tool used by organizations, managers, and policymakers to change behavior. We propose that more than just motivating behavior for monetary reasons, incentives also have an important, undiscovered consequence: they leak information about social norms. Four...

Research in the field of behavioral economics indicates that humans stumble in their decisionmaking in predictable ways that can often be corrected by a gentle nudge from the appropriate regulatory authority. Two new books -- Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational and Richard Thaler and Cass...

Customers often must decide not only whether to purchase, but also what quantity to buy. The current research introduces and compares the quantity-sequential (QS) selling format, under which shoppers make the purchase and quantity decisions separately, with the quantity-integrated (QI) selling...

The current research demonstrates that temporally separating a consumer's initial decision to perform a guilt-inducing action from its actual enactment reduces the guilt felt while acting. This hypothesis follows from the development of a dynamic model that unpacks guilt into two distinct...

Dishonesty plays a large role in the economy. Causes for (dis)honest behavior seem to be based partially on external rewards, and partially on internal rewards. Here, we investigate how such external and internal rewards work in concert to produce (dis)honesty. We propose and test a theory of...

Interruptions to consumer decision making are ubiquitous. Across three studies, we find that interruptions in decision making can increase risk-taking. When an individual is interrupted during a risky decision, we find that his/her previous consideration of the decision causes it to feel more...