Six studies (N = 3,209) demonstrate that introducing a period in which consumers must work-to-unlock continuous rewards increases persistence relative to when consumers can earn continuous rewards for their effort right away. When working to unlock rewards, consumers must complete a target...

Does how much self-control consumers exert to choose a goal-consistent action influence their perceptions of goal progress? For example, if you choose to go to the gym when one of your favorite television shows is on (vs. when there is nothing interesting on TV), do you perceive that you have...

Consumers often use products, such as language learning apps or fitness trackers, to aid them in their goal pursuits. In long-term goal pursuit, setbacks and struggles are inevitable and may lead consumers to disengage from the goal and discontinue the use of goal-relevant products. How can...

How does spending from a used (vs. unused) account affect consumption behavior? In one large dataset (N=210,586) and six studies (N=6,055), we find that consumers are more likely to spend resources on non-essential items and activities from a used (vs. unused) account. This is because consumers...

Along the path of struggling to reach their personal and organizational long-term goals, the experience of an initial subgoal failure can lead individuals to feel less committed to their overall goal and even to give up entirely on reaching it. In one field study and three lab studies, we...

Extremeness aversion—the tendency for consumers to prefer middling options in a choice set—is an incredibly robust and well-studied phenomenon (Neumann, Böckenholt, and Sinha 2016; Simonson 1989; Simonson and Tversky 1992; Tversky and Simonson 1993). However, there is still an unanswered question as to...

A growing percentage of American workers are now freelancers and thus responsible for their own retirement savings, yet they face a number of psychological hurdles that hamper them from saving enough money for the long-term. Although prior theory-derived interventions have been successful in...

Recent research has aimed to understand how people consider financial decisions because they have important consequences for well-being. Yet, existing research has largely failed to examine how attitudes and behaviors vary as a function of the specific financial product (e.g., debt type). We ask...