People view uncertain events as knowable in principle (epistemic uncertainty), as fundamentally random (aleatory uncertainty), or as some mixture of the two. We show that people make more extreme probability judgments (i.e., closer to 0 or 1) for events they view as entailing more epistemic...

Several studies show that information used to screen alternatives becomes less important relative to information acquired latter in the search process simply because it was used to screen. Experiment 1 shows that the tendency to deemphasize prescreening information leads to systematically...

We find that exposure to different types of categories or assortments in a first task creates a mindset that changes how consumers process information. These mindsets in turn, have a spillover effect that alters consumers' decision making in a variety of subsequent and unrelated tasks, from...

Through five experiments, we provide a cognitive account of when and why nine-ending prices are perceived to be smaller than a price one cent higher. First, this occurs only when the leftmost digits of the prices differ (e.g., $2.99 vs. $3.00). Second, the left-digit effect also depends on the...

Some food items that are commonly considered unhealthy also tend to elicit impulsive responses. The pain of paying in cash can curb impulsive urges to purchase such unhealthy food products. Credit card payments, in contrast, are relatively painless and weaken impulse control. Consequently,...

We examine two questions: Does the roundness or precision of prices bias magnitude judgments? If so, do these biased judgments affect buyer behavior? Results from five studies suggest that buyers underestimate the magnitudes of precise prices. We term this the precision effect. The first three...

Psychological distance can reduce the subjective experience of difficulty caused by task complexity and task anxiety. Four experiments were conducted to test several related hypotheses. Psychological distance was altered by activating a construal mind-set and by varying bodily distance from a...

Consumers' budgets are influenced by the temporal frame used for the budget period. Budgets planned for the next month are much lower than recorded expenses, while those for the next year are closer to recorded expenses (study 1). The difficulty of estimating budgets for the next year imparts...

Substitution decisions have been examined from a variety of perspectives. The economics literature measures cross-price elasticity, operations research models optimal assortments, the psychology literature studies goals in conflict, and marketing research has examined substitution-in-use, brand...