Numerous laboratory studies find that minor nuances of presentation and description change behavior in ways that are inconsistent with standard economic models. How much do these context effect matter in natural settings, when consumers make large, real decisions and have the opportunity to...

The study of risky decision making has long used monetary gambles to study choice, but many everyday decisions do not involve the prospect of winning or losing money. Monetary gambles, as it turns out, may be processed and evaluated differently than gambles with nonmonetary outcomes. Whereas...

In this chapter, we argue that good experimental design and analysis accounts for the notion of construal, a person's subjective interpretation of a stimulus, a situation, or an experimental intervention. Researchers have long been aware of motivations, such as self-presentation, profit seeking,...

Consumers need information to compare alternatives for markets to function efficiently. Recognizing this, public policies often pair competition with easy access to comparative information. The implicit assumption is that comparison friction--the wedge between the availability of comparative...

Firms spend billions of dollars each year advertising consumer products in order to influence demand. Much of these outlays are on the creative design of advertising content. Creative content often uses nuances of presentation and framing that have large effects on consumer decision making in...

Participants made choices after the salience of their social identities was manipulated. Choices assimilated to the salient identity, whether that identity stemmed from a person’s role (e.g., student, family member) or culture (e.g., Chinese, American). Thus, the preferences that participants...