Is variety of the spice of life? The present research suggests that the answer depends on the rate of consumption. In three experiments, we find that, whereas a variety of stimuli is preferred to repetition of even a better-liked single stimulus when consumption is continuous, this preference...

Is variety of the spice of life? The present research suggests that the answer depends on the rate of consumption. In three experiments, we find that, whereas a variety of stimuli is preferred to repetition of even a better-liked single stimulus when consumption is continuous, this preference...

The present research demonstrates that symbolic boundaries such as political borders act as psychological buffers. Across six experiments (N = 583) we demonstrate that consumers prefer to avoid crossing a town border to reach a store (experiments 1 and 2), even when no visual cues are provided...

Consumers frequently consume items to the point where they no longer enjoy them. In three experiments spanning three distinct classes of stimuli, we find that people can recover from this satiation by simply recalling the variety of alternative items they have also consumed in the past. Rather...

People are often motivated to be entertaining. Past work has shown that those given entertainment goals tell stories differently than those given accuracy goals (e.g. Dudukovic, Marsh, & Tversky, 2004). In three studies we investigate the influence of the motive to entertain on story distortion....

People tend to overestimate their contribution to joint tasks, in part because their own contributions are more memorable than the contributions of their collaborators. We examined some of the interpersonal consequences of this bias. Participants engaged in either a hypothetical (Experiment 2)...

Prior work has found that people occasionally seek useless information, a violation of strict rationality. The present work examined whether and why curiosity can also cause individuals to seek harmful information. In five experiments, participants were given the opportunity to gain knowledge of...

Prior research has found that people tend to overestimate their relative contributions to joint tasks (e.g., Ross & Sicoly, 1979). In the present research we investigate one of the causes of this bias, and in doing so, identify an important moderator of the effect. In three studies we...

The present research investigated consumers' intuitions about percent differences. We found that the perceived difference between two quantities compared on a percent scale varies as a function of the target of the comparison. The subjective price difference between a $1500 and a $1000 moped,...

Prior work has found that when people compare themselves with others they egocentrically focus on their own strengths and contributions and pay less attention to strengths and contributions of the comparison group. As a consequence, individuals tend to overestimate their comparative standing...