Neuroscientific studies demonstrate that erotic stimuli activate the reward circuitry processing monetary and drug rewards. Theoretically, a general reward system may give rise to nonspecific effects: exposure to "hot stimuli" from one domain may thus affect decisions in a different domain. We...

People are often exposed to actionable food temptations (i.e., an immediate opportunity to consume, like when friends offer cookies) and nonactionable food temptations (i.e., no immediate consumption opportunity, like ads for chocolate). The results of three experiments suggest that prior...

Three experiments are used to investigate the influence of conditioning procedures on attention to a conditioned stimulus. In experiment 1, scenes presented in a sequence that is consistent with prescribed conditioning procedures are shown to encourage attention to the advertised brands in...

A series of studies demonstrates that consumers are inclined to believe that the selling price of a good or service is substantially higher than its fair price. Consumers appear sensitive to several reference points--including past prices, competitor prices, and cost of goods sold--but...

Many buying decisions require predictions of another person's product attitudes. Yet, consumers are often inaccurate predictors, even for familiar others. We provide strong evidence that target familiarity can even hurt accuracy in the presence of attitude feedback. Although overprojection and...

Markman and Brendl have demonstrated that individuals tend to regard as more valuable those objects that are able to satisfy an active desire. Building on their framework, we predicted that desire would enlarge the consideration set and, hence, affect variety-seeking tendencies in a product...