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...

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...

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...

Quantitative information can appear in different units (e.g., 7-year warranty = 84-month warranty). This article demonstrates that attribute differences appear larger on scales with a higher number of units; expressing quality information on such an expanded scale makes consumers switch to a...

Previous research on attribute framing has shown that people often infer higher quantity from larger numbers, usually with the assumption that the units used to specify this information elicit the same meanings. Drawing on literature on categorization and numerical cognition, the authors...

Ego depletion, the observation that self‐regulation reduces subsequent self‐regulation, is a remarkably robust phenomenon, and the generalization to the consumer domain appears undisputable. Contrary to most other self‐regulatory situations, however, consecutive self‐regulatory decisions in...

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...