Prosocial lending in the form of micro-financing, small uncollateralized loans to entrepreneurs in the developing world, has recently emerged as a leading contender as a cure for world poverty. Our research investigates, in a field setting with real world and consequential data, the...

Marketers distinguish between three types of media: paid (e.g., advertising), owned (e.g., company website), and earned (e.g., publicity). The effects of paid media on sales have been extensively covered in the marketing literature. The effects of earned media, however, have received limited...

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...

Although researchers have documented instances of crowd wisdom, it is important to know whether some kinds of judgments may lead the crowd astray, whether crowds’ judgments improve with feedback over time, and whether crowds’ judgments can be improved by changing the way judgments are...

Across seven laboratory studies and one field study, we demonstrate that people remember an unpleasant experience as more aversive when they expect this experience to return, than when they have no such expectation. Our results indicate that this effect results from people’s tendency to brace...

Gift givers are faced with the difficult task of choosing gifts that will be liked by gift recipients, and the challenging nature of this task often leads gift givers to unintentionally give poor gifts. The results of seven lab and field studies across 1,513 participants suggest that this...