Consumers often make inferences to fill in gaps in knowledge when they do not have complete information regarding products. Eight experiments show that consumers often have contradictory naive theories about the implications of common market phenomena and that they draw different conclusions as...

Managers often must assess singular strategic options. Four studies of such assessments demonstrate a tunnel vision effect: Focal managerial options often are favored in an evidentially unjustifiable manner. Study 1 concerns new product development, and demonstrates that a prototype that has...

Research has consistently shown that the process of eliciting environmental values is fraught with potential pitfalls that can produce biased estimates. The present research focused on how to preclude one such pitfall, overvaluation of a focal environmental entity, in light of the psychological...

Some recent advertisements attempt to increase persuasiveness by directly asking consumers to imagine arguments supporting the ad's message. This research provides a critical test of the effectiveness of this imagine strategy, while also identifying specific situations in which this technique...

Four experiments demonstrated that as the perceived diagnosticity of the presented information increases, sensitivity to missing diagnostic information decreases. However, experts were sensitive to missing information regardless of the diagnosticity of the presented attribute information. When a...