Choices of multiple items can be framed as a selection of single offerings (e.g., a choice of two individual candy bars) or of bundled offerings (e.g., a choice of a bundle of two candy bars). Four experiments provide strong evidence that consumers seek more variety when choosing from single...

People often do not realize they are being influenced by an incidental emotional state. As a result, decisions based on a fleeting incidental emotion can become the basis for future decisions and hence outlive the original cause for the behavior (i.e., the emotion itself). Using a sequence of...

The proposed model integrates two streams of research on affect by specifying how evaluative and regulatory mechanisms interact to guide behavior. Two experiments demonstrate that when no mood changes are expected, the affective evaluation mechanism guides behavior, leading to a monotonic...

How can the hedonistic assumption (i.e., people's willingness to pursue pleasure and avoid pain) be reconciled with people choosing to expose themselves to experiences known to elicit negative feelings? We assess how (1) the intensity of the negative feelings, (2) positive feelings in the...

People exhibit excessive confidence in visually-based estimates, which in turn biases decision making. Three experiments support this assertion. Experiment 1 shows a strong impact of presentation format on estimation of proportions. Experiment 2 shows that people rely on these erroneous...

Five experiments demonstrate that brands cause priming effects (i.e., behavioral effects consistent with those implied by the brand), whereas slogans cause reverse priming effects (i.e., behavioral effects opposite to those implied by the slogan). For instance, exposure to the retailer brand...

One's own emotions may influence someone else's behavior in a social interaction. If one believes this, she or he has an incentive to game emotions-to strategically modify the expression of a current emotional state-in an attempt to influence her or his counterpart. In a series of three...

Prior research examining how negative feelings influence aesthetic preferences (e.g., liking of different kinds of music, movies, or stories) has reported inconsistent findings. This article proposes a theoretical argument to explain when people are more likely to prefer mood-congruent to...