Consumers are influenced by the metaphoric relationship between cardinal direction and vertical position (i.e., quot;north is upquot;). People think it will take longer to travel north than south (Study 1), that it will cost more to ship to a northern than to a southern location (Studies 2 and...

Four studies examined young healthy individuals' willingness to take drugs intended to enhance their own social, emotional, and cognitive traits. We found that people were much more reluctant to enhance traits believed to be more fundamental to self-identity (e.g., social comfort) than traits...

Attitudes differ in the functions that they serve: Whereas attitudes towards some products may serve a utilitarian purpose of helping consumers maximize rewards, attitudes towards other products may symbolize or express consumers' values. This paper shows that branding alters the associations...

Seven studies test the hypothesis that people use subjective time progression in hedonic evaluation. When people believe that time has passed unexpectedly quickly, they rate tasks as more engaging, noises as less irritating, and songs as more enjoyable. We propose that felt time distortion...

Can social preferences sustain a for-profit company? We analyze panel data tracking payments of 57,196 customers for five years from an online retail firm whose profitability relies on consumers' altruism. Most customers are generous and remain so over time. However, their generosity slowly...