While the significance of narrative thinking has been increasingly recognized by social scientists, very little empirical research has documented its consequences for economically significant outcomes. The current paper addresses this gap in one important domain: valuations. In three...

Consumers often behave differently than they would ideally like to behave. We propose that an anticipatory pain of paying drives tightwads to spend less than they would ideally like to spend. Spendthrifts, by contrast, experience too little pain of paying and typically spend more than they would...