Consumers prefer to watch television programs without commercials. Yet, in spite of most consumers’ extensive experience with watching television, we propose that commercial interruptions can actually improve the television‐viewing experience. Although consumers do not foresee it, their...

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...

Consumers prefer to watch television programs without commercials. Yet, in spite of most consumers' extensive experience with watching television, we propose that commercial interruptions can actually improve the television viewing experience. Although consumers do not foresee it, their...

Six studies demonstrate that interrupting a consumption experience can make pleasant experiences more enjoyable and unpleasant experiences more irritating, even though consumers avoid breaks in pleasant experiences and choose breaks in unpleasant experiences. Across a variety of hedonic...

Building on previous research in economics and psychology, we propose that the costliness of initial prosocial behavior positively influences whether that behavior leads to consistent future behaviors. We suggest that <i>costly</i> prosocial behaviors serve as a signal of prosocial identity and that...

Although researchers have documented many 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...

Influencing behavior change is an ongoing challenge in psychology, economics, and consumer behavior research. Building on previous work on commitment, self-signaling, and the principle of consistency, a large, intensive field experiment (N = 2,416) examined the effect of hotel guests’...