Decision quicksand: Why do consumers get mired in trivial choices?
2012-03-19
(Press-News.org) Does it matter which toothbrush or breakfast cereal you buy? A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research explains why consumers get stuck in store aisles contemplating the dizzying array of options.
"Why do people get mired in seemingly trivial decisions? Why do we agonize over what toothbrush to buy, struggle with what sandwich to pick, and labor over which shade of white to paint the kitchen?" ask authors Aner Sela (University of Florida) and Jonah Berger (University of Pennsylvania).
The authors say this "decision quicksand" results from people assuming that a difficult decision is an important one. Then they increase the amount of time and effort they spend. "For example, instead of realizing that picking a toothbrush is a trivial decision, we confuse the array of options and excess of information with decision importance, which then leads our brain to conclude that this decision is worth more time and attention," the authors write. Ironically, this is more likely to happen when decisions initially seem unimportant, because people expect them to be easier.
In one experiment, the researchers gave participants a selection of airline flight options. One group chose their options in small, low-contrast font (difficult condition), while another group chose the same options in a larger, high-contrast font (easy condition). Not surprisingly, the hard-to-read font led to increased deliberation time because people were forced to decipher their options. "What was more interesting is that this extra effort led to perceptions of increased importance: The flight options now seemed like a weighty decision," the authors write. "Moreover, this effect was strongest when people were initially led to believe that the choice of flights was actually unimportant!"
The authors also found that unexpected difficulty caused people to voluntarily seek more options, which increased decision difficulty even more.
"Our findings suggest that people sometimes fall into a recursive loop between deliberation time, difficulty, and perceived importance," the authors write. "Inferences from difficulty may not only impact immediate deliberation, but may kick off a quicksand cycle that leads people to spend more and more time on a decision that initially seemed rather unimportant. Decision quicksand sucks people in, but the worse it seems, the more we struggle."
###
Aner Sela and Jonah Berger. "Decision Quicksand: How Trivial Choices Suck Us In." Journal of Consumer Research: August 2012.
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2012-03-19
Planning your diet won't really help you gain self-control unless you're feeling good about your weight in the first place, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. And the same goes for saving money.
"Although planning tends to aid subsequent self-control for those who are in good standing with respect to their long-term goal, those who perceive themselves to be in poor goal standing are found to exert less self-control after planning than in the absence of planning," write authors Claudia Townsend (University of Miami) and Wendy Liu (University ...
2012-03-19
Hydrogen fuel cells, like those found in some "green" vehicles, have a lot of promise as an alternative fuel source, but making them practical on a large scale requires them to be more efficient and cost effective.
A research team from the University of Central Florida may have found a way around both hurdles.
The majority of hydrogen fuel cells use catalysts made of a rare and expensive metal – platinum. There are few alternatives because most elements can't endure the fuel cell's highly acidic solvents present in the reaction that converts hydrogen's chemical energy ...
2012-03-19
New deals sourced this week by money-saving codes website DiscountVouchers.co.uk can help the country's shoppers save on great last-minute gift ideas for Mother's Day. Consumers can log on right now and save themselves money at leading retailers such as Interflora, White Stuff and Boden.
Money off clothing and accessories can help children of all ages to afford more for Mum this Mother's Day, with this week's DiscountVouchers.co.uk deals including top store White Stuff. The retailer is available on a budget thanks to new White Stuff deals such as Save Up To 50% in the ...
2012-03-19
MANHATTAN, KAN. -- A collaborative discovery involving Kansas State University researchers may improve animal health and save the U.S. pork industry millions of dollars each year.
Raymond "Bob" Rowland, a virologist and professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology, was part of the collaborative effort that discovered a genetic marker that identifies pigs with reduced susceptibility to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, or PRRS. This virus costs the U.S. pork industry more than $600 million each year.
"This discovery is what you call a first-first," ...
2012-03-19
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Less than 2 percent of low-income mothers met breastfeeding recommendations in a recent study – a drastic decline compared with a more affluent population – and a lack of support and available resources appears to play a key role.
The research findings out of Michigan State University suggest in addition to raising overall awareness of breastfeeding, especially among women of lower socioeconomic status, physicians can play a role in removing barriers that prevent new mothers from breastfeeding.
The study, performed by College of Osteopathic Medicine ...
2012-03-19
A new study published in the journal Respirology reveals that children who are exposed to passive smoke have almost double the risk of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in adulthood compared with non-exposed children.
At Haukeland University Hospital in Bergen, Norway, researchers examined patients with COPD (433) and control subjects (325) who participated in the Bergen COPD Cohort Study during 2006-2009. Ane Johannessen, PhD, and co-workers assessed risk factors for COPD and analyzed by gender.
Results found that exposure to passive smoke when ...
2012-03-19
Light-to-moderate alcohol consumption has been consistently associated with lower risk of heart disease, but data for stroke are less certain, especially among women.
A total of 83,578 female participants of the Nurses' Health Study who were free of diagnosed cardiovascular disease and cancer at baseline were followed-up from 1980 to 2006. Data on self-reported alcohol consumption were assessed at baseline and updated approximately every 4 years, whereas stroke and potential confounder data were updated at baseline and biennially. Strokes were classified according to ...
2012-03-19
COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new national study suggests that adults who receive an inheritance save only about half of what they receive, while spending, donating or losing the rest.
The results are good news for retailers, restaurant owners and people in the service industry who will receive that windfall.
But it is bad news for those who are concerned about the low U.S. savings rate, said Jay Zagorsky, author of the study and research scientist at Ohio State University's Center for Human Resource Research.
"I came into this study thinking that people would save more of their ...
2012-03-19
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Adults and children in a recent study could correctly identify, on average, fewer than half of an assortment of the peanuts and tree nuts that are among the most common food allergens in the United States.
Parents of children with peanut and tree-nut allergies did no better at identifying the samples in the survey than did parents of children without this food allergy. And only half of participants with a peanut or tree-nut allergy correctly identified all forms of the nuts to which they were allergic.
The 19 samples included various nuts in and out ...
2012-03-19
It's normal to not always act on your sense of compassion—for example, by walking past a beggar on the street without giving them any money. Maybe you want to save your money or avoid engaging with a homeless person. But even if suppressing compassion avoids these costs, it may carry a personal cost of its own, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. After people suppress compassionate feelings, an experiment shows, they lose a bit of their commitment to morality.
Normally, people assume that ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Decision quicksand: Why do consumers get mired in trivial choices?
