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Along the path of struggling to reach their personal and organizational long-term goals, the experience of an initial subgoal failure can lead individuals to feel less committed to their overall goal and even to give up entirely on reaching it. In one field study and four lab studies, we examine the ability of a cost-free nudge to decrease the detrimental impact of subgoal failure on goal attainment. More specifically, we demonstrate that framing goals with emergency reserves, a type of slack, can motivate individuals to persist after subgoal failures, leading to better performance on long-term goals, compared to objectively equivalent goals without slack. After failing to reach a subgoal, we found that individuals with goals framed with emergency reserves felt a greater sense of perceived progress, causing them to feel more committed to their goal, and thus increasing their likelihood of persisting at their goals.

The success of choice architecture, including its adoption in government policy and practice, has prompted questions of whether choice architecture design decisions are sufficiently transparent and publicly acceptable. We examined whether disclosing to decision-makers that a particular choice architecture is in place reduces its effectiveness and whether an understanding of the effectiveness of choice architecture design decisions increases their acceptability. We find that disclosure of the design decision does not reduce its effectiveness and that individuals perceive the effectiveness of specific designs to be higher for others than for themselves. Perceived effectiveness for self increases when individuals have actually experienced the effect of a design decision rather than having it simply described to them. Perceived effectiveness for oneself and others increases the acceptability of the designs. We also find that the intentions of the source matter more than who the source actually is. Important for policy-makers, then, is that disclosure of design decisions does not reduce their effectiveness, and their acceptability depends on their perceived effectiveness and the inferred motivations of the design architect.

Author(s): Bakr, Omar; Afsar-Manesh, Nasim; Raja, Naveen; Dermenchyan, Anna; Goldstein, Noah J; Shu, Suzanne B; May, Folasade P | Abstract: IntroductionColorectal cancer (CRC) is a major cause of cancer-related morbidity and mortality in the United States. Although various interventions have improved screening rates, they often require abundant resources and can be difficult to implement. Social psychology and behavioral economics principles offer an opportunity for low-cost and easy-to-implement strategies but are less common in clinical settings.MethodsWe randomized 2,000 patients aged 50-75 years eligible for CRC screening to one of the 2 mailed interventions: a previously used text-based letter describing and offering fecal immunochemical testing (FIT) and colonoscopy (usual care arm); or a letter leveraging social psychology and behavioral economics principles (e.g., implied scarcity and choice architecture), minimal text, and multiple images to offer FIT and colonoscopy (intervention arm). We compared total screening uptake, FIT uptake, and colonoscopy uptake at 1-month intervals in each group.ResultsThere were 1,882 patients included in the final analysis. The mean age was 69.3 years, and baseline characteristics in the 2 groups were similar. Screening completion at 26 weeks was 19.5% in the usual care arm (16.3% FIT vs 3.2% colonoscopy, P l 0.01) and 24.1% in the intervention arm (22.1% FIT vs 2.0% colonoscopy, P l 0.01) (P = 0.02).DiscussionAmong primary care patients aged 50-75 years in an academic setting, mailed CRC outreach employing social psychology and behavioral economics principles led to a higher participation in CRC screening than usual care mailed outreach.Translational impactMailed interventions to increase CRC screening should incorporate social psychology and behavioral economics principles to improve participation.

Geosocial networking phone applications (GSN apps) used to meet sexual partners have become popular in the men who have sex with men (MSM) communities of the USA since 2009. Previous studies have shown greater incidence of gonorrhea and chlamydia and lower testing frequency for HIV testing among GSN app users when compared to non-users. The present study aims to determine the type, number, and frequency of apps used, as well as the association between dispositional self-control and health-related behaviors. Participants (n = 146) were recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk program to respond to a brief GSN app marketing survey. Multivariate regression was used to determine differences in app priorities, length of app use, and number of sexual partners between high self-control and low self-control participants. A majority of the participants reported using Grindr (78%) followed by Scruff (19%), Growlr (12%), and Jack'd (12%). Most individuals used one app only (58%), but a significant proportion reported using two apps (28%) or three or more apps (14%). Respondents with low self-control were more likely to report a higher number of hours using GSN apps and a higher number of sexual partners, controlling for race/ethnicity, education, employment, and HIV status. Given the popularity of this burgeoning communication medium, these findings have important implications for developing prevention resources for different segments of GSN app users.

We examine how perceived similarity between sequential risks affects individuals' risk-taking intentions. Specifically, in six studies we find that in sequential choice settings individuals exhibit significant positive state dependence in risk-taking preferences, such that they are more likely to take a risk when it is similar to a previously taken risk than when it is dissimilar. For example, if an individual has previously taken a health/safety risk, that individual is more likely to take a second health/safety risk than a second risk that is in the financial domain. Since similarity between risks is malleable and can be determined by situational and contextual variables, we show that we can change subsequent risk-taking intentions in a predictable manner by manipulating similarity through framing. Finally, we establish that increased feelings of self-efficacy and self-signaling through the prior risk-taking experience drive state dependent risk-taking preferences. We further show that the effe...

How many positive claims should firms use to produce the most positive impression of a product or service? This article posits that when consumers know that the message source has a persuasion motive, the optimal number of positive claims is three. Increasing the number of claims improves consumer perceptions until the fourth claim, at which point consumers’ persuasion knowledge causes them to view all the claims with skepticism. The studies herein establish and explore this pattern, which the authors refer to as the “charm of three.” An initial experiment indicates that impressions peak at three claims for sources with a persuasion motive but not for sources without a persuasion motive. The second experiment indicates that this effect occurs for attitudes and impressions and that increased skepticism at four or more claims explains the effect. Two final experiments examine the mental process by which the charm of three occurs by investigating how cognitive load and sequential claims influence the effect.

Research has shown self-affirmation to be a powerful tool for increasing openness to arguments. However, prior examinations of its effects involved manipulations with limited applicability outside the laboratory. Building on recent work suggesting that choice of highly aesthetic products can be a form of affirmation, we proposed and tested whether merely affiliating people with high aesthetics can affirm their sense of self and thus encourage openness to arguments advocating selection of one option over another. In 3 experiments we examined this effect in financial and consumer decisions in which choices varied in their inherent risk. Across the experiments, after affiliating people with high (vs. low) aesthetics, they were more likely to select the advocated option--whether that option was the riskier or less risky option. This occurred using actual annual reports and a sample of experienced investors (Experiment 1), when the aesthetic affiliation and the choice tasks were in entirely unrelated areas (Experiment 2) and was driven by greater openness to arguments (Experiment 3). Together these studies offer a self-affirmation manipulation that is relevant and easily used by practitioners in a variety of fields. They also provide novel insights on the link between aesthetics, self-affirmation, openness, and risk taking.

Life expectations are essential inputs for many important personal decisions. We propose that longevity beliefs are responses constructed at the time of judgment, subject to irrelevant task and context factors, and leading to predictable biases. Specifically, we examine whether life expectancy is affected by the framing of expectations questions as either live-to or die-by, as well as by factors that actually affect longevity such as age, gender, and self-reported health. We find that individuals in a live-to frame report significantly higher chances of being alive at ages 55 through 95 than people in a corresponding die-by frame. Estimated mean life expectancies across three studies and 2300 respondents were 7.38 to 9.17 years longer when solicited in a live-to frame. We are additionally able to show how this framing works on a process level and how it affects preference for life annuities. Implications for models of financial decision making are discussed.

This research proposes that the concept of emotional attachment, and specifically the independent constructs of psychological ownership and affective reaction, can help explain many of the endowment effect findings documented in the literature. We define these constructs and then test them across a set of nine studies in which we both replicate previous and generate new endowment effect findings, and then show that psychological ownership and affective reaction can mediate the effects. In doing so, we offer direct empirical support for the idea of emotional attachment as a driver of loss aversion while also providing practitioners and future endowment effect researchers with new insights about the psychological processes that underlie the endowment effect.

The use of scarcity and reference price techniques in 13,594 retail newspaper display advertisements across four major U.S. cities was evaluated in terms of frequency and usage strategies using framing and information‐processing perspectives. One or both of these techniques were found in 22.4% of the ads. Scarcity was used more frequently than reference pricing, and was strongly associated with the use of reference pricing. Limited time availability was found to dominate the use of scarcity tactics. Scarcity and reference pricing were also strongly associated with the use of other attention and persuasion tactics, such as color ads, larger ads, and “Sale” announcements. Given the extensive use of reference pricing and scarcity appeals, their association with each other, and their further association with other commonly recognized advertising tactics, additional research on the use of multiple influence strategies appears warranted. The authors thank Tiffani Oltmanns and Daniel Taraba for their assistance ...

It is well established that people perceive streaks where they do not exist. However, little is known about what constitutes a streak in the mind of an observer. This paper proposes that the third repeat event in a sequence is pivotal to the subjective belief that a streak is occurring. In five studies, we find direct and indirect evidence that perceived streakiness plateaus with the third repeat outcome in a sequence. The evidence to support this rule of three comes from various domains, including: observation of randomly determined probabilistic outcomes, investment decisions in response to performance histories, and basketball shooting percentages.

How many positive claims should be used to produce the most positive impression of a product or service? This article posits that in settings where consumers know that the message source has a persuasion motive, the optimal number of positive claims is three. More claims are better until the fourth claim, at which time consumers’ persuasion knowledge causes them to see all the claims with skepticism. The studies in this paper establish and explore this pattern, which is referred to as the charm of three. An initial experiment finds that impressions peak at three claims for sources with persuasion motives but not for sources without a persuasion motive. Experiment 2 finds that this occurs for attitudes and impressions, and that increases in skepticism after three claims explain the effect. Two final experiments examine the process by investigating how cognitive load and sequential claims impact the effect.

This research finds that merely touching an object results in an increase in perceived ownership of that object. For nonowners, or buyers, perceived ownership can be increased with either mere touch or with imagery encouraging touch. Perceived ownership can also be increased through touch for legal owners, or sellers of an object. We also explore valuation of an object and conclude that it is jointly influenced by both perceived ownership and by the valence of the touch experience. We discuss the implications of this research for online and traditional retailers as well as for touch research and endowment effect research.