Research

Intertemporal choices involve tradeoffs between the value of rewards and the delay before those rewards are experienced. Canonical intertemporal choice models such as hyperbolic discounting assume that reward amount and time until delivery are integrated within each option prior to comparison. An alternative view posits that intertemporal choice reflects attribute-wise processes in which amount and time attributes are compared separately. 

In this paper, we use multi-attribute drift diffusion modeling (DDM) to show that attribute-wise comparison represents the choice process better than option-wise comparison for intertemporal choice in a young adult population. We find that, while accumulation rates for amount and time information are uncorrelated, the difference between those rates predicts individual differences in patience. Moreover, patient individuals incorporate amount earlier than time into the decision process. 

Using eye-tracking, we link these modeling results to attention, showing that patience results from a rapid, attribute-wise process that prioritizes amount over time information. Thus, we find converging evidence that distinct evaluation processes for amount and time determine intertemporal financial choices. Because intertemporal decisions in the lab have been linked to well-being including common failures of patience such as insufficient saving to dysfunctional impatience as in addiction, understanding individual differences in the choice process is important for developing more effective interventions.

The context surrounding a consumer decision, such as one’s overall budget available for purchases, can exert a strong effect on the subjective value of a product. Across three eye-tracking studies, we explore the attentional processes through which budget size influences consumers’ purchasing behavior. In Study 1 and 2, participants chose whether to buy or skip items with varying prices, budgets, and desirability, whereas in Study 3, we rule out the possibility that budgets act solely as numerical anchors. Results show that higher budgets increased and sped up purchasing even when items were affordable at all budget sizes. Moreover, attention interacted with budget size to promote purchasing at higher budgets. Finally, individual differences in the magnitude of the budget effect related to attentional patterns: those whose decisions depended more on budget exhibited more budget-price transitions and less variability in search patterns compared to those whose decisions were less dependent on budget. These findings indicate that budgets can alter purchasing decisions through changes in the allocation of attention, allowing low budgets to serve as self-control devices and large budgets to generate impulse purchases.

We explore the psychological mechanisms underlying self-serving redistribution decisions in an experimental setting. This self-serving bias in redistribution has been attributed not only to self-interest, but also to constructs such as differing beliefs about the hard work or luck underlying inequality, differing fairness views, and differing perceptions of social norms. In this study, we directly measure each of these potential mechanisms and compare their mediating roles in the relationship between status and redistribution. In our experiment, participants complete real-effort tasks and then are randomly assigned a high or low pay rate per correct answer to exogenously induce (dis)advantaged status. Participants are then paired and those assigned the role of dictator decide how to divide their joint earnings. We find that advantaged dictators keep more for themselves than disadvantaged dictators and report different fairness views and beliefs about task performance, but not different perceptions of social norms. Further, only fairness views play a significant mediating role between status and allocation differences, suggesting this is the primary mechanism underlying self-serving differences in support for redistribution.

Attitudes towards fairness and redistribution differ along socio-economic lines, resulting in political conflict. To understand the formation of such views and find levers to affect them, we study the role of attention. In a large online experiment, we investigate how subjects allocate their visual attention to the contributions of merit and luck in the generation of a surplus and how they decide on its division. We find that subjects who randomly obtained an advantaged position pay less attention to information about true merit and retain more of the surplus. Both the attentional and behavioral patterns persist, although with smaller effect sizes, when dictators subsequently divide money between pairs of advantaged and disadvantaged subjects in the role of a benevolent judge. Moreover, attention has a substantial causal effect: forcing subjects to look for one second more at merit information relative to overall outcomes reduces the effect of having an advantaged position on allocations by about 40%. The evidence is consistent with a habit formation effect of attention in fairness decisions. These findings open a new window on socio-economic cleavages in attitudes towards redistribution, and suggest that attention-based policy interventions may be effective in reducing polarized views on inequality.

Despite the increasing accessibility of ethical information, consumers underutilize this information, leading to missed societal opportunities to combat forced labour, climate change, and poverty. One potential reason for this under-use may be conflicting information-seeking and ignorance motives surrounding negatively-framed ethical information. Consumers may use ethical information when confronted with it but ignore such information when possible because it is unpleasant to contemplate. We investigate how positive vs. negative framing of ethical information influences the tension between information-seeking to make informed choices and information-ignorance to reduce unpleasant emotions and the resulting impact on choice. 

Preliminary results discussed: https://ase.uva.nl/content/news/2024/01/amasino-ethical-labelling-impact-on-consumer-choices.html