Yang Yang

Research Interests

Judgment and Decision Making, Consumption Experience, Social Influence, Artificial Intelligence and algorithmic bias, Technology and Consumers

Journal Publications (* denotes equal authorship; † denotes former or current doctoral student) 

1. Nan, Lana*†, Sang Kyu Park*† and Yang Yang* (forthcoming), “Rejections Are More Contagious Than Choices: How Another’s Decisions Shape Our Own,” Journal of Consumer Research.

Every day, we learn about others’ decisions from various sources. We perceive some of these decisions as choices and others as rejections. Does the mere perception of another’s decision as a choice versus as a rejection influence our own behavior? Are we more likely to conform to another’s decision if we view it in one way or the other? The current research investigates the social influence of decision frames. Eight studies, including a field study conducted during a livestreaming event hosted by an influencer with over 1.5 million followers, find that people are more likely to conform to another’s decision if it is perceived as a rejection than if it is perceived as a choice. This effect happens because consumers are more likely to attribute another’s decision to product quality as opposed to personal preference, when consumers perceive another’s decision as a rejection than as a choice. The inference about quality versus personal preference in turn increases conformity. This research bridges the existing literatures on decision framing, social influence, and perceptions of quality and personal preference, and it offers important implications for marketers and influencers. 

2. Yang, Yang, Xilin Li† and Christopher Hsee (2023), “Relevance Insensitivity: A Framework of Psychological Biases in Consumer Behavior and Beyond,” Consumer Psychology Review. 

In judgment and choice, consumers show a variety of biases, from the sunk cost fallacy and projection bias to usage frequency neglect and erroneous price-quality inferences. This article explains these seemingly disparate biases and predicts new biases using an overarching framework based on the relevance insensitivity theory proposed by Hsee, Yang, and Li (2019). According to the theory, many biases arise because people are insufficiently sensitive to the relevance (i.e., weight) of a cue variable to the target variable (the dependent variable). The direction of the bias depends on the normative relevance of the cue—people over-rely on the cue when it is normatively irrelevant and under-rely on the cue when it is normatively highly relevant. We show that ostensibly unique and universal biases are neither unique nor universal: all are manifestations of relevance insensitivity, and each bias attenuates or reverses as the cue variable’s relevance changes. 

3. Yoon, Haewon, Yang Yang and Carey Morewedge (2022), “Early Cost Realization and College Choice,” Journal of Marketing Research.

Student loans defer the cost of college until after graduation, allowing many students access to higher lifetime earnings and colleges and universities they otherwise could not afford. Even with student loans, however, the authors find that students psychologically realize the financial costs of a college education long before their loan repayments begin. This early cost realization frames financial decisions between most pairs of colleges as an intertemporal trade-off. Students choose between investments with (1) smaller short-term costs but smaller long-term returns (a lower-cost, lower-return [LC-LR] college) and (2) larger short-term costs but larger long-term returns (a higher-cost, higher-return [HC-HR] college). The authors find that early cost realization increases preferences for LC-LR colleges—preferences that could reduce lifetime earnings—in both simulations and experiments. Preferences for LC-LR colleges are pronounced among financially impatient students and in choice pairs of LC-LR and HC-HR colleges where the equilibrium is set at a low-discount-rate threshold. A return-on-investment strategy, future uncertainty, and debt aversion cannot explain these results. A decision aid synchronizing the psychological realization of costs and benefits reduced preferences for LC-LR colleges, illustrating that the preference is constructed and receptive to interventions. 

4. Yang, Yang, Christopher Hsee and Xilin Li† (2021), “Prediction Biases: An Integrative Review,” Current Directions in Psychological Science.

Research in psychology and related fields has documented a myriad of prediction biases, such as the underprediction of hedonic adaptation and the overprediction of other people’s concern for fairness. These prediction biases are ostensibly independent, each with its own cause. We argue, however, that many of these seemingly disparate biases are specific instances of a general bias—situation insensitivity: People are insensitive to variations in the situational variable that underlies the target variable (the variable to be predicted). Consequently, when encountering a condition in which the situational variable is at one of its ends such that the value of the target variable is low, people overpredict the value; conversely, when encountering a condition in which the situational variable is at its other end such that the value of the target variable is high, people underpredict it. Most prior research documenting prediction biases has focused on only one end of the situational variable and therefore has shown either only an overprediction bias or only an underprediction bias. We argue that at the other end of the situational variable, the originally documented bias can disappear or even reverse. Our framework not only explains known biases but also predicts new biases.

5. Hsee, Christopher, Yang Yang and Xilin Li† (2019), “Relevance Insensitivity: A New Look at Some Old Biases,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

People show systematic biases in judgment and decision making. We propose that many seemingly disparate biases reflect a common underlying mechanism—insensitivity to the relevance of some given information—and that manipulating the relevance of the information can eliminate or even reverse the original bias. We test our theory in four experiments, each focusing on a classic bias—the sunk cost fallacy, non-regressive prediction, anchoring bias, and base rate neglect, and show that people over-rely on a given piece of information when it is irrelevant, thus exhibiting one bias, and under-rely on the same piece of information when it is highly relevant, thus showing a reverse bias. For example, when a past cost is irrecoverable and hence irrelevant to future cost, people over-rely on it when making a decision for the future, thus exhibiting the classic sunk cost fallacy, but when the past cost is fully recoverable and hence highly relevant to future cost, people under-rely on it, thus showing the reverse of the sunk cost fallacy. We also find that when people are made sensitive to the relevance of the information, both the original biases and their reverse biases are attenuated. This research offers a new look at these “old” biases, suggesting that each individual bias is not general because it can be reversed, but collectively, these biases are general because they all reflect relevance insensitivity.

6. Zhu, Meng, Yang Yang and Christopher Hsee (2018), “The Mere Urgency Effect,” Journal of Consumer Research.

In everyday life, people are often faced with choices between tasks of varying levels of urgency and importance. How do people choose? Normatively speaking, people may choose to perform urgent tasks with short completion windows, instead of importance tasks with larger outcomes, because important tasks are more difficult and further away from goal completion, urgent tasks involve more immediate and certain payoffs, or people want to finish the urgent tasks first and then work on important tasks later. The current research identifies a mere urgency effect, a tendency to pursue urgency over importance even when these normative reasons are controlled for. Specifically, results from five experiments demonstrate that people are more likely to perform unimportant tasks (i.e., tasks with objectively lower payoffs) over important tasks (i.e., tasks with objectively better payoffs), when the unimportant tasks are characterized merely by spurious urgency (e.g., an illusion of expiration). The mere urgency effect documented in this research violates the basic normative principle of dominance—choosing objectively worse options over objectively better options. People behave as if pursuing an urgent task had its own appeal, independent of its objective consequence.

7. Yang, Yang*, Yangjie Gu* and Jeff Galak* (2017), “When It Could Have Been Worse, It Gets Better: How Favorable Uncertainty Resolution Slows Hedonic Adaptation,” Journal of Consumer Research.

Thankfully, most product consumption experiences are positive. Unfortunately, however, those positive experiences are not always guaranteed, and defects creep into the consumer experience. Though its assertion runs counter to most prescriptions, the current research proposes that exposing consumers to the mere possibility of negative experiences occurring in a consumption sequence increases consumers’ happiness with those experiences over time. Six studies demonstrate this effect and further show that it is driven by hedonic responses as a result of favorable uncertainty resolution. That is, with the mere possibility of a negative experience, a consumer who actually experiences a positive outcome is likely to feel relief or pleasure from not having to experience the negative outcome. This research enriches existing literature on hedonic adaptation and uncertainty and has significant implications for consumer behavior.

8. Yang, Yang and Jeff Galak (2015), “Sentimental Value and Its Effect on Hedonic Adaptation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Sentimental value is a highly prevalent, yet largely understudied phenomenon. We introduce the construct of sentimental value and investigate how and why sentimental value influences hedonic adaptation. Across 7 studies, we examine the antecedents of sentimental value and demonstrate its effect on hedonic adaptation using both naturally occurring and experimentally manipulated items with sentimental value. We further test the underlying process linking sentimental value and hedonic adaptation by showing that whereas feature-related utility decreases for all items with time, sentimental value typically does not, and that sentimental value moderates the influence of the decrement in feature-related utility on hedonic adaptation. Moreover, this moderating effect of sentimental value is driven by a shift in focus from features of the item to the associations that item possess. We conclude with a discussion of related phenomena and implications for individuals.

9. Hsee, Christopher, Yang Yang and Bowen Ruan (2015), “The Mere Reaction Effect: Even Non-positive and Non-informative Reactions Can Reinforce Actions,” Journal of Consumer Research.

Prior research indicates that a stimulus can reinforce an action if the stimulus is a reward (i.e., a priori positive) or carries useful information. The current research finds that if a stimulus is perceived as a reaction to an action, it can reinforce the action even if the stimulus is a priori nonpositive and noninformative. Mere reactions are reinforcing. Specifically, eight experiments, including a field experiment, demonstrate that individuals are more likely to repeat an action (e.g., inserting money in a donation box or typing a message in a textbox) if the action is followed by a stimulus (e.g., the emission of a sound or the flash of an image) than if it is not, even if the stimulus is a priori negative (e.g., an annoying sound or an aversive image) and carries no useful information. Moreover, the effect just described will occur only if the stimulus is contingent on (immediately follows) the action and perceived as a reaction to the action. Finally, by serving as a reaction, an a priori nonpositive stimulus can become positive. The present work yields theoretical implications for stimulus–response relationships and practical implications for designs of consumer products and loyalty programs.

10. Hsee, Christopher*, Yang Yang*, Xingshan Zheng and Hanwei Wang (2015), “Lay Rationalism: Individual Differences in Using Reason versus Feelings to Guide Decisions,” Journal of Marketing Research. 

People have a lay notion of rationality—that is, the notion of using reason rather than feelings to guide decisions. Yet people differ in the degree to which they actually base their decisions on reason versus feelings. This individual difference variable is potentially general and important but is largely overlooked. The present research (1) introduces the construct of lay rationalism to capture this individual difference variable and distinguishes it from other individual difference variables; (2) develops a short, easy-to-implement scale to measure lay rationalism and demonstrates the validity and reliability of the scale; and (3) shows that lay rationalism, as measured by the scale, can predict a variety of consumer-relevant behaviors, including product preferences, savings decisions, and donation behaviors.

11. Galak, Jeff, Joseph Redden, Yang Yang and Ellie Kyung (2014), “How Perceptions of Temporal Distance Influence Satiation,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Although people recover from satiation with the natural passage of time, we examine whether it is possible to influence the recovery process merely by changing the perceived temporal distance from past consumption. Experiment 1, a field experiment, demonstrates that influencing the perceived temporal distance from dinnergoers' last meal affects the caloric value of the meal purchased (more recent leads to smaller food purchase). In a lab environment controlling for objective temporal distance and initial satiation, Experiment 2 demonstrates that these changes in perceived temporal distance also affect the actual enjoyment of an experience (listening to a favored song). Beyond these reconstructed temporal judgments, Experiment 3 directly manipulates the perceived length of the intervening period since last consumption using an altered time clock, and replicates these effects on satiation. Our findings illustrate that simple manipulations of subjective time perception can influence consumption, even in the presence of very real physiological inputs, and provide further insight into how satiation is constructed.

12. Yang, Yang, Joachim Vosgerau and George Loewenstein (2013), “Framing Influences Willingness to Pay but Not Willingness to Accept,” Journal of Marketing Research.

The authors show, with real and hypothetical payoffs, that consumers are willing to pay substantially less for a risky prospect when it is called a “lottery ticket,” “raffle,” “coin flip,” or “gamble” than when it is labeled a “gift certificate” or “voucher.” Willingness to accept, in contrast, is not affected by these frames. This differential framing effect is the result of an aversion to bad deals, which causes buyers to focus on different aspects than sellers. Buyers’ willingness to pay is influenced by the extent to which a risky prospect’s frame is associated with risk (Experiment 1) as well as the prospect’s lowest (but not highest) possible outcome (Experiment 2). Sellers’ willingness to accept, in contrast, is influenced by a prospect’s lowest and highest possible outcomes but not by the risk associated with its frame (Experiments 2 and 3). The framing effect on willingness to pay is independent of the objective level of uncertainty (Experiment 4) and can lead to the uncertainty effect. The findings have important implications for research on risk preferences and marketing practice.

13. Hsee, Christopher, Yang Yang, Yangjie Gu and Jie Chen (2009), “Specification Seeking: How Product Specifications Influence Consumer Preference,” Journal of Consumer Research.

We offer a framework about when and how specifications (e.g., megapixels of a camera and number of air bags in a massage chair) influence consumer preferences and report five studies that test the framework. Studies 1–3 show that even when consumers can directly experience the relevant products and the specifications carry little or no new information, their preference is still influenced by specifications, including specifications that are self-generated and by definition spurious and specifications that the respondents themselves deem uninformative. Studies 4 and 5 show that relative to choice, hedonic preference (liking) is more stable and less influenced by specifications.

14. Hsee, Christopher, Yang Yang, Naihe Li and Luxi Shen (2009), “Wealth, Warmth and Wellbeing: Whether Happiness is Relative or Absolute Depends on Whether It Is about Money, Acquisition, or Consumption,” Journal of Marketing Research, 46(3), 396-409.

A central question in consumer and happiness research is whether happiness depends on absolute or relative levels of wealth and consumption. To address this question, the authors evaluate a finer level than overall happiness and distinguish three specific types of happiness: with money, with the acquisition of an item, and with the consumption of an item. They find that happiness with money and with acquisition is relative and that happiness with consumption can be either absolute or relative, depending on whether the consumption is inherently valuable or not. Including both lab and field data, this research yields implications for how to increase consumer happiness from one generation to the next.