Ashwani Monga

How I Decide Depends on What I Spend: Use of Heuristics Is Greater for Time than for Money

We demonstrate that decision making is more heuristic in situations that involve spending time rather than money. Relative to participants in the money condition, those in the time condition show a higher propensity to choose a compromise option (experiment 1) and to rely on an arbitrary anchor (experiment 2). We propose that such heuristics are used more for time because, compared to monetary expenditures, temporal expenditures are harder to account for. Consistent with this proposition, when participants in both time and money conditions are primed to account for their expenditures, they no longer differ in their use of heuristics. The associated response times offer additional process evidence (experiment 3).

Years, Months, and Days versus 1, 12, and 365: The Influence of Units versus Numbers

Quantitative changes may be conveyed to consumers using small units (e.g., change in delivery time from 7 to 21 days) or large units (1-3 weeks). Numerosity research suggests that changes are magnified by small (vs. large) units because a change from 7 to 21 (vs. 1-3) seems larger. We introduce a reverse effect that we term unitosity: changes are magnified by large (vs. small) units because a change of weeks (vs. days) seems larger. We show that numerosity reverses to unitosity when relative salience shifts from numbers to units (study 1). Then, arguing that numbers (units) represent a low-level (high-level) construal of quantities, we show this reversal when mind-set shifts from concrete to abstract (studies 2-4). These results emerge for several quantities--height of buildings, time of maturity of financial instruments, weight of nutrients, and length of tables--and have significant implications for theory and practice.

Tracking Costs of Time and Money: How Accounting Periods Affect Mental Accounting

After people incur costs to get future benefits, they usually track these costs in their mental accounts and are keen to receive the benefits when they become available. We introduce the notion that costs and benefits can occur either in the same accounting period (day, season, etc.) or in different periods. Our key argument is that monetary costs are tracked across accounting periods but that temporal costs are written off at the end of the period in which they are incurred. Thus, accounting periods lead to a time-money asymmetry in the tracking of costs and, consequently, in the likelihood of seeking benefits. In a laboratory study, an online-panel study, and a field study with movie-theater patrons, we demonstrate how this relationship among accounting periods, cost tracking, and benefit seeking is different for time than for money. Our findings offer insights into the sunk-cost effect, time-money differences, and mental accounting. (c) 2010 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

When Time Has a Will of Its Own, the Powerless Don't Have the Will to Wait: Anthropomorphism of Time Can Decrease Patience

This article introduces time anthropomorphism: a tendency to imbue time with humanlike mental states (e.g., time has a will of its own). This tendency, which varies across individuals and may also be induced, changes patience (e.g., for standard over expedited shipping). Specifically, time anthropomorphism reduces patience for low-power (but not high-power) individuals because anthropomorphism makes the aversive force of wait time seem more potent (i.e., more aversive) to those who feel less potent themselves (i.e., low-power individuals). In a field study with real money at stake and four experiments, the authors verify the effect on patience and confirm the process via both mediation (i.e., the effect is mediated by how aversively time is perceived) and moderation (i.e., the effect reverses when time is made to seem beneficent). Thus, they introduce time as a consequential anthropomorphic entity, present novel effects on intertemporal preferences, and delineate a potency process for power.

Time versus money

Consumers are known to spend both time and money. These two resources are often seen as economically comparable because the value of ones time can be equated to a monetary amount, such as ones wage rate. Recent research suggests that even when time and money are economically equivalent, they are psychologically different. We discuss how time (versus money) leads to decision making that is more heuristic rather than systematic, to an orientation that is more emotional rather than value-maximizing, to a thinking process that is more holistic rather than analytic, and to a mindset that is more abstract rather than concrete. Implications arise for a variety of domains such as consumer search, happiness, product evaluation, and charitable giving.