Chip Heath

Preference and belief: Ambiguity and competence in choice under uncertainty

We investigate the relation between judgments of probability and preferences between bets. A series of experiments provides support for the competence hypothesis that people prefer betting on their own judgment over an equiprobable chance event when they consider themselves knowledgeable, but not otherwise. They even pay a significant premium to bet on their judgments. These data connot be explained by aversion to ambiguity, because judgmental probabilities are more ambiguous than chance events. We interpret the results in terms of the attribution of credit and blame. The possibility of inferring beliefs from preferences is questioned.1

Synchrony and Cooperation

Armies, churches, organizations, and communities often engage in activities—for example, marching, singing, and dancing—that lead group members to act in synchrony with each other. Anthropologists and sociologists have speculated that rituals involving synchronous activity may produce positive emotions that weaken the psychological boundaries between the self and the group. This article explores whether synchronous activity may serve as a partial solution to the free-rider problem facing groups that need to motivate their members to contribute toward the collective good. Across three experiments, people acting in synchrony with others cooperated more in subsequent group economic exercises, even in situations requiring personal sacrifice. Our results also showed that positive emotions need not be generated for synchrony to foster cooperation. In total, the results suggest that acting in synchrony with others can increase cooperation by strengthening social attachment among group members.

Where Consumers Diverge from Others: Identity Signaling and Product Domains

We propose that consumers often make choices that diverge from those of others to ensure that they effectively communicate desired identities. Consistent with this identity-signaling perspective, four studies illustrate that consumers are more likely to diverge from majorities, or members of other social groups, in product domains that are seen as symbolic of identity (e.g., music or hairstyles, rather than backpacks or stereos). In identity domains, participants avoided options preferred by majorities and abandoned preferences shared with majorities. The social group associated with a product influenced choice more in identity domains and when a given product was framed as identity relevant. People diverge, in part, to avoid communicating undesired identities.

Mental Budgeting and Consumer Decisions

Consumers often set budgets for categories of expenses (e.g., entertainment) and track expenses against their budget. Because budgets cannot perfectly anticipate consumption opportunities, people may earmark too much or too little money for a particular category. This leads them to overconsume or underconsume goods in that category. The results of three studies suggest that consumers do indeed set budgets and that budgeting may lead to underconsumption. To show that consumers track expenses, the studies demonstrate that budgeting effects are larger for purchases that are highly typical of their category. Such purchases reduce the amount people spend in a category and block the purchase of other typical items. The studies control for satiation and income effects; thus, budgeting adds predictive power to standard economic consumer theory. Copyright 1996 by the University of Chicago.

Emotional selection in memes: The case of urban legends.

This article explores how much memes like urban legends succeed on the basis of informational selection (i.e., truth or a moral lesson) and emotional selection (i.e., the ability to evoke emotions like anger, fear, or disgust). The article focuses on disgust because its elicitors have been precisely described. In Study 1, with controls for informational factors like truth, people were more willing to pass along stories that elicited stronger disgust. Study 2 randomly sampled legends and created versions that varied in disgust; people preferred to pass along versions that produced the highest level of disgust. Study 3 coded legends for specific story motifs that produce disgust (e.g., ingestion of a contaminated substance) and found that legends that contained more disgust motifs were distributed more widely on urban legend Web sites. The conclusion discusses implications of emotional selection for the social marketplace of ideas.

Coordination Neglect: How Lay Theories of Organizing Complicate Coordination in Organizations

ABSTRACT We argue that organizations often fail to organize effectively because individuals have lay theories about organizing that lead to coordination neglect. We unpack the notion of coordination neglect and describe specific cognitive phenomena that underlie it. To solve the coordination problem, organizations must divide a task and then integrate the components. Individuals display shortcomings that may create problems at both stages. First, lay theories often focus more on division of labor than on integration. We discuss evidence that individuals display partition focus (i.e. they focus on partitioning the task more than on integration) and component focus (i.e. they tend to focus on single components of a tightly interrelated set of capabilities, particularly by investing to create highly specialized components). Second, when individuals attempt to integrate components of a task, they often fail to use a key mechanism for integration: ongoing communication. Individuals exhibit inadequate communication because the ‘curse of knowledge’ makes it difficult to take the perspective of another and communicate effectively. More importantly, because specialists find it especially difficult to communicate with specialists in other areas, the general problem of communication will often be compounded by insufficient translation.

The Mozart effect: tracking the evolution of a scientific legend.

Theories of the diffusion of ideas in social psychology converge on the assumption that shared beliefs (e.g., social representations, rumours and legends) propagate because they address the needs or concerns of social groups. But little empirical research exists demonstrating this link. We report three media studies of the diffusion of a scientific legend as a particular kind of shared belief. We studied the Mozart effect (ME), the idea that listening to classical music enhances intelligence. Study 1 showed that the ME elicited more persistent media attention than other science reports and this attention increased when the ME was manifested in events outside of science. Study 2 suggested that diffusion of the ME may have responded to varying levels of collective anxiety. Study 3 demonstrated how the content of the ME evolved during diffusion. The results provide evidence for the functionality of diffusion of ideas and initial elements for a model of the emergence and evolution of scientific legends.

Idea Habitats: How the Prevalence of Environmental Cues Influences the Success of Ideas

We investigate 1 factor that influences the success of ideas or cultural representations by proposing that they have a habitat, that is, a set of environmental cues that encourages people to recall and transmit them. We test 2 hypotheses: (a) fluctuation: the success of an idea will vary over time with fluctuations in its habitat, and (b) competition: ideas with more prevalent habitats will be more successful. Four studies use subject ratings and data from newspapers to provide correlational support for our 2 hypotheses, with a negative factoid, positive rumor, catchphrases, and variants of a proverb. Three additional experimental studies manipulate the topic of actual conversations and find empirical support for our theory, with catchphrases, proverbs, and slang. The discussion examines how habitat prevalence applies to a more extensive class of ideas and suggests how habitats may influence the process by which ideas evolve.

Good Reasons Sell: Reason-Based Choice Among Group and Individual Investors in the Stock Market

In this paper, we compare the investment decisions of groups (stock clubs) and individuals. Both individuals and clubs are more likely to purchase stocks that are associated with good reasons (e.g., a company that is featured on a list of most-admired companies). However, stock clubs favor such stocks more than individuals, despite the fact that such reasons do not improve performance. We describe why social dynamics may make good reasons more important for groups than individuals.

Emotional and Deliberative Reactions to a Public Crisis Mad Cow Disease in France

Although most theories of choice are cognitive, recent research has emphasized the role of emotions. We used a novel context—the Mad Cow crisis in France—to investigate how emotions alter choice even when consequences are held constant. A field study showed that individuals reduced beef consumption in months after many newspaper articles featured the emotional label “Mad Cow,” but beef consumption was unaffected after articles featured scientific labels for the same disease. The reverse pattern held for the disease-related actions of a government bureaucracy. A lab study showed that the Mad Cow label induces people to make choices based solely on emotional reactions, whereas scientific labels induce people to consider their own probability judgments. Although the Mad Cow label produces less rational behavior than scientific labels, it is two to four times more common in the environment.