Gal Zauberman

Good Parameters and Implementations for Combined Multiple Recursive Random Number Generators

Combining parallel multiple recursive sequences provides an efficient way of implementing random number generators with long periods and good structural properties. Such generators are statistically more robust than simple linear congruential generators that fit into a computer word. We made extensive computer searches for good parameter sets, with respect to the spectral test, for combined multiple recursive generators of different sizes. We also compare different implementations and give a specific code in C that is faster than previous implementations of similar generators.

On the making of an experience: the effects of breaking and combining experiences on their overall evaluation

How do people create overall evaluations for experiences that change in intensity over time? What ‘rules’ do they use for combining such diAerent intensities into single overall evaluations? And what factors influence these integration rules? This paper starts by examining the relationship between the patterns of experiences over time and their overall evaluations. Within this framework, we propose and test the idea that the rules for combining such experiences depend on whether the experiences are perceived to be composed of single or multiple parts (i.e. continuous or discrete). In two experiments we demonstrate that an experience’s level of cohesiveness moderates the relationship between its pattern and overall evaluation. The results show that breaking up experiences substantially reduces the impact of patterns on overall evaluations. In addition, we demonstrate that continuously measuring momentary intensities produces a similar eAect on this relationship, causing us to speculate that providing continuous intensity responses causes subjects to self-segment the experience. Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Memories as Assets: Strategic Memory Protection in Choice over Time

We present five studies supporting our strategic memory protection theory. When people make decisions about experiences to consume over time, they treat their memories of previous experiences as assets to be protected. The first two studies demonstrate that people tend to avoid situations that they believe will threaten their ability to retrieve special (rather than merely pleasant) memories. The next three studies demonstrate that people seek to obtain memory pointers to help them cue special memories at a later time when they anticipate interference from subsequent events. These preferences are driven by peoples lay theories about the importance and difficulty of obtaining and retrieving special memories. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

When Do You Want It? Time, Decisions, and Public Policy

Most consumer decisions involve trade-offs of costs and benefits over time. The research literature on “intertemporal choice” examines behavioral regularities in how people think about such decisions, drawing from marketing, psychology, and behavioral economics. This diverse literature is relevant to the analysis of public policy issues related to consumers’ discounting of future outcomes “too much” compared with sooner outcomes. A stream of outcomes can be viewed as occurring in three temporal regions: the present, the near future, and the more distant future. Somewhat different research streams have developed around the topic of underweighting outcomes in the distant (compared with the near) future and of overweighting outcomes in the present compared with any point in the future. The authors review key concepts from the literature on underweighting the distant future versus the near-term future to analyze policy issues related to consumers’ saving for retirement and their response to rebates. The authors review key concepts from the literature on impulsive behavior and present-biased preferences to analyze the problems of self-control that people have in their consumption of “sin” products that are proximate and that affect rewards in the present. The authors critique current information and incentive remedies that ignore behavioral principles from the literature, focusing their recommendations on policy interventions designed to influence eating habits and obesity and on cooling-off laws that govern return policies for consumers’ big-ticket purchases.

Mental Simulation and Preference Consistency Over Time: The Role of Process-Versus Outcome-Focused Thoughts

Research on choice over time has found that people tend to focus on concrete aspects of near-future events and abstract aspects of distant-future events. Furthermore, a focus on concrete aspects heightens the feasibility-related components, whereas a focus on abstract aspects heightens the desirability-related components, which can lead to preference inconsistency over time. In this research, the authors integrate research on choice over time with mental simulation. They propose and show that counter to peoples natural tendencies, outcome simulation for near-future events and process simulation for distant-future events lead to preference consistency over time. The results also suggest that outcome timing moderates the effectiveness of process versus outcome simulation.

Consuming Now or Later? The Interactive Effect of Timing and Attribute Alignability

Decisions are often temporally separated from their outcomes. Using theories of structural alignment and temporal construal, we examined how temporal distance and the associated shift in decision processes moderate susceptibility to context effects. Specifically, in two experiments (one hypothetical, one with real outcomes), we demonstrated that people attend more to nonalignable differences when the outcome of the decision is in the distant future than when it is in the near future. This shift in decision processes was found in preference and choice data, as well as coded written protocols. We further show that this temporal shift cannot be explained by differential involvement with the decision or by the feasibility and desirability of the attributes. Our findings establish temporal distance as an important moderator of structural alignment effects and also extend the implications of temporal construal theory beyond the nature of the attributes to the structural relationships among attributes.

Differential partitioning of extended experiences

Abstract This article focuses on the effect of the perceived cohesiveness of experiences, whether composed of single or multiple parts, on their overall hedonic evaluations. Four experiments demonstrate the effects of partitioning on decision makers’ evaluation of extended experiences. First, patterns (i.e., improving vs. deteriorating trends) strongly influence how experiences are evaluated. Second, increased partitioning of an experience reduces the effect of the overall trend and results in more equal weighting of its parts. Third, breaking experiences at strategic points (i.e., local maxima and minima) influences the overall evaluation of experiences as well as the prediction of their future levels. These results suggest that components of sequences are evaluated similarly to the way whole sequences are evaluated and that experiences composed of multiple components are evaluated relatively more on the basis of their individual intensity and less based on their overall pattern.

Construing Consumer Decision Making

Understanding how consumers represent outcomes and weigh different decision criteria is critical to consumer behavior research. Construal-level theory articulates how psychological distance alters the mental representation of inputs and the effective weight given to “high-level” and “low-level” criteria. Trope, Liberman, and Wakslak (2007) provide a review of this literature. In this commentary, we illustrate the relevance of construal-level theory to issues in consumer psychology, particularly consumer decision making. We highlight specific questions that researchers could address by considering consumer behavior within the framework of changes in construal. We focus our discussion on how construal levels affect consideration sets and how shifts in weight from high-level to low-level features might lead to consumer regret and dissatisfaction. Construal level can help us understand follow-through on stated intentions for “really new” products and illuminate public-policy issues such as consumer saving for retirement and nonredemption of rebates. We identify open issues related to how construal levels for the same object evolve over time and whether resources differ in terms of how susceptible they are to psychological distance effects.

Can Victoria's Secret Change the Future? A Subjective Time Perception Account of Sexual-Cue Effects on Impatience

Sexual cues influence decisions not only about sex, but also about unrelated outcomes such as money. In the presence of sexual cues, individuals are more impatient when making intertemporal monetary tradeoffs, choosing smaller immediate amounts over larger delayed amounts. Previous research has emphasized the power of sexual cues to induce a strong general psychological desire to obtain not only sex-related but all available rewards. In the case of money, that heightened appetite enhances the perceived value of immediate monetary rewards. We propose a different psychological mechanism to explain this effect: Sexual cues induce impatience through their ability to lengthen the perceived temporal distance to delayed rewards. That is, sexual cues make the temporal delay seem subjectively longer, resulting in greater impatience for monetary rewards. We attribute this process to the arousing nature of sexual cues, thus extending findings on arousal and overestimation of elapsed time to the domain of future time perception and intertemporal preferences.

1995 Feels So Close Yet So Far The Effect of Event Markers on Subjective Feelings of Elapsed Time

Why does an event feel more or less distant than another event that occurred around the same time? Prior research suggests that characteristics of an event itself can affect the estimated date of its occurrence. Our work differs in that we focused on how characteristics of the time interval following an event affect people’s feelings of elapsed time (i.e., their feelings of how distant an event seems). We argue that a time interval that is punctuated by a greater number of accessible intervening events related to the target event (event markers) will make the target event feel more distant, but that unrelated intervening events will not have this effect. In three studies, we found support for the systematic effect of event markers. The effect of markers was independent of other characteristics of the event, such as its memorability, emotionality, importance, and estimated date, a result suggesting that this effect is distinct from established dating biases.