Kurt A. Carlson

The Goal of Consistency as a Cause of Information Distortion

Why, during a decision between new alternatives, do people bias their evaluations of information to support a tentatively preferred option? The authors test the following 3 decision process goals as the potential drivers of such distortion of information: (a) to reduce the effort of evaluating new information, (b) to increase the separation between alternatives, and (c) to achieve consistency between old and new units of information. Two methods, the nonconscious priming of each goal and assessing the ambient activation levels of multiple goals, reveal that the goal of consistency drives information distortion. Results suggest the potential value of combining these methods in studying the dynamics of multiple, simultaneously active goals.

Generating Objectives: Can Decision Makers Articulate What They Want?

Objectives have long been considered a basis for sound decision making. This research examines the ability of decision makers to generate self-relevant objectives for consequential decisions. In three empirical studies, participants consistently omitted nearly half of the objectives that they later identified as personally relevant. More surprisingly, omitted objectives were perceived to be almost as important as those generated by participants on their own. These empirical results were replicated in a real-world case study of strategic decision making at a high-tech firm. Overall, our research suggests that decision makers are considerably deficient in utilizing personal knowledge and values to form objectives for the decisions they face.

Leader‐Driven Primacy: Using Attribute Order to Affect Consumer Choice

Leader-driven primacy uses initial product information to install a targeted brand as the early leader in a choice between two brands. Biased evaluation of subsequent attributes builds support for the targeted brand, causing the choice itself to be biased. Study 1 finds evidence of this effect in choices between two equally attractive brands. Study 2 extends the finding to a situation where one brand is inferior and to conditions where participants do not explicitly identify their leader. Study 3 shows how leader-driven primacy can be reduced by encouraging brand-based processing.

Choosing an Inferior Alternative

We show how decision makers can be induced to choose a personally inferior alternative, a strong violation of rational decision making. First, the inferior alternative is installed as the leading option by starting with information that supports this alternative. Then, the decision maker uses the natural process of distorting new information to support whichever alternative is leading. This leader-supporting distortion overcomes the inherent advantages of the superior alternative. The end result is a tendency to choose the self-identified inferior alternative. We trace the choice process to reveal the amount of distortion and its influence on preference. Self-reported awareness of distortion to support the inferior alternative is not related to the amount of distortion. The absence of valid awareness suggests that the manipulation that produces this preference violation is unlikely to be detected and that the distortion is unlikely to be corrected by the decision maker. As expected, given the lack of awareness, final confidence is just as high when the inferior alternative is chosen as when the superior one is. The discussion considers how to prevent an adversary from manipulating ones decisions using this technique.

Unrealistically Optimistic Consumers: A Selective Hypothesis Testing Account for Optimism in Predictions of Future Behavior

We propose that when predicting future behavior, consumers selectively (but unwittingly) test the hypothesis that they will behave ideally. This selective hypothesis testing perspective on unrealistic optimism suggests that estimates of future behavior should be similar to those made by individuals who assume that conditions will be ideal. Moreover, consumers who initially provide estimates assuming that conditions will be ideal should recognize that the world is not ideal and so should test a more realistic hypothesis. In line with these predictions, we find that ideal-world estimates (e.g., In an ideal world, how often will you exercise next week?) do not differ from standard estimates (e.g., How often will you exercise next week?). We also find that individuals who initially estimate their behavior in an ideal world subsequently make more realistic predictions. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

Improving the Generation of Decision Objectives

Real decision makers exhibit significant shortcomings in the generation of objectives for decisions that they face. Prior research has illustrated the magnitude of this shortcoming but not its causes. In this paper, we identify two distinct impediments to the generation of decision objectives: not thinking broadly enough about the range of relevant objectives, and not thinking deeply enough to articulate every objective within the range that is considered. To test these explanations and explore ways of stimulating a more comprehensive set of objectives, we present three experiments involving a variety of interventions: the provision of sample objectives, organization of objectives by category, and direct challenges to do better, with or without a warning that important objectives are missing. The use of category names and direct challenges with a warning both led to improvements in the quantity of objectives generated without impacting their quality; other interventions yielded less improvement. We conclude by discussing the relevance of our findings to decision analysis and offering prescriptive implications for the elicitation of decision objectives. In this version of the paper, “Improving the Generation of Decision Objectives” by Samuel D. Bond, Kurt A. Carlson, and Ralph L. Keeney, originally published online ahead of print March 10, 2010, the first panel heading of Figure 2 was corrected to read “Study 1 (Choice context = Dissertation),” as shown on page 243.

Improving Preference Assessment: Limiting the Effect of Context Through Pre-exposure to Attribute Levels

This paper introduces a technique for improving preference assessment by reducing the influence of context on preferential choices. We propose that a decision maker who is exposed to relevant attribute levels will form spontaneous valuations, which will then insulate the decision maker from the effects of context during subsequent preference assessment. Results from three studies supported this hypothesis. Pre-exposure to product attribute levels undermined the impact of attribute priming, decision framing, and asymmetric dominance on preferential choices. A fourth study demonstrated that similar results can be obtained by allowing decision makers to pregenerate lists of attribute levels on their own.

The Role of Health Knowledge in Determining Dietary Fat Intake

An endogenous switching regression model is used to estimate the effect that health information has on the food purchase decisions of meal planners. Specifically, we examine how information concerning the health implications of dietary fat intake influences the meal planners daily intake of total and saturated fat. This analysis uses the 1989 to 1990 and 1990 to 1991 Continuing Survey of Food Intake by Individuals (CSFII), and companion Diet and Health Knowledge Surveys (DHKS). Our results show that health information regarding dietary fat intake has a significant impact on meal planner food choices.

Goal Reversion in Consumer Choice

How do consumers manage goal conflicts before making a choice? This question was studied by examining emerging preferences in choices involving two products that were means to conflicting goals. These preference patterns revealed that an initially active goal, which had been set aside to reconcile a goal conflict, exerted greater than expected influence on the remainder of the choice process. This influence was manifest in a tendency for consumers to revert to the product aligned with the initially active goal upon seeing information that objectively favored neither product. The prevalence of the reversion (i.e., flip-flop) preference pattern suggests that activation of a set-aside goal escalates when it is set aside, much as if its pursuit had been impeded by an external force. In addition to revealing goal reversion in a variety of choice contexts, the studies in this article also find that goal reversion is moderated by goal conflict.

Biased Predecisional Processing of Leading and Nonleading Alternatives

When people obtain information about choice alternatives in a set one attribute at a time, they rapidly identify a leading alternative. Although previous research has established that people then distort incoming information, it is unclear whether distortion occurs through favoring of the leading alternative, disfavoring of the trailing alternative, or both. Prior examinations have not explored the predecisional treatment of the nonleading alternative (or alternatives) because they conceptualized distortion as a singular construct in binary choice and measured it using a relative item comparing the evaluation of both alternatives simultaneously. In this article, we introduce a measure of distortion at the level of the alternative, which allows for measuring whether predecisional distortion favors or disfavors every alternative being considered in choice sets of various sizes. We report that both proleader and antitrailer distortion occur and that the use of antitrailer processing differs between binary choices and multiple-options choices.