Papers by Joachim Vosgerau
Journal of experimental psychology. General, 2010
People appear to be unrealistically optimistic about their future prospects, as reflected by theo... more People appear to be unrealistically optimistic about their future prospects, as reflected by theory and research in the fields of psychology, organizational behavior, behavioral economics, and behavioral finance. Many real-world examples (e.g., consumer behavior during economic recessions), however, suggest that people are not always overly optimistic. I suggest that people can be both overly optimistic and pessimistic in their beliefs about future events, depending on whether they focus on success or on failure. More specifically, people judge the likelihood of desirable and undesirable events to be higher than similar neutral events because they misattribute the arousal those events evoke to their greater perceived likelihood. I demonstrated this stake-likelihood effect in 4 studies. In Study 1, arousal was shown to increase likelihood judgments. Study 2 demonstrated that such elevated likelihood judgments are due to misattribution of the arousal from having a stake in the outcome...
Journal of Consumer Research, 2014
Defaults effects can be created by social contexts. The observed choices of others can become soc... more Defaults effects can be created by social contexts. The observed choices of others can become social defaults, increasing their choice share. Social default effects
are a novel form of social influence not due to normative or informational influence: participants were more likely to mimic observed choices when choosing in private than in public (experiment 1) and when stakes were low rather than high (experiment 2). Like other default effects, social default effects were greater for uncertain rather than certain choices (experiment 3) and were weaker when choices required
justification (experiment 4). Social default effects appear to occur automatically as they become stronger when cognitive resources are constrained by time pressure or load, and they can be sufficiently strong to induce preference reversals (experiments 5 and 6).
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
... Peter Stüttgen ([email protected]) is a doctoral candidate in Marketing, and Joachim Vo... more ... Peter Stüttgen ([email protected]) is a doctoral candidate in Marketing, and Joachim Vosgerau ([email protected]) and Peter Boatwright ([email protected]) are Associate ... Greenwald, Nosek, & Banaji, 2003; Hofmann, Gawronski, Gschwender, & Schmitt, 2005). ...
Science, 2010
The consumption of a food typically leads to a decrease in its subsequent intake through habituat... more The consumption of a food typically leads to a decrease in its subsequent intake through habituation—a decrease in one’s responsiveness to the food and motivation to obtain it.
We demonstrated that habituation to a food item can occur even when its consumption is merely imagined. Five experiments showed that people who repeatedly imagined eating a food (such as cheese) many times subsequently consumed less of the imagined food than did people
who repeatedly imagined eating that food fewer times, imagined eating a different food (such as candy), or did not imagine eating a food. They did so because they desired to eat it less, not because they considered it less palatable. These results suggest that mental representation alone can engender habituation to a stimulus.
Marketing Letters, 2010
Game theoretic models of marketing channels typically rely on simplifying assumptions that, from ... more Game theoretic models of marketing channels typically rely on simplifying assumptions that, from a behavioral perspective, often appear naïve. However, behavioral researchers have produced such an abundance of behavioral regularities that they are impossible to incorporate into game theoretic models. We believe that a focus on three core findings would benefit both fields; these are: first, beliefs that are held by the various players regarding profit consequences of different actions are incomplete and often biased; second, players' preferences and optimization objectives are not commonly known; and third, players have insufficient cognitive abilities to achieve optimization objectives. Embracing these three findings shifts the focus from rational decision making to how decision makers learn to improve their decision-making skills. Concluding, we believe that greater convergence of game theoretic modeling and behavioral research in marketing channels would lead to new insights for both fields.
Journal of Marketing Research, 2010
... In Study 1, we demonstrate an IAT effect in favor of Coca-Cola when Coca-Cola is first paired... more ... In Study 1, we demonstrate an IAT effect in favor of Coca-Cola when Coca-Cola is first paired with the positive stimuli but no IAT effect when it is first paired with the negative stimuli. ... 375 left response key must be pressed for Pepsi and the right response key for Coca-Cola. ...
Journal of Marketing Research, 2013
Journal of Consumer Research, 2006
Why would consumers prefer live television, even when tape-delayed broadcasts provide the same se... more Why would consumers prefer live television, even when tape-delayed broadcasts provide the same sensory experience? We propose that indeterminacy is a key reason. Indeterminate consumption experiences (such as watching sports competitions live on television) unfold in ways that are not decided ex ante. This makes them more exciting than equivalent determinate experiences (such as watching recorded broadcasts). We offer empirical evidence for this proposition: independently of other differences between live and taped broadcasts, the indeterminacy of events made watching them live more exciting and correspondingly preferable. We conclude by discussing implications of the indeterminacy concept for consumer research.
Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2008
and Vohs (2007) sketch a theory of free will as the human ability to exert self-control. Self-con... more and Vohs (2007) sketch a theory of free will as the human ability to exert self-control. Self-control can produce goal-directed behavior, which free will conceptualized as random behavior cannot. We question whether consumer psychology can shed light on the ontological question of whether free will exists. We suggest that it is more fruitful for consumer psychology to examine consumers' belief in free will. Specifically, we propose that this belief arises from consumers' phenomenological experience of exercising self-control in the face of moral or intertemporal conflicts of will. Based on extant literature in philosophy, psychology, and economics, we offer both a narrower conceptualization of the nature of self-control problems and a more general conceptualization of self-control strategies, involving not only willpower but also precommitment. We conclude with a discussion of the consequences of consumers' belief in free will.
Behavior Research Methods, 2013
Data quality is one of the major concerns of using crowdsourcing websites such as Amazon Mechanic... more Data quality is one of the major concerns of using crowdsourcing websites such as Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to recruit participants for online behavioral studies. We compared two methods for ensuring data quality on MTurk: attention check questions (ACQs) and restricting participation to MTurk workers with high reputation (above 95% approval ratings). In Experiment 1, we found that high-reputation workers rarely failed ACQs and provided higher-quality data than did low-reputation workers; ACQs improved data quality only for low-reputation workers, and only in some cases. Experiment 2 corroborated these findings and also showed that more productive high-reputation workers produce the highest-quality data. We concluded that sampling high-reputation workers can ensure high-quality data without having to resort to using ACQs, which may lead to selection bias if participants who fail ACQs are excluded post-hoc.
status: published
SESSION OVERVIEW The capacity to exert self-control is an important feature of human nature. Give... more SESSION OVERVIEW The capacity to exert self-control is an important feature of human nature. Given the adaptive benefits of being able to control inner states and behavioral responses, self-control is of significant importance for achieving success in life (cf. ...
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2014
We propose that affective forecasters overestimate the extent to which experienced hedonic respon... more We propose that affective forecasters overestimate the extent to which experienced hedonic responses to an outcome are influenced by the probability of its occurrence. The experience of an outcome (e.g., winning a gamble) is typically more affectively intense than the simulation of that outcome (e.g., imagining winning a gamble) upon which the affective forecast for it is based. We suggest that, as a result, experiencers allocate a larger share of their attention toward the outcome (e.g., winning the gamble) and less to its probability specifications than do affective forecasters. Consequently, hedonic responses to an outcome are less sensitive to its probability specifications than are affective forecasts for that outcome. The results of 6 experiments provide support for our theory. Affective forecasters overestimated how sensitive experiencers would be to the probability of positive and negative outcomes (Experiments 1 and 2). Consistent with our attentional account, differences in sensitivity to probability specifications disappeared when the attention of forecasters was diverted from probability specifications (Experiment 3) or when the attention of experiencers was drawn toward probability specifications (Experiment 4). Finally, differences in sensitivity to probability specifications between forecasters and experiencers were diminished when the forecasted outcome was more affectively intense (Experiments 5 and 6).
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Papers by Joachim Vosgerau
are a novel form of social influence not due to normative or informational influence: participants were more likely to mimic observed choices when choosing in private than in public (experiment 1) and when stakes were low rather than high (experiment 2). Like other default effects, social default effects were greater for uncertain rather than certain choices (experiment 3) and were weaker when choices required
justification (experiment 4). Social default effects appear to occur automatically as they become stronger when cognitive resources are constrained by time pressure or load, and they can be sufficiently strong to induce preference reversals (experiments 5 and 6).
We demonstrated that habituation to a food item can occur even when its consumption is merely imagined. Five experiments showed that people who repeatedly imagined eating a food (such as cheese) many times subsequently consumed less of the imagined food than did people
who repeatedly imagined eating that food fewer times, imagined eating a different food (such as candy), or did not imagine eating a food. They did so because they desired to eat it less, not because they considered it less palatable. These results suggest that mental representation alone can engender habituation to a stimulus.
are a novel form of social influence not due to normative or informational influence: participants were more likely to mimic observed choices when choosing in private than in public (experiment 1) and when stakes were low rather than high (experiment 2). Like other default effects, social default effects were greater for uncertain rather than certain choices (experiment 3) and were weaker when choices required
justification (experiment 4). Social default effects appear to occur automatically as they become stronger when cognitive resources are constrained by time pressure or load, and they can be sufficiently strong to induce preference reversals (experiments 5 and 6).
We demonstrated that habituation to a food item can occur even when its consumption is merely imagined. Five experiments showed that people who repeatedly imagined eating a food (such as cheese) many times subsequently consumed less of the imagined food than did people
who repeatedly imagined eating that food fewer times, imagined eating a different food (such as candy), or did not imagine eating a food. They did so because they desired to eat it less, not because they considered it less palatable. These results suggest that mental representation alone can engender habituation to a stimulus.