Focusing on what you own: Biased information uptake due to ownership
Journal Title: Judgment and Decision Making - Year 2012, Vol 7, Issue 3
Abstract
The endowment effect has been debated for over 30 years. Recent research suggests that differential focus of attention might play a role in shaping preferences. In two studies we investigated the role of biased attention in the emergence of endowment effects. We thereby derive predictions from an extended version of evidence accumulation models by additionally assuming a bias in attentional allocation based on one’s endowment status. We test these predictions against an alternative account in which the endowment effect is the result of initial anchoring and adjustment differences (Sequential Value Matching model; Johnson & Busemeyer, 2005). In both studies we add deliberation time constraints to a standard Willingness-to-Accept/Willingness-to-Pay paradigm and consistently find that the endowment effect grows as deliberation time increases. In Study 2 we additionally use eye tracking and find that buyers focus more on value decreasing attributes than sellers (and vice versa for value increasing attributes). This shift in attention plays a pivotal role in the construction of value and partially mediates the endowment effect.
Authors and Affiliations
Nathaniel J. S. Ashby, Stephan Dickert and Andreas Glöckner
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP677889
- DOI -
- Views 146
- Downloads 0
Valuing bets and hedges: Implications for the construct of risk preference
Risk attitudes implied by valuations of risk-increasing assets depart markedly from those implied by valuations of risk-reducing assets. For instance, many are unwilling to pay the expected value for a risky asset or for...
Judging competing theoretical accounts by their empirical content and parsimony: Reply to Myrseth and Wollbrant (2015)
Myrseth and Wollbrant (2015) offer an alternative theoretical explanation for our finding that defection entails more cognitive conflict than cooperation (Kieslich & Hilbig, 2014). Although we completely agree that diffe...
How bookies make your money
UK bookies (bookmakers) herd geographically in less-affluent areas. The present work shows that UK bookies also herd with the special bets that they advertise to consumers, both in their shop window advertising and on TV...
The Regret and Disappointment Scale: An instrument for assessing regret and disappointment in decision making
The present article investigates the effectiveness of methods traditionally used to distinguish between the emotions of regret and disappointment and presents a new method — the Regret and Disappointment Scale (RDS) — fo...
Selective information sampling: Cognitive coherence in evaluation of a novel item
This study investigates the amount and valence of information selected during single item evaluation. One hundred and thirty-five participants evaluated a cell phone by reading hypothetical customers reports. Some partic...