Consumer Psyc 5

Question 1

Decision making tendencies: Maximising

Answer 1

pursuing the “best” option

Maximisation scale:
◦ “When I watch TV, I channel surf, often
scanning through the available options even
while attempting to watch one program”
(Schwartz et al., 2002)

Question 2

Decision making tendencies: Satisficing:

Answer 2

pursuing the “good enough”

option

Question 3

Who is happier with their decisions?

Answer 3

Schwartz et al. (2002, Study 2) asked participants
to recall a recent purchase
 Maximisers (compared to satisficers) were more
likely to report:
◦ taking longer to decide
◦ engaging in more:
 social comparison
 product comparison
 counterfactual thinking
◦ greater regret
◦ less happiness

Question 4

Who makes better decisions?

Answer 4

Iyengar et al. (2006) followed graduating
students who were on the job market
Maximising tendencies were associated with:
◦ Greater option fixation
◦ Greater reliance on information gathering from
external sources
◦ Improved job market performance
◦ Higher starting salary
◦ Greater negative affect with the job-search
process

Question 5

WRAP process (Heath & Heath, 2013)

Answer 5

Widen your options
Reality-test your assumptions
Attain distance before deciding
Prepare to be wrong

Question 6

Widen Your Options

Answer 6

Narrow framing
We tend to consider a single option, i.e.,
“whether or not” decisions
◦ E.g., “Should I buy the Audi or not?”
Instead, we should be considering multiple
options, by asking the right kinds of
questions
◦ E.g., “What’s the best way I could spend some
money to solve my transport problem?”

Generate other options by considering: 
  Opportunity cost
◦ Buy the Audi, or not buy the Audi and keep the $13,500 for other purchases
 The “vanishing options” test
 How others have solved the same problem
 More than one option at the same time
(multitrack)12

Adding just one more option can improve
decision making
Ensure that the options are real (not sham
options)

Question 7

Reality-Test Your Assumptions

Answer 7

Counteract the confirmation bias 
 Consider the opposite
◦ Devil’s advocates
◦ Ask disconfirming questions
 Take the inside view AND the outside view
◦ your specific situation
◦ how things generally unfold
 Run small experiments

Question 8

Attain Distance Before Deciding

Answer 8

Put emotion in perspective
Overcome short-term emotion
◦ 10/10/10 analysis (10 minutes, 10 months, 10
years from now)
◦ Consider an outsider’s perspective: what would
I tell my best friend to do in this situation
Beware of the status quo bias
Be true to your core values

Question 9

Prepare to be Wrong

Answer 9

Mitigate overconfidence
Anticipate a range of outcomes, good and bad
Set a tripwire to alert you to re-consider your
decision

Question 10

Summary

Answer 10

Maximising tendencies (compared to satisficing
tendencies) has been associated with objectively
better, but subjectively worse, outcomes
Sometimes, our decisions are influenced by biases
such as:
◦ narrow framing
◦ confirmation bias
◦ short-term emotion
◦ overconfidence
We can take steps to overcome these biases:
◦ Widen your options
◦ Reality-test your assumptions
◦ Attain distance before deciding
◦ Prepare to be wrong
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