Intuitive Confidence and the Prominence Effect: When Consumer Choices are Sensitive to Matching Prices. Joseph P. Simmons Yale University

Transcription

1 1 Intuitive Confidence and the Prominence Effect: When Consumer Choices are Sensitive to Matching Prices Joseph P. Simmons Yale University Leif D. Nelson New York University Joseph P. Simmons is Assistant Professor of Marketing, Yale School of Management, 135 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT ( phone: ). Leif D. Nelson is Assistant Professor of Marketing, Stern School of Business, New York University, 40 West 4 th Street, New York, NY ( leifnelson@stern.nyu.edu; phone: ). The authors contributions to this article have been equated; author order is therefore irrelevant. The authors thank Ravi Dhar for commenting on a previous version of this manuscript. Portions of this research were presented at the 2006 Behavioral Decision Research in Management conference in Santa Monica, CA.

2 1 Intuitive Confidence and the Prominence Effect: When Consumer Choices are Sensitive to Matching Prices When choosing between equated alternatives, consumers choose the option that is superior on the most important dimension. In five studies, this prominence effect decreased as confidence in the prominent option s superiority (intuitive confidence) decreased. As intuitive confidence increased, deciding between equated alternatives became easy, and matching more poorly predicted choosing.

3 2 Imagine the following scenario. Due to a lapse in judgment, you find yourself signed up to participate in a laboratory study on consumer decision making. The experiment starts off by asking you to choose between two apartments that differ in quality. One apartment is clearly superior it dominates the other one and so you choose it. Next, the experimenter tells you that the inferior apartment costs $950 per month, and he asks you to set a price for the superior one that essentially renders you indifferent between the options. You oblige, and after setting a monthly price of $1500 for the superior apartment, he asks you to choose again in light of the two prices. Thus, you are forced to choose between two alternatives that you have equated in attractiveness. Now, ask yourself two questions. First, given this choice, which apartment would you select? Second, was this a hard decision? In trying to understand how people answer the first question, researchers have, seemingly quite sensibly, assumed that they already knew the answer to the second one. Choosing between equated alternatives must be a difficult thing to do because, well, the options are equated. Indeed, researchers have suggested that an operational definition of decision conflict is the degree of negative correlation between attributes (Luce 1998, p. 410). Thus, decisions are thought to be difficult to the extent that they require tradeoffs between attributes. Because equated alternatives represent choice options whose attributes are, for all practical purposes, perfectly negatively correlated, it seems sensible to conclude that choosing between equated alternatives arouses maximal choice conflict. Furthermore, with that as the premise, it seems reasonable to predict that consumers choices in this situation will resemble choices typically made under such conflict namely, consumers will rely on easy-to-justify tiebreaking strategies (Slovic 1975; Tversky, Sattath, and Slovic 1988) or, if possible, they will choose not to choose at all (Dhar 1997; Luce 1998; Tversky and Shafir 1992). In this paper, we propose an alternative account of how people choose between equated alternatives. The key differences between our account and existing theory are that (1) we propose that decision makers rely on metacognitive rather than justificatory reasons for choosing between equated alternatives, (2) we suggest that choosing between equated alternatives may actually feel easy, and (3) we reveal why it often feels easy, and we identify when it will feel difficult. With the research presented here, we hope to

4 3 increase researchers understanding of the causes and consequences of choice conflict, while explicating the conditions under which different methods of preference elicitation will diverge. From a practical standpoint, we hope to identify conditions under which willingness-to-pay responses will and will not predict choice shares. We begin by reviewing past research investigating choosing between equated alternatives. The Prominence Effect In the first investigation of choices between equated alternatives, Slovic (1975) presented people with two alternatives (e.g., Tire Brand A vs. Tire Brand B) that differed on two quantitative attribute dimensions (e.g., tread life vs. price). For one of the options an attribute value was missing, and participants filled it in with a number that made the options equally attractive to them (e.g., they filled in a missing price for Tire Brand A). Then, in a subsequent session, participants were asked to choose between the options that they had equated. Slovic found that, across many domains, people tended to choose the option that was superior on the most important, or prominent, dimension (Slovic 1975). For example, participants who equated the tire brands on the dimensions of price and tread life (the prominent dimension) subsequently chose the higher tread life tire over the cheaper tire 79% of the time. This finding is known as the prominence effect. 1 Building on Slovic s (1975) research, Tversky et al. (1988) found that, in general, people tend to more heavily weigh the prominent dimension in choice tasks than in matching/equating tasks (for replications and extensions, see Fischer, Carmon, Ariely, and Zauberman 1999; Fischer and Hawkins 1993; Selart 1996). In one oft-cited study, participants were presented with two transportation programs that varied on the dimensions of traffic casualties (the prominent dimension) and cost (Tversky, Sattath, and Slovic 1988, p. 373): 1 The prominence effect actually refers to two related but distinct effects in the literature. One is a between-subjects effect referring to the finding that people weigh the most important dimension more heavily in choice tasks than in matching tasks (Tversky et al. 1988). The other is a within-subjects effect referring to the finding that people tend to choose the option that is better on the most important dimension after they themselves have equated the options (Slovic 1975). In this manuscript, we refer mostly to this within-subjects prominence effect in our usage of this term. However, we do explore the between-subjects effect in the paper s final study, and we find that both effects are determined by similar processes.

5 4 Casualties Cost Program A 500 $55 million Program B 570 $12 million Program A cost more than Program B, but it also saved more lives. In one condition, participants were asked to choose between the two programs; in the other condition, they were asked to make the two programs equally attractive by filling in the missing cost value of Program A. When choosing between the options most participants (67%) selected Program A, the program with fewer casualties and a higher cost. However, in the matching condition, when the cost of Program A was unspecified, only 4% of respondents set an equating price as high as $55 million. Thus, the more prominent dimension (casualties) was given greater weight in choice than in matching. Researchers have offered a few different explanations for why people weigh the prominent dimension more heavily in choice than in matching (see Fischer, Carmon, Ariely, and Zauberman 1999 for a review). However, most treatments have focused on the vagaries of the matching process (e.g., Carmon and Simonson 1998; Fischer and Hawkins 1993; Frederick and Shafir 2006). Thus, despite some important distinctions, all of the explanations share the same assumption about how the choice process operates when people are confronted with equated alternatives. According to this assumption, people faced with equally-attractive alternatives choose the option that is superior on the prominent dimension (hereafter referred to as the prominent option) because choosing that option represents a choice strategy that is easy to implement and to justify (Bettman, Luce, and Payne 1998; Fischer, Carmon, Ariely, and Zauberman 1999; Selart 1996; Shafir, Simonson, and Tversky 1993; Slovic 1975, 1995; Tversky, Sattath, and Slovic 1988; see Table 1 for a summary of theorizing in support of this view). According to this view, choosing the prominent option is an explicit and sensible tiebreaking strategy that respondents employ when they are faced with such a difficult decision. As a result, we can expect consumers to choose the prominent option whenever they are faced with the choice between equated alternatives. This tiebreaking hypothesis has a lot of appeal, in no small part because it agrees with the widely accepted notion that people make difficult choices by using simplifying heuristics or choice strategies (e.g., Bettman et al. 1998; Frederick 2002; Kahneman and Frederick 2002; Tversky 1972; Tversky and

6 5 Shafir 1992). Indeed, there is considerable evidence demonstrating that people faced with difficult decisions tend to make choices based on reasons that are easy to justify (Shafir et al. 1993). Nevertheless, we contend that this hypothesis fails to capture how people make decisions between equated alternatives. Instead, we suggest that people faced with equated alternatives rely primarily on metacognitive rather than justificatory reasons for choosing between them. In particular, we argue that people often decide between equated options by choosing based on their feelings of confidence in the superiority of the prominent option. The more confidence people have in the prominent option s superiority, the more likely they are to choose it against an equated alternative. Thus, unlike the tiebreaking hypothesis, we predict that the prominence effect is not universal that it holds primarily when confidence in the superiority of the prominent option is high. In this light, we argue that the ubiquity of the prominence effect reflects a ubiquity in research design: Prominence effect researchers nearly always present participants with decisions that confer high confidence in the superiority of the prominent option. Indeed, most of this research has presented participants with 2 x 2 tables (like the one shown above) that feature two options that quantitatively differ along prominent and non-prominent attribute dimensions. In these situations, deciding which option is better on the prominent dimension is a simple matter of comparing the explicit prominent-option values, and the simplicity of this determination is likely to confer high confidence in the prominent option s superiority (e.g., I am confident that 570 casualties is worse than 500 casualties). By our account it is no surprise that the prominence effect is typically observed in such cases. Indeed, whenever consumers are highly confident that one option is better than another on the prominent dimension, we expect most consumers to choose that option. However, as we describe below, the malleability of the prominence effect becomes apparent when confidence in the prominent option s superiority is reduced. Intuitive Confidence and Choosing between Equated Alternatives People often answer difficult questions by first substituting and answering an easier one instead (Kahneman and Frederick 2002; Simmons and Nelson 2006). Consistent with this idea, our theory assumes that when choosing between equated alternatives, consumers attempt to answer a difficult

7 6 question (Given the options quality and price differences, should I choose option X?) by first answering an easier one that focuses on only one attribute dimension (Given the options quality difference, should I choose option X?). Thus, participants focus initially on the more important dimension (in this case, quality) at the expense of the less important dimension. The output of this initial assessment the prominent option serves as an initial hypothesis, or intuition, that they then assess in light of other attribute values that have not yet been considered. This subsequent assessment takes the form of a stayswitch decision: Consumers decide whether to stay with the intuitive, prominent option, or whether there is sufficient reason to switch away from that option and to choose the non-prominent alternative. Consistent with Simmons and Nelson (2006), we suggest that this stay-switch decision is determined in large part by intuitive confidence, which in this case refers to the consumer s subjective certainty that the prominent option is superior to its alternative. Consistent with a large body of research indicating that people rely on their feelings as information when making judgments and decisions (e.g., Schwarz 2004; Schwarz and Clore 1996), our account posits that intuitive confidence serves as metacognitive information that tells consumers whether they should stay with the prominent option in the face of an equated alternative. High intuitive confidence signals that this option should be chosen even in the face of an equated alternative. Low intuitive confidence, in contrast, signals that the non-intuitive alternative should receive more consideration, and that it should perhaps be chosen. Intuitive confidence, in turn, derives in large part from the ease with which people determine which option is better on the prominent dimension. The more easily people make this determination, the greater their intuitive confidence, and the more likely they will be to choose the prominent option in the face of an equated alternative (e.g., Epley and Norwick 2006; Kelley and Lindsay 1993). We refer to this prediction as the intuitive confidence hypothesis (Simmons and Nelson 2006), and it constitutes the first hypothesis of this paper: H 1 : The more confidence people have in the prominent option s superiority, the more likely they will be to choose it against an equated alternative.

8 7 Although rarely tested directly (for an exception, see Simmons and Nelson 2006, described below), the existing literature is consistent with the claim that intuitive confidence guides choices between equally attractive alternatives. At least three findings are relevant and supportive. First, Selart (1996) found that when options did not greatly differ along the prominent dimension, people were less likely to choose the prominent option over an equated alternative. Although Selart argued that this effect occurred because large prominent-attribute differences make tiebreaking choice strategies more salient than do small differences, it seems just as likely that larger differences inspire more confidence in the prominent option s superiority. Second, Heath and Tversky (1991) found that participants answering general knowledge questions preferred to bet on the accuracy of their own intuitive judgment rather than an equally-likely chance event when they were highly confident in their judgment, but not when they were less confident. For example, participants chose to bet on a judgment that they reportedly held with 90% confidence rather than a chance event that offered them a 90% chance of winning. However, this preference changed when subjective confidence was lower, as participants frequently chose to bet on the chance event when they were merely 55% confident in their own judgment and the chance event offered a 55% chance of victory. Heath and Tversky attributed this effect to people s desire to take credit for wins and to avoid taking blame for losses. In contrast, we believe that the effect may arise because high intuitive confidence encourages people to stay with their intuitions, whereas low confidence signals that the nonintuitive option (the chance event) should perhaps be chosen. Finally, Simmons and Nelson (2006) accumulated considerable support for the intuitive confidence hypothesis in their investigation of sporting event predictions. They showed that gamblers decisions between equated alternatives were based in large part on how confidently their intuitions favored one team over another. Specifically, they found that when one team was obviously better than another, participants believed that the superior team would win by a margin greater than their own predicted point differential. However, as it became more difficult to decide which team was better, participants were more likely to believe that the superior team would win by less than their predicted point differential.

9 8 Intuitive Confidence and Decision Conflict Because of the information that intuitive confidence provides to decision makers, we suggest that it determines not only choice outcomes but also whether a choice feels easy or difficult. Although common sense and past theorizing suggests that choosing between equated alternatives should always induce choice conflict, we propose here that the degree of choice conflict in this decision is actually determined by one s level of intuitive confidence. When it is easy to decide which option is superior, the high confidence that results provides an unambiguous prescription for how to choose in light of the equating prices (i.e., such high confidence tells consumers to stay with that initial option). In the face of such a straightforward prescription, we suggest that the final choice actually feels quite easy. However, when assessing the quality difference between two options feels difficult, the low confidence that results provides no obvious prescription for choosing against an equated, low-price alternative. Here a reliance on confidence tells consumers that the low-price alternative should be considered, and the choice is therefore difficult. This analysis agrees with Simmons and Nelson s (2006) intuitive betrayal hypothesis, which suggests that people are less satisfied with their choices when they betray their intuitions than when they choose consistently with them (for a conceptually related finding, see Kivetz and Simonson 2000). They found evidence for this effect even when intuitive options were objectively inferior, and decision confidence correlated negatively with decision accuracy under those circumstances. However, despite their strong evidence for the intuitive betrayal hypothesis, those researchers did not fully explain why intuitive options should be associated with greater decision satisfaction than equally attractive nonintuitive options. One possibility, in light of the preceding analysis, is that the effect arises because intuitive options are chosen only when intuitive confidence is high and when choosing feels easy, whereas nonintuitive options are chosen only when intuitive confidence is low and when choosing feels difficult. If people are more satisfied after making an easy choice than a difficult one precisely because they infer satisfaction from choice difficulty (i.e., Consumers feel satisfied with their choice because it was an easy one to make), then the fact that different options are chosen under different conditions of decision difficulty may explain

10 9 the intuitive betrayal effect. In tentative support of this notion, Simmons and Nelson did find that the intuitive betrayal effect was diminished after controlling for intuitive confidence, although the effect did persist in some cases. This discussion leads to our next hypothesis: H 2 : Consistent with Simmons and Nelson s (2006) intuitive betrayal hypothesis, people who choose the prominent option against an equated alternative will be more satisfied with their final choice than people who choose the non-prominent option. In addition, this effect should be at least partially mediated by intuitive confidence. Other hypotheses deriving from this analysis will be presented later in the paper. Research Overview In this paper, we report five studies exploring the effects of intuitive confidence on consumers decisions between equated alternatives. In most of these studies, participants assess two options on the prominent dimension of quality, equate the options on price, and then choose between the equated options. These studies go beyond previous research by revealing the choice processes underlying the prominence effect and by demonstrating that the prominence effect is not universal (Studies 1-3). In a further departure from previous research, we investigate whether intuitive confidence affects how much conflict people experience when choosing between equated alternatives, and we show that choosing between equated alternatives does not often feel difficult (Study 4). Finally, in Study 5, we explore for the first time whether these effects hold in a between-subjects investigation whether consumers willingness-to-pay match responses are more consistent with their choices when intuitive confidence is low than when it is high. Study 1a In Study 1a, we presented participants with a choice between two apartments that differed on the prominent dimension of quality (Carmon and Simonson 1998). In the Easy Choice condition, one apartment dominated the other it was superior on one dimension and identical on five other dimensions. In the Difficult Choice condition, each apartment was better on one feature (landlord quality), but worse

11 10 on another (available space). We expected the necessary tradeoff in the Difficult Choice condition to make choosing feel more difficult, and to reduce participants confidence in their preferred apartment. After choosing which apartment they preferred, participants indicated how much more money they would be willing to pay for their preference. Participants then imagined that their preferred apartment costs exactly that much more than the apartment they did not prefer, and they chose between the apartments given the equating price difference. Finally, participants indicated how satisfied they were with their final choice. Our hypotheses in this study, and in the subsequent studies, were consistent with our analysis of intuitive confidence and intuitive betrayal. We expected the prominence effect to be stronger in the Easy Choice condition than in the Difficult Choice condition (H 1 ). In addition, we expected participants to be more satisfied with their choices when they chose the prominent option than when they did not, and that this effect would be mediated by intuitive confidence (H 2 ). Method Participants. One hundred undergraduates participated in this experiment in exchange for partial course credit. We eliminated four participants who did not fully complete the task, leaving us with data from 96 participants in the analyses described below. Design. This study employed a simple two-group between-subjects design (Easy Choice vs. Difficult Choice). Procedure. Participants completed a one-page questionnaire at the beginning of a larger packet. Participants first imagined that they were considering renting an apartment and they identified which of two apartments listed on the page they would prefer to rent. In both conditions, the apartments were listed as Apartment A and Apartment B, and they were described along six attribute dimensions (neighborhood quality, landlord quality, quality of fixtures, amount of space, quality of neighbors, and distance from school). In the Easy Choice condition, Apartments A and B differed only on the attribute of landlord quality: Apartment B had a responsible landlord while Apartment A had an irresponsible landlord. In the Difficult Choice condition, the two apartments differed on two attributes: Apartment B had an

12 11 irresponsible landlord and a large space, while Apartment A had a responsible landlord and a small space. After choosing which apartment they preferred, participants were asked to indicate on a 9-point scale how confident they were that their choice was the right one (1 = not at all confident; 9 = very confident). We expected the majority of participants in both conditions to prefer Apartment B, and that this choice would be associated with less confidence in the Difficult Choice condition. Next, participants indicated how much more money per month they would be willing to spend for the apartment they preferred. Then, they were asked to imagine that the apartment that you did not select had a rent that was less than the preferred apartment by exactly the amount you just specified. Given the new difference in price, which apartment would you select? After making their selection, participants were asked two questions designed to assess decision satisfaction. The first question asked participants how satisfied they were with their choice. The second question asked participants to indicate how confident they were that their choice was the right one. Both questions were answered on 9-point scales anchored with 1 = not at all and 9 = very. The two decision satisfaction questions were very highly correlated (r =.81), and so we averaged them to create a single measure. Figure 1 presents a general outline of the methods employed in Studies 1-3. Results and Discussion Preliminary analyses confirmed the success of the manipulation. As shown in Table 2, participants in the Easy Choice condition were more likely to initially prefer Apartment B, and more confident in their initial preference (p s <.001). The effect of condition on confidence also held when selecting only participants who initially preferred Apartment B, as did every other effect that emerged in this study. Because this initial-choice variable had no effect on any of the results, we collapsed across this variable in the analyses described below. Although participants were more confident in their initial preference in the Easy Choice condition than in the Difficult Choice condition, the top half of Table 2 shows that participants were willing to pay significantly more for their preference in the Difficult Choice condition than in the Easy Choice condition. This presumably occurred because participants in the Difficult Choice condition tended to

13 12 choose based on an attribute that is traditionally tied to apartment prices (apartment size), whereas those in the Easy Choice condition chose based on an attribute that is not typically tied to price differences (landlord quality). Thus, although participants confidence ratings indicated a stronger, more certain initial preference in the Easy Choice condition, their pricings indicated a stronger initial preference in the Difficult Choice condition. This is an advantage of the current study because any effects of confidence on choosing between equated alternatives must be attributed to the confidence advantage that participants had in the Easy Choice condition, rather than to an overall strength-of-preference advantage, which is not evident in the pricings. Nevertheless, this conditional difference could be problematic if one assumes that participants will be more likely to choose against the prominent option when it is more highly priced. To get around this potential problem, we controlled for pricings in many of the analyses reported below. In addition, we eliminated or reversed this confound in subsequent studies. According to H 1, participants in the Easy Choice condition should be more likely than participants in the Difficult Choice condition to choose the prominent option over an equally attractive alternative. As shown in Table 2, this prediction was confirmed. In the Easy Choice condition 84.4% of participants stayed with their initial preference and chose the prominent option against an equated alternative. In contrast, only 54.9% of participants in the Difficult Choice condition made this choice. The prominence effect was significant in the Easy Choice condition, χ 2 (1, N = 45) = 21.36, p < 10-5, but not in the Difficult Choice condition, χ 2 (1, N = 51) = 0.49, p =.48. In a logistic regression, the effect of condition on choice was significant even after controlling for matching prices. Mediational analyses confirmed that intuitive confidence was responsible for the effect of condition on choice. Logistically regressing choice on (1) condition and (2) the measure of intuitive confidence produced only a significant effect of the intuitive confidence measure (p =.001); the effect of condition was non-significant (p =.32). Moreover, a Sobel test indicated that the inclusion of the intuitive confidence measure significantly reduced the effect of condition on prominent-option choosing, z = 2.89, p <.004. These results did not differ when controlling for the magnitude of equating prices.

14 13 A t-test analyzing the effects of prominent-option choosing on decision satisfaction revealed strong support for H 2 as well. Participants who chose the prominent option were much more satisfied with their choice (M = 6.52) than were participants who chose the non-prominent option (M = 5.13), t(93) = 3.90, p <.001. A 2-way Condition x Choice ANOVA revealed that this effect was of a similar magnitude in both choice conditions (i.e., the interaction was nonsignificant: p =.375). Also, as expected, a linear regression revealed that the effect of choice on decision satisfaction reduced to marginal significance (p =.053) when controlling for intuitive confidence, which significantly predicted decision satisfaction (p =.002). A Sobel test indicated that this reduction was highly significant, z = 2.78, p <.006. This suggests that the effect of choice on decision satisfaction was at least partially attributable to the effect of intuitive confidence on prominent-option choosing. The results of this study support the notion that increased intuitive confidence increases prominent-option choosing and decision satisfaction. Study 1b In Study 1a, participants choosing between equated alternatives were less likely to choose the highquality prominent option when the initial quality assessment was difficult and associated with low confidence than when it was easy and associated with high confidence. Indeed, the prominence effect was obtained only in the Easy Choice condition. In Study 1b, we sought to demonstrate that this effect would still emerge when participants were not asked to explicitly choose between the two options on the dimension of quality or to indicate their confidence in their initial choice before choosing between the equated alternatives. In addition, we sought to replicate Study 1a when the method of equating the alternatives required participants to set prices for the options rather than indicating an equating price difference. Method Participants. Two hundred and twenty-eight undergraduates participated in exchange for a chance to win a $50 prize. Design. This study featured a simple two-group design identical to the design of Study 1a (i.e., Easy Choice condition vs. Difficult Choice condition).

15 14 Procedure. As part of a web survey, participants completed a one-page questionnaire that began by asking them to consider two apartments Apartment X and Apartment Y. The features of the apartments were identical to Study 1a, as were the easy vs. difficult choice manipulations. Apartment X was identical to Apartment A in Study 1a, while Apartment Y was identical to Study 1a s Apartment B. Below the listing of the apartments features, participants were asked to Assume that Apartment X costs $1350 per month. What monthly rent would make Apartment Y equally attractive to Apartment X? Thus, unlike Study 1a, participants did not first choose between the options or rate their confidence in this choice before matching them on price. Further, the matching task asked participants to indicate an exact price for Apartment Y rather than a price differential. After setting a price for Apartment Y, participants were asked to imagine that Apartment Y was renting for exactly the amount they had just specified, and to then choose between the apartments. After making their choice, participants indicated their satisfaction with that choice using the same two items and scales as in Study 1a. These two items were once again very highly correlated (r =.71), and so we averaged them to create a single measure of decision satisfaction. Results and Discussion Despite the methodological differences between Studies 1a and 1b, the bottom half of Table 2 reveals that Study 1b replicated the findings of Study 1a. Consistent with H 1, 77.6% of participants in the Easy Choice condition stayed with their initial preference and chose the prominent option against an equated alternative. In contrast, only 46.4% of participants in the Difficult Choice condition stayed with their initial choice. Thus, the prominence effect held in the Easy Choice condition, χ 2 (1, N = 116) = 35.31, p < 10-8, but not in the Difficult Choice condition, χ 2 (1, N = 112) = 0.57, p = 45. In a logistic regression, the effect of condition on prominent-option choosing remained significant after controlling for matching prices (p <.0001), which were once again greater in the Difficult Choice than Easy Choice condition, t(226) = 3.07, p =.002. In support of H 2, participants were vastly more satisfied with their final choice when they chose in line with their initial, quality-based preference (M = 6.29) than when switching to the better-priced option

16 15 (M = 5.28), t(226) = 4.04, p < Somewhat surprisingly, however, a 2-way Condition x Choice ANOVA revealed a significant Choice X Condition interaction, F(1, 224) = 14.23, p <.001. The effect of choice on decision satisfaction was evident only in the Easy Choice condition, but not in the Difficult Choice condition. This result is inconsistent with Study 1a, and with the results of similar studies (Simmons and Nelson 2006). Thus, we assume it is anomalous, and we do not discuss it further. Studies 1a and 1b provided strong support for all three hypotheses. Participants in the Easy Choice condition were more confident in their initial quality-based preference than participants in the Difficult Choice condition. As a result, they were much more likely to select the same high-quality option when choosing against an equated alternative, and they were more satisfied with their final choice. Further, Study 1b demonstrated that these effects emerged even when participants were not required to explicitly choose between the options before pricing them, even when they did not rate how confident they were in their initial preference, and even when the matching task required them to set specific prices for one of the apartments rather than indicating a price differential. Thus, we can be confident that the validity of our hypotheses is not dependent on any of these methodological factors. Study 2 The results of Study 1 suggest that intuitive confidence plays an important role in the production of the prominence effect. Indeed, when intuitive confidence was decreased by making the quality difference between the options more difficult to discern, the prominence effect disappeared an effect that was mediated by intuitive confidence in the only study that measured it (Study 1a). In Study 2, we attempted to extend these findings to a different manipulation of intuitive confidence, while ruling out the relevance of two confounds of Study 1: (1) the fact that the choice options had different values on the critical attributes across the two conditions (i.e., landlord quality was high for the prominent option in the Easy Condition, but lower for the most prevalent prominent option in the Difficult Choice condition), and (2) the fact that the confidence manipulation required a tradeoff between quality attributes in one condition but not the other. In Study 2, we avoided these confounds by manipulating intuitive confidence in a way that did not alter the choice options themselves.

17 16 All participants in Study 2 were first presented with a simple choice between two existing car brands Nissan vs. Mazda. Unlike Studies 1a and 1b, the options were presented without attributes so that the initial choice task required a simple declaration of existing preferences. After they indicated their preference we manipulated intuitive confidence. We induced high intuitive confidence by asking approximately half of the participants to list two reasons for their preference. The remaining participants were asked to list 10 reasons. In these tasks, people typically find it relatively easy to list two reasons for their preferences, and that feeling of ease confers them with high confidence in their choices. However, people find it relatively difficult to list 10 reasons, and that feeling of difficulty confers a lack of confidence in their choices. Thus, asking participants to list ten reasons for a choice can decrease confidence in that choice. This manipulation is based on the influential work of Schwarz, Bless, Strack, Klumpp, Rittenauer-Schatka, and Simons (1991), who showed that people rely on the ease vs. difficulty of generating reasons in order to infer aspects of their own personalities, among other things (see Schwarz 2004, for a review). If the List 2 Reasons vs. List 10 Reasons manipulation results in the same effects observed in Studies 1a and 1b, then we can be confident that those results were attributable not to condition differences in the choice stimuli, but to the effects of intuitive confidence on choosing between equated alternatives. Method Participants. One hundred and twenty-eight undergraduates participated in this study in exchange for course credit. Of these, six participants were removed for indicating equating price differences equal to zero, and three were removed for failing to complete the task. This left data from 119 participants for the final analyses. Design. This study employed a simple two-group between-subjects design (List 2 Reasons vs. List 10 Reasons). Procedure. As part of a laboratory session, participants completed a one-page questionnaire that began by asking them to indicate which of two brands of cars they preferred, Mazda or Nissan. After indicating their preference, participants were either asked to list two reasons for their preference (the List

18 17 2 Reasons condition) or to list ten reasons for their preference (the List 10 Reasons condition). Next, participants were asked to indicate their preference on a 10-point scale where 1 = Strongly prefer the Mazda, 5 = Slightly prefer the Mazda, 6 = Slightly prefer the Nissan, and 10 = Strongly prefer the Nissan. They then indicated how certain they were in their preference on a 10-point scale ranging from 1 = Not at all certain to 10 = Completely certain. Next, participants were asked to indicate how much more they would be willing to spend for the car they preferred. They were then asked to imagine that your preferred car costs exactly that much more than your unpreferred car. At these new prices, which car would you select? Express your preference in light of this additional cost. Participants then expressed their preference on the same 10-point preference scale that they had used previously. Finally, participants indicated how certain they were in this final preference and how satisfied they were with their purchase decision. These two items were highly correlated (r =.79), and so we averaged them to create a composite measure of decision satisfaction. Results and Discussion Preliminary analyses confirmed the success of the manipulation. As shown in Table 3, participants in the List 2 Reasons condition were more confident in their initial preference than were participants in the List 10 Reasons condition, t(117) = 3.15, p =.002. In order to investigate the effects of our manipulation on choices, we computed the percentage of participants who stayed with vs. switched away from their initial preference in the face of equating prices. In support of H 1, we found that participants in the List 2 Reasons condition were significantly more likely to stay with their initial preference when choosing against an equated alternative (82.8%) than were participants in the List 10 Reasons condition (57.4%), χ 2 (1, N = 119) = 9.08, p <.003. The prominence effect was significant in the List 2 Reasons condition, χ 2 (1, N = 58) = 24.90, p < 10-6, but not in the List 10 Reasons condition, χ 2 (1, N = 61) = 1.33, p <.25. This difference arose despite the lack of condition differences in which option was initially preferred (p =.86) and in the magnitude of the equating prices (p =.45). Moreover, this difference also emerged when we treated preference change as a continuous variable rather than as a dichotomous choice variable: In the face of equating prices, participants in the

19 18 List 2 reasons condition altered their preference more toward the low-quality, low-price option than did participants in the List 10 Reasons condition, t(117) = 2.44, p <.02, an effect that held when controlling for the magnitude of equating prices (p <.03). The relevant means are displayed in Table 3. In further support of H 1, mediational analyses suggest that intuitive confidence was responsible for the effect of listing reasons on choice. Logistically regressing choice on (1) condition and (2) the measure of intuitive confidence produced only a significant positive relation between the intuitive confidence measure and prominent-option choosing (p <.001); the effect of condition was only marginally significant (p =.082). Moreover, a Sobel test showed that the inclusion of the intuitive confidence measure reduced the effect of condition on prominent-option choosing, z = 2.57, p =.01. These results did not differ when controlling for the magnitude of equating prices. This study also produced the expected effects of choice and condition on decision satisfaction. Consistent with H 2, participants were much more satisfied with their final decisions when they stayed with their initial preference than when they switched to the alternative, t(117) = 3.70, p <.001. A 2-way Condition x Choice ANOVA revealed that this effect was of a similar magnitude in both choice conditions (i.e., the interaction was nonsignificant: p =.89). Moreover, when we regressed decision satisfaction on both choice (stay vs. switch) and intuitive confidence, the effect of choice became nonsignificant (p <.40) and was significantly reduced, z = 5.35, p < The effect of intuitive confidence on decision satisfaction was highly significant, p < Study 2 produced evidence consistent with our hypotheses by manipulating confidence in a way that did not alter the choice options themselves. These findings suggest that the results of Studies 1a and 1b were not attributable to the confounds discussed earlier, but rather to the hypothesized effects of intuitive confidence on prominent-option choosing. People who are confident in the quality superiority of their chosen option are more likely to choose that option again in the face of an equated alternative, and they are also more satisfied with their final decision. This occurs even when confidence is decreased by searching for too many reasons for one s preference. Study 3

20 19 Study 3 sought to test our hypotheses by relying on a different manipulation of intuitive confidence that once again failed to alter the relevant aspects of the decision context the font of the questionnaire. Researchers have demonstrated that people often infer their own level of confidence in answers to questions based on the ease with which they answer those questions (Epley and Norwick 2006; Kelley and Lindsay 1993). When they feel that answering a question is difficult, they assume that they have low confidence in their answer. When they feel that answering it is easy, they assume that they have high confidence in their answer. As a result, manipulations that decrease the ease of answering a question can without changing decision accuracy decrease the confidence people have in their answer. One such manipulation is font. Texts that appear in bad font are more difficult to read, and people often infer from this difficulty that they are less confident in answers given to questions written in bad font even though bad fonts do not affect answer quality or accuracy (Novemsky, Dhar, Schwarz, and Simonson, forthcoming; Simmons and Nelson, 2006). Essentially, people misattribute reading difficulty to question difficulty, and they consequently lack confidence in their answers to questions written in a bad font. However, if the source of the uncertainty is clarified with a warning that the font may disrupt their processing, people do accurately attribute processing difficulty to the poor font, and their inferences of confidence are therefore unaffected by the font (Novemsky et al., forthcoming). In Study 3, participants made an easy choice between two apartments one apartment dominated the other on a questionnaire that was printed in either easy-to-read font or difficult-to-read font. In addition, within the Bad Font condition, participants were either warned about the bad font or not. As in Studies 1a and 1b, participants matched the apartments on price after choosing between them, chose again, and then indicated how satisfied they were with their final decision. We expected the difficult-to-read font to decrease participants confidence in their preference, but only when they were not warned about the font. As a result, we expected decreased prominent-option choosing, and therefore decreased decision satisfaction, in the Bad Font Unwarned condition than in the Good Font or Bad Font Warned conditions. Method

21 20 Participants. Sixty-four undergraduates participated in this study in exchange for course credit. Two participants were eliminated for indicating equating price differences equal to zero, thus leaving 62 participants for the final analyses. Design. This study employed a three-group between-subjects design (Good Font vs. Bad Font Warned vs. Bad Font Unwarned). Procedure. As part of a larger experimental session, participants completed a one-page questionnaire that was identical in content to the Easy Choice condition of Study 1a. Participants chose between two apartments Apartment A vs. Apartment B in a situation where Apartment B dominated Apartment A. They then indicated how confident they were in this choice before equating the options by setting a price differential and then choosing again between the equated options. They completed the questionnaire by indicating how satisfied they were with their final decision. The only difference between the procedures of Study 1a s Easy Choice condition and Study 3 was in the critical manipulation employed in Study 3, which involved presenting the questionnaire in different fonts. In the Good Font condition, the questionnaire was printed in easy-to-read Times New Roman 12- point font. In the two Bad Font conditions, the questionnaire was printed in difficult-to-read 10-point Haettenschweiler italicized font. Participants in the Bad Font Unwarned condition received no warning about the font, whereas participants in the Bad Font Warned condition were warned at the top of the questionnaire in easy-to-read 13-point Century Gothic bold italicized font with an apology that read: Sorry about the font. We are having trouble with the software. 2 Results and Discussion The manipulation significantly affected intuitive confidence, F(2, 59) = 3.78, p <.03. As predicted, participants in the Bad Font Unwarned condition were less confident in the superiority of the prominent option than those in the Good Font and Bad Font Warned conditions, t(59) = 2.67, p =.01. In addition, 2 The astute reader will realize that this should have made little sense to the participants, because the apology for the bad font was actually printed in good font. Nevertheless, participants indicated no suspicion about this warning, adding yet another example to the catalog of demonstrations that people are often mindless in their intake of information (e.g., Langer, Blank, and Chanowitz 1978).

22 21 the font manipulation affected confidence without affecting matching prices, F(2, 59) = 1.73, p <.19. See Table 4 for the relevant means and choice percentages. In support of H 1, participants in the Bad Font Unwarned condition were less likely to choose the prominent option in the face of an equated alternative than were participants in either the Good Font condition, χ 2 (1, N = 42) = 3.86, p <.05, or the Bad Font Warned condition, χ 2 (1, N = 41) = 5.03, p <.03. Further, the prominence effect was significant in the Good Font, χ 2 (1, N = 21) = 8.05, p <.005, and Bad Font Warned conditions, χ 2 (1, N = 20) = 9.80, p <.002, but not in the Bad Font Unwarned condition, χ 2 (1, N = 21) = 0.05, p =.83. As Table 4 reveals, the ordering of the choice percentages across the three conditions matched the ordering of confidence across the conditions. Further, the correlation between intuitive confidence and prominent-option choosing was once again strongly positive and highly significant, r(60) =.47, p <.001, and this effect held when controlling for matching prices, r(59) =.54, p <.001. Mediational analyses showed that controlling for intuitive confidence reduced the effect of font on prominent-option choosing, z = 1.94, p <.053, a result that became a little stronger (p <.043) after controlling for matching prices. All in all, then, these results provide strong support for the hypothesized effects of intuitive confidence on choice. Supporting H 2, participants were once again much more satisfied with their decision when they stayed with the prominent option in the face of equating prices than when they switched to the non-prominent option, t(60) = 5.88, p < Once again, this effect of choice on decision satisfaction was significantly reduced when controlling for intuitive confidence, z = 3.26, p <.002, though both variables remained significant predictors of satisfaction (p s <.001). Consistent with Simmons and Nelson (2006) and with Study 1a, this result suggests that the intuitive betrayal effect is determined in part but not entirely by intuitive confidence. In sum, the results of Study 3 found evidence for both hypotheses. Even when intuitive confidence is manipulated by altering the font of the questionnaire (and nothing else), increased confidence is associated with increased prominent-option choosing and increased decision satisfaction. The fact that our hypotheses were most strongly evident in the differences between the two Bad Font conditions rules out