Carolina Raffaelli

Although decisions often appear instantaneous, they can unfold dynamically with sequential processing of different types of information. Prior research finds that the order of considering risks versus rewards in uncertain decisions can influence the perceived value of a financial prospect. However, it remains unclear which information people might choose to learn first for themselves. Across eleven preregistered experiments (N = 6709 adult participants from in-person and online pools), we demonstrate that a majority of people prefer to consider risks before rewards. This preference is associated with individual sensitivity to economic ambiguity, but not a general need for structure. We further show that self-selected sequences are useful not only for predicting information seeking behavior in financial and marketplace contexts, but also for predicting downstream behavior in terms of choice process and choice outcomes.

Research involving brands has increased substantially in recent decades. Yet, there is no extensive and free dataset of consumer responses to branding stimuli. The present research develops and validates such a dataset, which we call the Brand Recognition and Attitude Norms Database (BRAND). BRAND is the most comprehensive set of methodologically transparent, freely-available, research-relevant consumer responses to branding stimuli, with measures of familiarity (awareness), liking (attitudes), and memory (recognition) of more than 500 top brands and their logos, spanning 32 industries. BRAND includes 5,356 primary datapoints aggregated from 244,400 raw datapoints collected from 2000 US-resident consumers in two years (i.e., 2020 and 2024). The data exhibit good reliability, face validity, external validity, robustness across samples and time, cross-validity, and discriminant validity. BRAND can be broadly useful for testing hypotheses involving responses to brands, and for selecting stimuli in any study involving brands or logos.

Marketers are increasingly focused on promoting greater product usage after purchase, which is beneficial to consumers and the environment if it reduces excessive purchases. Yet how do people subjectively evaluate the total usage of a product? In particular, when considering how happy they would be with total usage, do people weigh the expected duration and frequency of use equally, when the two dimensions make the same objective contribution to total usage and cost-per-use? This research finds that consumers are more sensitive and give greater weight to usage duration than usage frequency. We posit this asymmetry is partly driven by differences in the strength of consumers' prior expectations, due to differential associations with these dimensions. Specifically, people associate usage frequency with mainly user characteristics which have diffuse expectations, but associate usage duration with both user and product characteristics that give rise to more inherent baseline expectations. The presence of strong expectations in turn leads to consumers' greater sensitivity to usage duration than frequency. Eight studies provide evidence for this asymmetry and its underlying mechanisms. This research contributes to theories of subjective consumption utility from product usage and has significant managerial implications for how marketers and responsible consumption advocates promote high-usage products.

When an employer pays less than agreed, workers object. When the same employer takes the equivalent value in unpaid time, they are much more likely to stay silent. Under wage-rate contracts, working longer than agreed (a time deviation) and being paid less than agreed (a money deviation) impose the same economic loss, yet across six experiments (N = 2,722) people are far less likely to complain about the former. In a real paid task, workers raised a time deviation about half as often as a money deviation and were more likely to quit without comment. The asymmetry persists when lost time is tied to forgone pay and when the two deviations are compared side by side. People see a cash shortfall as a clear-cut wrong that nearly everyone would condemn, and the equivalent overrun as a gray area. The complaint gap is concentrated in cash: when compensation is paid in merchandise, a money deviation is tolerated about as much as a time deviation. Time deviations and in-kind shortfalls are judged less immoral, and complaining about them feels petty. The findings are consistent with a rule-based account in which a clear norm governs cash underpayment but not other departures from a contract. Workers may thus be systematically shortchanged on time, and employers may never hear about it.