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In the attraction effect, adding a dominated third option to a choice set of two options can alter preferences for the original two options and increase the dominating option's choice share. This can constitute a violation of the axioms of regularity and independence from irrelevant alternatives, which are core properties of any choice model in which the utility of each option is stable across choice sets. In the past 20 years, the attraction effect has driven the development of a set of influential models of multiattribute choice. However, two studies (Frederick et al., 2014;Yang & Lynn, 2014) involving a series of experiments with naturalistic choice options (e.g., snacks, movies) found no evidence for the attraction effect in choice contexts where alternatives are represented without objectively defined (e.g., numerical) attribute dimensions-a finding that would severely undermine its theoretical importance. Huber et al. ( 2014) criticized these studies, laying down a set of criteria that should be met by any experiment wishing to test for the attraction effect in real-world consumer choices. Based on these criteria, this article presents a carefully designed experiment testing the attraction effect with movies as naturalistic choice options. The results show a precisely zero attraction effect.

Significance Scholars have identified that inequality is a notable detriment to well-being. Status-signaling luxury expenditure is taken as a symptom of the reduced well-being associated with income inequality. Despite evidence that status-signaling luxury expenditure is higher in unequal regions, it remains unclear who is affected by inequality. We use payroll and daily spending data from 683,677 individuals in 32,008 precisely-defined workplace peer groups to show that workers at unequal firms spend significantly more on high-status, luxury goods. This is also seen in those with a high absolute salary, but low salary rank within their workplace. Compared to aggregated, regional data, financial data allow us to identify groups of workplace peers and offer precise measurements of status-signaling expenditure for each individual.

In the attraction effect, adding a dominated third option to a choice set of two options can alter preferences for the original two options and increase the dominating option's choice share. This can constitute a violation of the axioms of regularity and independence from irrelevant alternatives, which are core properties of any choice model in which the utility of each option is stable across choice sets. In the past 20 years, the attraction effect has driven the development of a set of influential models of multiattribute choice. However, two studies (Frederick et al., 2014;Yang & Lynn, 2014) involving a series of experiments with naturalistic choice options (e.g., snacks, movies) found no evidence for the attraction effect in choice contexts where alternatives are represented without objectively defined (e.g., numerical) attribute dimensions-a finding that would severely undermine its theoretical importance. Huber et al. ( 2014) criticized these studies, laying down a set of criteria that should be met by any experiment wishing to test for the attraction effect in real-world consumer choices. Based on these criteria, this article presents a carefully designed experiment testing the attraction effect with movies as naturalistic choice options. The results show a precisely zero attraction effect.