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Earlier research has documented a preference for words with consonantal articulation patterns that move from the front to the back of the mouth (e.g., MENIKA) over words with reversely wandering consonantal articulation spots (e.g., KENIMA). The present experiments explored the temporal dynamics of the reading process in this in-out preference effect. In three experiments (total N = 344), we gradually reduced the presentation durations of inward and outward wandering words from 1000 ms down to 25 ms to approximate the minimum length of visual stimulus presentation required to trigger the effect. The in-out effect was reliably observed for exposure timings down to 50 ms, but vanished for 25 ms timings, which is line with previous evidence on phonological encoding. Thus, impressively, 50 ms of word presentation is sufficient to evoke the in-out effect. These findings suggest phonological activation to be a prerequisite and thus a driving mechanism of the in-out effect.

For financial decision-making, people trade off the expected value (return) and the variance (risk) of an option, preferring higher returns to lower ones and lower risks to higher ones. To make decision-makers indifferent between a risky and risk-free option, the expected value of the risky option must exceed the value of the risk-free option by a certain amount—the risk premium. Previous psychological research suggests that similar to risk aversion, people dislike inconsistency in an interaction partner’s behavior. In eight experiments (total N = 2,412) we pitted this inconsistency aversion against the expected returns from interacting with an inconsistent partner. We identified the additional expected return of interacting with an inconsistent partner that must be granted to make decision-makers prefer a more profitable, but inconsistent partner to a consistent, but less profitable one. We locate this inconsistency premium at around 31% of the expected value of the risk-free option.

While previous research has revealed several reasons why humans generally do good deeds , we explore a simple nudge that might get more of them done: the "maybe favor". We first show conceptually that, compared to a conventional favor, humans are more willing to grant a favor to a stranger on which they might eventually not have to make good. Furthermore, we conducted a series of fully incentivized experiments (total N = 3475) where participants could make actual donations to charity. Introducing a "maybe" into our donation proposals by randomly revoking some donations not only led to significant increases in donation rates but also increased the total amount of donations. That is, due to biased perceptions of costs and benefits combined with non-linear probability weighting, the donations we revoked due to the "maybe" were overcompensated by an increased overall willingness-to-donate.

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