No abstract

Consumer research has shown the downsides of offering consumers too much choice and is now starting to explore moderators of the effect of assortment size on consumer decisions. Building on previous studies, this research examines two side effects of tyranny of choice in the marketplace: high assortment entropy and high density of attribute values. We analyze two supermarkets-one offering small, the other large assortments-to examine how size, entropy, and density relate in the marketplace. We find that larger supermarket assortments come with higher density and higher entropy. Simulations of various choice strategies in these marketplace assortments reveal that making selections from large high-density and high-entropy

We consider the strongly anisotropic spin-1/2 XXZ model on the sawtooth-chain lattice with ferromagnetic longitudinal interaction J zz = ∆J and aniferromagnetic transversal interaction J xx = J yy = J > 0. At ∆ = −1/2 the lowest one-magnon excitation band is dispersionless (flat) leading to a massively degenerate set of ground states. Interestingly, this model admits a three-coloring representation of the ground-state manifold [H.J. Changlani et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 117202 (2018)]. We characterize this ground-state manifold and elaborate the low-temperature thermodynamics of the system. We illustrate the manifestation of the flat-band physics of the anisotropic model by comparison with two isotropic flat-band Heisenberg sawtooth chains. Our analytical consideration is complemented by exact diagonalization and finite-temperature Lanczos method calculations.

In their depictions of scandalized politicians, journalists frequently use news images that highlight the (alleged) isolation of politicians. To test how this way of portraying political actors affects a recipient’s attitudes and his/her guilt perception toward such a scandalized politician an experiment was conducted. All participants were exposed to the identical textual information. However, the visual information (degree of isolation) was systematically altered. A multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) showed that participants – exposed to a visual highlighting the isolation of the politician – evaluated the politician in a significantly more negative way and rated other recipients’ perceptions of the politician’s level of guilt to be higher.

The author interviewed 18 West Coast newspaper business editors and reporters. Nearly all agreed that business journalists need classes or training in business and economics to do their jobs well.