Form vs. function: Emotional and behavioral consequences of making hedonic vs. functional tradeoffs

Chitturi, Ravi; Raghunathan, Raj

doi:10.1037/e621312012-086

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“…This tendency may lead decision-makers to underweight factors that are important to their consumption experience, but do not serve to fulfill their main objective. In a recent study, Chitturi, Raghunathan and Mahajan (2003) found that when presented with a more functional cell phone and a better-looking cell phone, consumers often choose the more functional model, even though they like the better-looking model more and believe that the better-looking model is more expensive. These intriguing findings are consistent with our results.…”

Section: Television Studymentioning

confidence: 96%

Lay rationalism and inconsistency between predicted experience and decision

Hsee

Zhang

et al. 2003

Behavioral Decision Making

131

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Decision-makers are sometimes depicted as impulsive and overly influenced by 'hot', affective factors. The present research suggests that decision-makers may be too 'cold' and overly focus on rationalistic attributes, such as economic values, quantitative specifications, and functions. In support of this proposition, we find a systematic inconsistency between predicted experience and decision. That is, people are more likely to favor a rationalistically-superior option when they make a decision than when they predict experience. We discuss how this work contributes to research on predicted and decision utilities; we also discuss when decision-makers overweight hot factors and when they overweight cold factors. Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.key words rationale; rationalism; rule; decision utility; experienced utility; predicted utility; consumption experience; inconsistency; preference reversal Traditional decision theorists assume that when choosing between options that have the same costs, decisionmakers analyze which option will deliver the highest expected outcome utility and choose that option. This is a consequentialist utility analysis approach. In reality, people rarely base their decisions strictly on this approach. In recent years, behavioral decision theorists have proposed that choices are often driven by decisionmakers' affect toward the choice options (e.g. Frederick, 2002;Hsee & Rottenstreich, 2002;Kahneman, Schkade, & Sunstein, 1998;Loewenstein, 1996;Loewenstein et al., 2001;Rottenstreich & Hsee, 2001;Slovic et al., 2002), and that such affect-driven decisions often lead to different choices than the consequentialist utility analysis would prescribe. For example, when choosing between two equally expensive computers, one with a faster processor and the other having a more appealing color, decision-makers may focus more on the color of the computers than warranted by a careful consequentialist utility analysis. It appears that decisions are not 'cold' enough.

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Section: Television Studymentioning

confidence: 96%