Marketing Papers

Document Type

Journal Article

Date of this Version

8-2012

Publication Source

Journal of Consumer Research

Volume

39

Issue

2

Start Page

360

Last Page

370

DOI

10.1086/662997

Abstract

Consumers often get unnecessarily mired in trivial decisions. Four studies support a metacognitive account for this painful phenomenon. Our central premise is that people use subjective experiences of difficulty while making a decision as a cue to how much further time and effort to spend. People generally associate important decisions with difficulty. Consequently, if a decision feels unexpectedly difficult, due to even incidental reasons, people may draw the reverse inference that it is also important, and consequently increase the amount of time and effort they expend. Ironically, this process is particularly likely for decisions that initially seemed unimportant because people expect them to be easier (whereas important decisions are expected to be difficult to begin with). Our studies not only demonstrate that unexpected difficulty causes people to get caught-up in unimportant decisions, but also to voluntarily seek more options, which can increase decision difficulty even further.

Copyright/Permission Statement

This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Journal of Consumer Research following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version: Berger, Jonah and Morgan Ward, (2012) “Decision Quicksand: How Trivial Choices Suck Us In,” Journal of Consumer Research, 39(2), 360-370. is available online at: http://jcr.oxfordjournals.org/content/39/2/360

Keywords

metacognition, consumer decision making

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Date Posted: 27 November 2017

This document has been peer reviewed.