Eternal Quest for the Best

by Cassie Mogilner, Baba Shiv, Sheena S. Iyengar in JCR

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Positioning

There is a growing literature on how people subsequently experience and live with the decisions, i.e., the importance of commitment and satisfaction with the decision.

Traditional research focuses on either simultaneous presentation or objective strategy in sequence search instead of the commitment as an outcome and role of emotion.

Conceptual and Empirical

Experiment 1: Moderation effect of cognitive load

Formulation:

$$S=p + c + p*c$$

• S: satisfaction, p: presentation mode, c: cognitive load

• Cognitive load: remember a two-digit number vs. a 10-digit number

• Choice: 5 chocolate

• Manipulation check: three questions to measure hope

• Other measures: PANAS scale for mood, regret, fear, happiness, and excitement

• Satisfaction/commitment: Decision to switch to an unknown chocolate and expected quality of the unknown chocolate

Result:

• cognitive load impacted the level of hope

• presentation mode impacted the level of hope

• no other emotion effect is significant

• main effect of presentation_mode on satisfaction and commitment

• interaction effect with cognitive load on satisfaction and commitment

• main effect of cognitive load on commitment

Experiment 2: Direct manipulation of hope

Formulation :

$$s = p + h + p*h$$

• Hope: reflect on hope or a neutral topic

• Presentation mode: simultaneous or sequential rejection/acceptance (more restrictive compared to study 1)

Result:

• Sequential choice induces hope

• Interaction effect of hope and presentation mode on satisfaction

• Main effect of the presentation mode and interaction effect on commitment

Experiment 3: Hope as mediation, regret, and additional presentation modes

Result:

• Main effect of presentation mode on commitment

• Mediation effect of hope and regret

General Issues

• What are other contextual factors or individual difference variables that would increase choosers' tendencies to wonder about future possibilities?