Consumer Behavior News

April 18, 2024

Top Headlines

People Who Use Willpower Alone to Achieve Goals, Resist Temptation, Deemed More Trustworthy

Apr. 11, 2024 — People who use willpower to overcome temptations and achieve their goals are perceived as more trustworthy than those who use strategies that involve external incentives or deterrents -- such as ...

Can the Bias in Algorithms Help Us See Our Own?

Apr. 9, 2024 — New research shows that people recognize more of their biases in algorithms' decisions than they do in their own -- even when those decisions are the ...

People Make More Patient Decisions When Shown the Benefits First

Apr. 8, 2024 — Psychologists asked experiment participants to choose to receive $40 in seven days or $60 in 30 days, for example, under a variety of time constraints. The experiment showed that people tend to make more impulsive decisions if they think about time ...

New Technique Helps AI Tell When Humans Are Lying

Mar. 18, 2024 — Researchers have developed a new training tool to help artificial intelligence (AI) programs better account for the fact that humans don't always tell the truth when providing personal information. The new tool was developed for use in contexts when ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:47pm EDT

Nudging in a Virtual Supermarket for More Animal Welfare

Apr. 4, 2024 — It may be possible to change the purchasing behavior of consumers noticeably using some simple strategies. At least this is what a new study indicates. The researchers investigated the effect of ...

What Math Tells Us About Social Dilemmas

Feb. 26, 2024 — Human coexistence depends on cooperation. Individuals have different motivations and reasons to collaborate, resulting in social dilemmas, such as the well-known prisoner's dilemma. Scientists now ...

Unravelling the Genetic and Environmental Influences on Trust

Feb. 20, 2024 — Trust, a cornerstone of human interaction, has a significant genetic component, according to new ...

Combination of Group Competition and Repeated Interactions Promotes Cooperation

Feb. 22, 2024 — How did cooperative behavior prevail in human evolution? Researchers have challenged two prevailing explanations -- repeated interactions on the one ...

If Your TV Spoke to You, Would You Buy It? Study Finds People Spend More on Some 'Talking Products'

Feb. 20, 2024 — New research used brain scanning technology to understand the effect of advertisements that try to sell products with talking versions of themselves. ...

Older Adults Rely More on Trust in Decision Making. It Could Open Them Up to Scams

Feb. 13, 2024 — Elderly adults lose billions to financial scams by people they trust every year. New psychological research suggests this vulnerability could be ...

It's True, Happiness Doesn't Cost Much

Feb. 5, 2024 — Many Indigenous peoples and local communities around the world are leading very satisfying lives despite having very little money. This research shows that many societies with very low monetary ...

Influencers' Vulnerabilities: A Double-Edged Sword

Jan. 2, 2024 — New research finds that social media platforms and the metrics that reward content creators for revealing their innermost selves to fans open creators up to identity-based ...

Prone to Abandoning New Year's Resolutions? Research Suggests Blaming Money Worries Rather Than Being Time-Poor

Dec. 15, 2023 — People who abandon New Year's resolutions or other commitments can maintain the respect of their peers by blaming external factors such as lack of ...

What Makes Sustainable Consumption So Difficult

Nov. 30, 2023 — When it comes to self-discipline, psychological research traditionally focuses on individual responsibility. Some researchers believe this is too short-sighted. Self-discipline doesn't work without ...

Economic Wealth May Be Linked With Happiness in China -- If Inequality Is Low

Apr. 10, 2024 — A country's economic prosperity is linked with improved well-being in its residents, according to a new ...

Making the Future Too Bright: How Wishful Thinking Can Point Us in the Wrong Direction

Mar. 28, 2024 — Everyone indulges in wishful thinking now and again. But when is that most likely to happen and when could it actually be harmful? A new study demonstrates unequivocally that the greater the ...

New Study Reveals Unintended Ethical Faultline in Team-Based Reward Systems

Mar. 14, 2024 — Employers who have introduced team-based rewards systems to foster creativity, collaboration, productivity and sales may want to look again at a system that new research shows can create an ...

Why Politics Bring out the Worst in Us

Feb. 8, 2024 — In a survey involving a total of 2,472 respondents, researchers asked participants about nonpolitical and political moral behavior and nonpolitical and political moral tolerance. They found people ...

Women Farmers Quantitatively Linked to Better Community Well-Being

Jan. 17, 2024 — Having more women in agriculture is associated with greater community well-being, according to researchers. Their work suggests that women farmers approach their operations in ways that positively ...

Circular Take-Back Programs: Popular and Environmentally Responsible

Nov. 1, 2023 — Consumers exhibit a higher willingness to pay for products that are part of a circular take-back ...

Power of the Pictogram: Researcher Finds That Sorted Graphics Make Consumers Feel Optimistic

Oct. 31, 2023 — Sometimes, how the information is presented is as important as the information itself. Graphics, icons, and pictograms are increasingly popular methods of presenting information to consumers in ...

Givers to Crowdfunding Campaigns Enjoy Vicarious Success

Oct. 24, 2023 — Recent research has found that backers of crowdfunding projects participate, in part, because they enjoy a sense of indirect success and the feeling that they are contributing to something bigger ...

'I'd Rather Not Know': Why We Choose Ignorance

Oct. 19, 2023 — When given the choice to learn how their actions will affect someone else, 40% of people will choose ignorance, often in order to have an excuse to act selfishly, according to new ...

Scientists Explain How the Brain Encodes Lottery Values

Oct. 19, 2023 — Neuroscientists have uncovered a key brain area in rats that encodes the value of economic choices when faced with the uncertainty of a lottery. In this work, the causal role of frontal and parietal ...

Family Planning and the Fear of Missing out

Sep. 25, 2023 — Among regretful parents, fear of missing out is a key motivator for having ...

Modelling of Adhesive Technology Sheds New Light on Prehistoric Cognition

Sep. 25, 2023 — Studying prehistoric production processes of birch bark tar using computational modelling reveals what kinds of cognition were required for the materials produced by Neanderthal and early modern ...

Fruit Flies Offer Clues to How Brains Make Reward-Based Decisions

Sep. 22, 2023 — New research finds fruit flies make decisions based on their expectations about the likelihood of a reward and pinpoints the site in the fly brain where these value adjustments are made, enabling ...

Take the Money Now or Later? Financial Scarcity Doesn't Lead to Poor Decision Making

Sep. 14, 2023 — When people feel that their resources are scarce -- that they don't have enough money or time to meet their needs -- they often make decisions that favor short-term gains over long-term ...

Anxious People Use Less Suitable Section of Brain to Control Emotions

Aug. 17, 2023 — When choosing their behavior in socially difficult situations, anxious people use a less suitable section of the forebrain than people who are not ...

Study: People Expect Others to Mirror Their Own Selfishness, Generosity

Aug. 7, 2023 — A person's own behavior is the primary driver of how they treat others during brief, zero-sum-game competitions, researchers report. Generous people tend to reward generous behavior and selfish ...

Out With the Life Coach, in With the Chatbot

Aug. 7, 2023 — As we start to edge out of winter, improving our diet and boosting our exercise start to appear on our agenda. But, when it comes to encouraging a healthier lifestyle, it may surprise you that ...

Winery Experiences Affected by More Than What Is in Your Glass

July 19, 2023 — New research has determined that enjoying a tasting at a winery goes well beyond the sip. Scientists conducts research in the area of consumer behavior and branding with a special focus on luxury ...

Study Reveals Goal-Oriented Rewards as Key Factors in Decision-Making

July 18, 2023 — Groundbreaking research is shifting the understanding of human decision-making processes by highlighting the importance of goal-oriented ...

Controlled Cruelty: New Study Finds Aggression Can Arise from Successful Self-Control

July 13, 2023 — A new study has found that aggression is not always the product of poor self-control but, instead, often can be the product of successful self-control in order to inflict greater ...