Pain and Preferences: The Impact of Other's Decisional Conflict on Our Own Preferences

This paper explores a straightforward yet important and unexamined question: how does observing someone else experiencing emotional conflict over a decision impact our own preferences? Would we be more likely to choose similarly or differently after observing the pain and agony experienced by anothe...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Schrift, Rom Y, Amar, Moty
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Brand preferences
Cialdini, Robert
Consumer behavior
Pain
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:This paper explores a straightforward yet important and unexamined question: how does observing someone else experiencing emotional conflict over a decision impact our own preferences? Would we be more likely to choose similarly or differently after observing the pain and agony experienced by another? Indeed, understanding how other peoples' choices influence our own is important in many domains and contexts. A vast body of literature had studies social influence and how the behavior of others impacts our own actions and attitudes (see Cialdini & Goldstein 2004 for a review). In this paper we add to the social influence literature by demonstrating that observers' preferences are not only influenced by an actor's ultimate choice, but also by the process with which this choice is made. In particular, we hypothesize that observing others' choice conflict- a central and often conspicuous element of the decision making process-increases the likelihood that the observer's preferences will converge to those of the actor's. Six studies document this effect (two of which involve real and consequential choices), validate the suggested mechanism and rule out rival accounts.
ISSN:0098-9258