The phenomenon that prior gains may increase people’s willingness toaccept risky gambles is named as the house money effect (Thalerand Johnson, 1990). Many studies have shown that the “house moneyeffect” is a robust phenomenon but few scholars explain the mechanism ofit well. We suppose the reason for the house money effect is that the ante(starting amount) is from the prior gambling profits, and its potential loss hasrelatively low psychological value. To test this hypothesis, we designed aseries of studies using two-stage gambles. A total of 915 university studentsparticipated. In Study 1, in addition to a standard condition (which replicatedthe basic effect), we test how people respond to “prospect theory, withmemory” frame, a “concreteness” frame and“quasi-hedonic” editing. None of these types of frames result in asignificant house money effect. In Study 2, we certify the reference point shiftto 100 Yuan in the second-stage gamble, thus the house money effect can beregarded as the absence of loss aversion; Study 3, consisting of 3sub-experiments, indicated that gambling profits and normal income will opendifferent mental accounts which are spent quite differently. The pain of losing100 Yuan allowance is more serious than that of losing 100 Yuan gambling wins.People will typically reject the gamble of 50/50 chance to gain or lose 100 Yuanif the ante is from the “normal income account”, but accept if theante is from the “windfall account”. The results of the series ofexperiments prove the accuracy of our hypothesis mostly.

Consumers make trade-offs when they choose between utilitarian and hedonic products. The former is practical, instrumental, and functional, whereas the latter is sensational and experiential. Prior research shows that people feel more guilt when they contemplate on engaging in hedonic consumption than engaging in utilitarian consumption. The current research investigates the effect of decision targets (i.e., making decisions for oneself or another person) on preferences for utilitarian and hedonic products. Consumers deciding for others were more likely to choose hedonic over utilitarian options than were consumers deciding for themselves. Utilitarian/hedonic was manipulated either through attributes of similar products (Study 1) or through different products (Study 2). Anticipatory guilt accounted for such self–other difference (Study 2). In particular, anticipatory guilt triggered by contemplating hedonic consumption is less for consumers who made choices for others than for those who made choices for themselves. In sum, preferences for utilitarian and hedonic products depend on decision targets.

Three experiments investigated individuals’ preferences and affective reactions to negative life experiences. Participants had a more intense negative affective reaction when they were exposed to a highly negative life experience than when they were exposed to two negative events: a highly negative and a mildly negative life event. Participants also chose the situation containing two versus one negative event. Thus, “more negative events were better” when the events had different affective intensities. When participants were exposed to events having similar affective intensities, however, two negative events produced a more intense negative affective reaction. In addition, participants chose the situation having one versus two negative life experiences. Thus, “more negative events were worse” when the events had similar affective intensities. These results are consistent with an averaging/summation (A/S) model and delineate situations when “more” negative life events are “better” and when “more” negative life events are “worse.” Results also ruled out several alternative interpretations including the peak-end rule and mental accounting interpretations.

In considering moral dilemmas, people often judge the acceptability of exchanging individuals’ interests, rights, and even lives. Here we investigate the related, but often overlooked, question of how people decide who to sacrifice in a moral dilemma. In three experiments (total N = 558), we provide evidence that these decisions often depend on the feeling that certain people are fungible and interchangeable with one another, and that one factor that leads people to be viewed this way is shared nationality. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants read vignettes in which three individuals’ lives could be saved by sacrificing another person. When the individuals were characterized by their nationalities, participants chose to save the three endangered people by sacrificing someone who shared their nationality, rather than sacrificing someone from a different nationality. Participants do not show similar preferences, though, when individuals were characterized by their age or month of birth. In Experiment 3, we replicated the effect of nationality on participant’s decisions about who to sacrifice, and also found that they did not show a comparable preference in a closely matched vignette in which lives were not exchanged. This suggests that the effect of nationality on decisions of who to sacrifice may be specific to judgments about exchanges of lives.

“Waste not want not” expresses our culture’s aversion to waste. “I could have gotten the same thing for less” is a sentiment that can diminish pleasure in a transaction. We study people’s willingness to “pay” to avoid this spoiler. In one scenario, participants imagined they were looking for a rental apartment, and had bought a subscription to an apartment listing. If a cheaper subscription had been declined, respondents preferred not to discover post hoc that it would have sufficed. Specifically, they preferred ending their quest for the ideal apartment after seeing more, rather than fewer, apartments, so that the length of the search exceeds that available within the cheaper subscription. Other scenarios produced similar results. We conclude that people may sometimes prefer to be wasteful in order to avoid feeling wasteful.