Efficiency neglect: Why people are pessimistic about the effects of increasing population.

In six studies, we find evidence of efficiency neglect: when thinking about the effects of population growth, people intuitively focus on increased demand while neglecting the changes in production efficiency that occur alongside, and often in response to, increased demand. In other words, people tend to think of others solely as consumers, rather than as consumers as well as producers. Efficiency neglect leads to beliefs that the real costs of some consumer goods are rising when they are actually decreasing and may contribute to antiimmigration sentiments because of the fear that increasing local population creates competition for fixed resources. We demonstrate that economic pessimism and antiimmigration sentiments are reduced when people are prompted to consider their own beliefs about increased productivity over time, but are unchanged when they consider their beliefs about increases in demand. Together, these findings shed light on people's lay economic theories and suggest promising interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Prosocial nudges and visual indicators increase social distancing, but authoritative nudges do not.

Social distancing reduces the transmission of COVID-19 and other airborne diseases. To test different ways to increase social distancing, we conducted a field experiment at a major US airport using a system that presented color-coded visual indicators on crowdedness. We complemented those visual indicators with nudges commonly used to increase COVID-19-preventive behaviors. Analyzing data from 57,146 travelers, we find that visual indicators and nudges significantly affected social distancing. Introducing visual indicators increased the share of travelers practicing social distancing, and this positive effect was enhanced by introducing nudges focused on personal benefits ("protect yourself") and public benefits ("protect others"). Conversely, an authoritative nudge referencing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ("don't break CDC COVID-19 guidelines") did not change social distancing behavior. Our results demonstrate that visual indicators and informed nudges can boost social distancing and potentially curb the spread of contagious diseases.

Asymmetric Hedonic Contrast: Pain Is More Contrast Dependent Than Pleasure.

Research has shown that hedonic-contrast effects are a ubiquitous and important phenomenon. In eight studies (N = 4,999) and four supplemental studies (N = 1,809), we found that hedonic-contrast effects were stronger for negative outcomes than for positive outcomes. This asymmetric-contrast effect held for both anticipated and experienced affect. The effect makes risks that include gains and losses more attractive in the presence of high reference points because contrast diminishes the hedonic impact of losses more than gains. We demonstrated that the effect occurs because people are generally more attentive to reference points when evaluating negative outcomes, so drawing attention to reference points eliminates the asymmetric-contrast effect.