Choose as much as you wish: Freedom cues in the marketplace help consumers feel more satisfied with what they choose and improve customer experience.

Consumer satisfaction and customer experience are key predictors of an organization's future market growth, long-term customer loyalty, and profitability but are hard to maintain in marketplaces with abundance of choice. Building on self-determination theory, we experimentally test a novel intervention that leverages consumer need for autonomy. The intervention is a message called a "freedom cue" (FC) which makes it salient that consumers can "choose as much as they wish." A 4-week field experiment in a sporting gear store establishes that FCs lead to greater consumer satisfaction compared to when the store displays no FC. A large (N = 669) preregistered process-tracing experiment run with a consumer panel and a global e-commerce company shows that FCs at point-of-sale improve consumer satisfaction and customer experience compared to an equivalent message that does not make freedom to choose any amount salient. Perceived freedom mediates the effect. FCs do not change the time spent or clicks on the website overall but do change the focus of the choice process. FCs lead to greater focus on what is chosen than on what is not chosen. We discuss practical implications for organizations and future research in consumer choice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Balancing the Freedom-Security Trade-Off During Crises and Disasters.

During crises and disasters, such as hurricanes, terrorist threats, or pandemics, policymakers must often increase security at the cost of freedom. Psychological science, however, has shown that the restriction of freedom may have strong negative consequences for behavior and health. We suggest that psychology can inform policy both by elucidating some negative consequences of lost freedom (e.g., depression or behavioral reactance) and by revealing strategies to address them. We propose four interlocking principles that can help policymakers restore the freedom-security balance. Careful consideration of the psychology of freedom can help policymakers develop policies that most effectively promote public health, safety, and well-being when crises and disasters strike.

Global Behaviors, Perceptions, and the Emergence of Social Norms at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

We conducted a large-scale survey covering 58 countries and over 100,000 respondents between late March and early April 2020 to study beliefs and attitudes towards citizens' and governments' responses at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most respondents reported holding normative beliefs in support of COVID-19 containment measures, as well as high rates of adherence to these measures. They also believed that their government and their country's citizens were not doing enough and underestimated the degree to which others in their country supported strong behavioral and policy responses to the pandemic. Normative beliefs were strongly associated with adherence, as well as beliefs about others' and the government's response. Lockdowns were associated with greater optimism about others' and the government's response, and improvements in measures of perceived mental well-being; these effects tended to be larger for those with stronger normative beliefs. Our findings highlight how social norms can arise quickly and effectively to support cooperation at a global scale.

Price-Denomination Effect: Choosing to Pay With Denominations That Are the Same as the Product Prices.

Building on past research on judgment anchoring, we investigate the effect of price information on consumers' choice of denomination when making a purchase. Across seven experiments, including two in the field (N = 4,020), we find that people tend to purchase with denominations that are the same as the product prices. They use larger denominations for higher priced products that are priced at the value of the denomination held, and smaller denominations for lower priced products that are priced at the value of the smaller denomination held. The effect is not explained by storage or purchase convenience. We propose the "price-denomination effect" is driven by consumers anchoring on product price and then choosing the denomination that matches the anchor. The effect replicates across participants from different continents (United States, Europe, and Africa) and samples (online panelists, and actual consumers), as well as prices in different currencies (United States $, €, and Nigerian Naira). We further demonstrate that people's preference for denominations also affects the choice of the form of payment used: cash versus card. Consumers are more likely to use cash (vs. card) when product price is exactly the same as a denomination held. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications.

Choice overload reduces neural signatures of choice set value in dorsal striatum and anterior cingulate cortex.

Modern societies offer a large variety of choices1,2, which is generally thought to be valuable3-7. But having too much choice can be detrimental1-3,8-11 if the costs of choice outweigh its benefits due to 'choice overload'12-14. Current explanatory models of choice overload mainly derive from behavioural studies13,14. A neuroscientific investigation could further inform these models by revealing the covert mental processes during decision-making. We explored choice overload using functional magnetic resonance imaging while subjects were either choosing from varying-sized choice sets or were browsing them. When choosing from sets of 6, 12 or 24 items, functional magnetic resonance imaging activity in the striatum and anterior cingulate cortex resembled an inverted U-shaped function of choice set size. Activity was highest for 12-item sets, which were perceived as having 'the right amount' of options and was lower for 6-item and 24-item sets, which were perceived as 'too small' and 'too large', respectively. Enhancing choice set value by adding a dominant option led to an overall increase of activity. When subjects were browsing, the decision costs were diminished and the inverted U-shaped activity patterns vanished. Activity in the striatum and anterior cingulate reflects choice set value and can serve as neural indicator of choice overload.

Helping patients choose: how to improve the design of comparative scorecards of hospital quality.

OBJECTIVE: To understand how the public understand comparative quality information as presented on NHS Choices, the Department of Health website in England. We explore what quality information people value, how they understand different measures of quality, and their preferences for different types of information. METHOD: Seven focus groups were conducted. RESULTS: Participants' preferences for types of information changed at different stages of the focus groups. Participants attempted to compare hospitals option-wise, building up an overall picture of the hospital's performance. Faced with abundance of conflicting criteria, participants attempted to make trade offs, but found it difficult. Older and less numerate participants used summative measures to overcome this difficulty. Some indicators were poorly understood and the multiplicity of formats and labels was confusing. Missing data were mistrusted. CONCLUSION: The presentation of information affects what information people value, how they understand and process it. The design of scorecards is crucial in order to support use of scorecards for informed patient choice. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: We offer guidelines for changing presentation of comparative quality information with the aim to improve its use by patients when choosing between hospitals, especially online.