Tradeoffs and Depletion in Choice

• Main Authors: WANG, Jing, Novemsky, Nathan, Dhar, Ravi, Baumeister, Roy
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2010
• Subjects: consumer behavior; decision making; self-control; depletion; Marketing; Sales and Merchandising
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/2999; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/lkcsb_research/article/3998/viewcontent/Trade_Offs_and_Depletion_in_Choice_sv.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Four experiments examine why choices deplete executive resources. The authors show that the resolution of trade-offs is a driver of depletion effects arising from choice, and the larger the trade-offs, the greater is the depletion effect. The authors also find that choice difficulty not related to trade-offs does not influence the depleting effect of the choices. Finally, the authors find that though people can intuit some depletion effects, they do not intuit that choices or trade-offs within choices might be depleting and therefore fail to predict that larger trade-offs are more depleting.