Stocks, flows, and risk response to pandemic data.

During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, data regarding new infections were commonly presented and used to guide policy decisions (e.g., whether to close schools) and personal choices (e.

Opportunity cost neglect and consideration in the domain of time.

Every decision regarding a course of action incurs an opportunity cost. Such costs are relevant to the decision but often neglected. Opportunity costs are more likely to be considered when alternatives are top-of-mind or when the decision maker faces severe resource constraints.

The Elasticity of Preferences.

We explore how preferences for attributes are constructed when people choose between multiattribute options. As found in prior research, we observed that while people make decisions, their preferences for the attributes in question shift to support the emerging choice, thus enabling confident decisions. The novelty of the studies reported here is that participants repeated the same task 6 to 8 weeks later.

Opportunity Cost Neglect Attenuates the Effect of Choices on Preferences.

The idea that choices alter preferences has been widely studied in psychology, yet prior research has focused primarily on choices for which all alternatives were salient at the time of choice. Opportunity costs capture the value of the best forgone alternative and should be considered as part of any decision process, yet people often neglect them. How does the salience of opportunity costs at the time of choice influence subsequent evaluations of chosen and forgone options? In three experiments, we found that there was a larger postchoice spread between evaluations of focal options and opportunity costs when opportunity costs were explicit at the time of choice than when they remained implicit.