Participants tasted two cups of coffee, decided which they preferred, and then rated each coffee. They were told (in lure) that one of the cups contained “eco-friendly” coffee while the other did not, although the two cups contained identical coffee. In Experiments 1 and 3, but not in Experiment 2, the participants were also told which cup contained which type of coffee before they tasted. The participants preferred the taste of, and were willing to pay more for, the “eco-friendly” coffee, at least those who scored high on a questionnaire on attitudes toward sustainable consumer behavior (Experiment 1). High sustainability consumers were also willing to pay more for “eco-friendly” coffee, even when they were told, after their decision, that they preferred the non-labeled alternative (Experiment 2). Moreover, the eco-label effect does not appear to be a consequence of social desirability, as participants were just as biased when reporting the taste estimates and willingness to pay anonymously (Experiment 3). Eco labels not only promote a willingness to pay more for the product but also lead to a more favorable perceptual experience of it.

a b s t r a c tConsumers believe that ''eco-labeled'' products taste better, which, at least in part, may be an effect of the label. The purpose of the current series of experiments was to examine some mechanisms and limits of this eco-label effect. In Experiment 1, an eco-label effect of similar magnitude was found for taste ratings of both conventional and organic bananas. Experiment 2 showed eco-label effects for a wider range of judgmental dimensions (i.e., health, calories, vitamins/minerals, mental performance, and willingness to pay) and the effect was about the same in magnitude for judgments of grapes and raisins. Experiment 3, with water as the tasted product, found no eco-label effect on judgments of taste, calories and vitamins/minerals, but an effect on willingness to pay, judgments of health benefits and judgments of mental performance benefits. Experiments 2 and 3 also included questionnaires on social desirability traits, schizotypal traits and pro-environmental consumer traits. The last was the strongest predictor of the eco-label effect amongst the three. In all, the eco-label effect is a robust phenomenon, but depends on interactions between product type and judgmental dimension. Implications for several accounts of the effect are discussed.

The aim of this investigation was to study the biases and accuracy in age estimation of persons selling alcohol. Two experiments are reported, both suggesting that the accuracy in age estimation of Swedish alcohol salespersons is higher than that of control persons. This expertise in age estimation is probably the result of the extensive training Swedish alcohol salespersons go through as a natural part of their profession. Nonetheless, their estimates were not free from bias. Salespersons overestimated the age of target persons below 20 years of age and thus too young to buy alcohol. The results also revealed that controls, in contrast to salespersons, assimilated their estimates towards their own age (i.e. an own-anchor effect). Furthermore, female participants were shown to estimate the age of old target persons (56-65 years) more accurately than male participants. These results are discussed in relation to previous findings on training in age estimation and present jurisdiction.

Anthropogenic climate changes stress the importance of understanding why people harm the environment despite their attempts to behave in climate friendly ways. This paper argues that one reason behind why people do this is that people apply heuristics, originally shaped to handle social exchange, on the issues of environmental impact. Reciprocity and balance in social relations have been fundamental to social cooperation, and thus to survival, and therefore the human brain has become specialized by natural selection to compute and seek this balance. When the same reasoning is applied to environment-related behaviors, people tend to think in terms of a balance between “environmentally friendly” and “harmful” behaviors, and to morally account for the average of these components rather than the sum. This balancing heuristic leads to compensatory green beliefs and negative footprint illusions—the misconceptions that “green” choices can compensate for unsustainable ones. “Eco-guilt” from imbalance in the moral environmental account may promote pro-environmental acts, but also acts that are seemingly pro-environmental but in reality more harmful than doing nothing at all. Strategies for handling problems caused by this cognitive insufficiency are discussed.

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This paper reports 2 studies of the own‐anchor effect (i.e., assimilation in age, height, and weight estimates) in same‐ and cross‐gender age, height, and weight estimates. The own‐anchor effect is believed to be stronger for same‐gender estimates, but the investigation reported here is the first to test this hypothesis with participants and target persons of both genders. Several own‐anchor effects were found in females' same‐ and cross‐gender estimates, whereas males only showed own‐anchor effects in same‐gender estimates. These results lean toward the possibility that women assimilate across gender, whereas men do not. Explanations of these results with reference to Krueger's (Krueger & Zeiger, 1993; Robbins & Krueger, 2005) theory of social projection and the consequences for witness reliability are discussed.

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This article investigates effects of anchoring in age estimation and estimation of quantities, two tasks which to different extents are based on visual stimuli. The results are compared to anchoring in answers to classic general knowledge questions that rely on semantic knowledge. Cognitive load was manipulated to explore possible differences between domains. Effects of source credibility, manipulated by differing instructions regarding the selection of anchor values (no information regarding anchor selection, information that the anchors are randomly generated or information that the anchors are answers from an expert) on anchoring were also investigated. Effects of anchoring were large for all types of judgments but were not affected by cognitive load or by source credibility in either one of the researched domains. A main effect of cognitive load on quantity estimations and main effects of source credibility in the two visually based domains indicate that the manipulations were efficient. Implications for theoretical explanations of anchoring are discussed. In particular, because anchoring did not interact with cognitive load, the results imply that the process behind anchoring in visual tasks is predominantly automatic and unconscious.