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a b s t r a c tThe perceived quality of interactive products can be roughly divided into instrumental, task-related, pragmatic attributes (e.g., usefulness, usability) and non-instrumental, self-referential, hedonic attributes (e.g., novelty, beauty). Recent studies suggest that the weighting of both aspects in forming an overall evaluation of an interactive product heavily depends on features of the actual situation, such as whether an individual has to perform a specific task or not. The present paper extends these findings by assuming that a match between an individual's motivational orientation and particular product attributes (i.e., pragmatic, hedonic) moderates the perceived value of interactive products. Specifically, it shows how differences in regulatory foci (promotion or prevention focus), that is, differences in the way goal-directed behavior is regulated, influence product evaluation and choice. Participants were either set in a prevention focus (concern for safety and the avoidance of negative outcomes) or promotion focus (concern for personal growth and the attainment of positive outcomes). Subsequently, they were asked to evaluate and choose between a primarily pragmatic and a primarily hedonic mp3-player. The results revealed the expected effect of the activated regulatory focus on evaluation and choice. Individuals in a promotion focus rated the hedonic player as more appealing and chose it more frequently compared to individuals in a prevention focus. Reverse results, albeit not as strong, were found for the evaluation and choice of the pragmatic player. Our findings support the idea that product appeal and choice is strongly contextdependent. It further extends previous findings by showing that not only major differences in the situation, such as providing a specific task or not, impact product appreciation but that more subtle, motivational orientations can have similar effects.

People often make decisions in a social environment. The present work examines social influence on people’s decisions in a sequential decision-making situation. In the first experimental study, we implemented an information cascade paradigm, illustrating that people infer information from decisions of others and use this information to make their own decisions. We followed a cognitive modeling approach to elicit the weight people give to social as compared to private individual information. The proposed social influence model shows that participants overweight their own private information relative to social information, contrary to the normative Bayesian account. In our second study, we embedded the abstract decision problem of Study 1 in a medical decision-making problem. We examined whether in a medical situation people also take others’ authority into account in addition to the information that their decisions convey. The social influence model illustrates that people weight social information differentially according to the authority of other decision makers. The influence of authority was strongest when an authority's decision contrasted with private information. Both studies illustrate how the social environment provides sources of information that people integrate differently for their decisions.

The present study addresses effects of social loafing and social compensation in automation monitoring. Thirty-six participants performed a multi-task, consisting of three sub-tasks which simulate work demands of operators in a chemical plant. One of the tasks involved the monitoring of an automated process. Participants were randomly assigned to three different groups: (1) “Non-Redundant”: participants worked on all tasks alone. (2) “Redundant”: participants were informed that a second crewmember would work in parallel on the monitoring task. (3) “Informed-Redundant”: like the “redundant” condition with the additional information that the crewmate's monitoring performance might be low. Results provide evidence of social loafing and social compensation effects in automation monitoring. Participants in the “redundant” condition cross-checked the automation significantly less than participants in the other groups. This result suggests that human redundancy might not always be the best solution to enhance safety, but might even lead to riskier operator behavior.