Many studies document the benefits of presenting smaller quantities of products, particularly when differences in quantity relate to availability or popularity. However, we know less about the effects of quantity differences in contexts unrelated to scarcity, such as when products are depicted in ads, special displays, or online retailing settings. The present research builds on extant literature by investigating a previously unexplored question: How do product perceptions differ depending on whether consumers view a single unit in isolation, versus as one unit among identical product replicates? Five experiments demonstrate that presenting multiple product replicates as a group (vs. presenting a single item) increases product efficacy perceptions because it leads consumers to perceive products as more homogeneous and unified around a shared goal. That is, consumers perceive greater product entitativity when viewing a group of product replicates. As a result, the perceived and actual ability of products to deliver that function (i.e., product efficacy) increases.

This article demonstrates that a loss of personal control leads to an increase in selfregulatory behavior. This occurs because a loss of control puts consumers at a deficit relative to one of the major lessons they learn during their childhood, which is to have control over the outcomes of their actions. This deficit triggers a compensatory process focused on following other lessons that consumers believe they learned during their childhood. Because exerting self-regulation is another major lesson parents emphasize, consumers engage in self-regulatory behavior to compensate for a loss of personal control. However, when consumers believe their parents emphasized self-regulation less strongly during childhood (i.e., they believe their parents had a more permissive style), a loss of control can reduce self-regulatory behavior. These findings have implications for what we know about the effects of childhood experiences on adult consumer behavior, the importance of individuals' beliefs about childhood experiences in determining adult behavior, the consequences of low personal control, and the antecedents of self-regulatory behavior.

Mutual fund advertisers often highlight their funds’ past returns albeit with an SEC mandated disclosure. To ascertain whether the SEC disclosure is effective and how it could be improved, the authors conduct seven experiments of individuals’ choices of mutual funds with ads touting past success plus disclosures. These experiments lead to several findings: First, current SEC disclosures do not work because investors fall prey to the hot hand bias and believe that past performance trends will continue. Second, while investors comprehend the content of the SEC disclosure, they misapply it. Third, an alternate stronger, less ambiguous disclosure effectively attenuates investors’ preferences for funds with longer (vs. shorter) performance runs. Fourth, the authors also show that only a disclosure that directly relates to the beliefs that give rise to the hot hand bias overcomes peoples’ tendency to chase returns. Fifth, these findings generalize to the real estate context. This is the only research that shows that when the SEC disclosure found in mutual fund ads is pitted against the hot hand bias, the hot hand wins out. Yet, a strongly worded disclosure has some success at debiasing individuals. Implications for policy makers, practitioners, and consumers are discussed.

Research demonstrates that people utilize both reasoning and feeling in decision making and that both strategies can be advantageous. However, little is known about how people perceive their decision‐making relative to others. Despite research findings and popular appeals supporting the use of affective decision processes, across a series of studies, we find that individuals believe they rely more on reasoning, and less on feelings, than others. These effects are driven by the motivation to self‐enhance where, in most contexts, individuals believe the use of reasoning is superior, and self‐enhancing, compared to the use of feelings. Consistent with this mechanism, beliefs that one’s decisions are more rational than others’ are as follows: (a) stronger for those who exhibit greater beliefs in the superiority of reasoning (vs. feeling), (b) attenuated when the decision context precludes motivational thinking about the self or the self is affirmed, and (c) reversed when the use of feelings is perceived as more self‐enhancing. We demonstrate downstream consequences (e.g., decision delegation), rule out alternative explanations, and discuss practical implications of these lay beliefs.

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