More Useful to You: Believing That Others Find the Same Objects More Useful

Ziano, Ignazio; Villanova, Daniel

doi:10.31234/osf.io/938m7

Cited by 5 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 39 publications

(79 reference statements)

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“…People often make decisions based on how they view themselves in comparison to the average other person. Such self-evaluation may concern their skills, personal attributes, or even physical conditions thus influencing many domains of life including education, health, business, and sports (Dunning et al, 2004;Guenther et al, 2015;Malmendier & Tate, 2005;Stanley et al, 2017;Taylor & Brown, 1988;Ziano & Villanova, 2020). If their evaluation is indeed inaccurate, it is necessary to understand the process behind the phenomenon.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Replication and Extension of Alicke (1985) Better-Than-Average Effect for Desirable and Controllable Traits

Ziano

Mok

Feldman

2020

Social Psychological and Personality Science

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People tend to regard themselves as better than average. We conducted a replication and extension of Alicke’s classic study on trait dimensions in evaluations of self versus others with U.S. American Mechanical Turk workers in two waves (total N = 1,573; 149 total traits). We successfully replicated the trait desirability effect, such that participants rated more desirable traits as being more descriptive of themselves than of others (original: [Formula: see text] = .78, 95% confidence interval [CI] [.73, .81]; replication: sr 2 = .54, 95% CI [.43, .65]). The effect of desirability was stronger for more controllable traits (effect of Desirability × Controllability interaction on self–other-ratings difference; original: [Formula: see text] = .21, 95% CI [.12, .28]; replication: sr 2 = .07, 95% CI [.02, .12]). In an extension, we found that desirable traits were rated as more common for others, but not for the self. Thirty-five years later, the better-than-average effect appears to remain robust. All materials, data, and code are available at https://osf.io/2y6wj/ .

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confidence: 99%

Replication and Extension of Alicke (1985) Better-Than-Average Effect for Desirable and Controllable Traits

Ziano

Mok

Feldman

2020

Social Psychological and Personality Science

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“…What perceptions are relevant to judging how much the buyer may value the product? Ziano and Villanova (2020) show that a discrepancy in perceived materialism contributes to overestimating others' product usefulness and WTP, or how much they value the product. In general, people believe that they are less materialistic than their counterparts.…”

Section: Perceptions Of Others and Perceived Materialismmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Individuals compare themselves favorably (and inaccurately) to others. As individuals are driven to maintain high self-esteem and a positive self-concept ( Van Lange 1991), they perceive themselves as above the average person on positive traits such as loyalty and below the average person on negative traits such as rudeness (Alicke 1985; successfully replicated in Ziano, Mok, and Feldman 2020). This self-serving tendency can underpin interpersonal discrepancies in perceptions of various characteristics.…”

Section: Perceptions Of Others and Perceived Materialismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, consumers think that others are more variety-seeking than them (Ratner and Kahn 2002) and they think that performance-enhancing drugs are a natural enabler of their own abilities, but an unfair embellishment of other people's skills (Williams and Steffel 2014). Further, consumers believe that others have more intense reactions to experiences (Jung et al 2020), and they assume that others would find the same product more useful than they themselves would (Ziano and Villanova 2020).…”

Section: Perceptions Of Others and Perceived Materialismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Specifically, we suggest that an overestimation of others' perceived materialism may partially underlie the endowment effect. Because people overestimate others' materialism, and more materialistic individuals have a greater affinity for products, they also believe others would find those products more useful, and others would pay more for those products (Ziano and Villanova 2020). Because others are expected to be willing to pay more for those products, this creates an opportunity for sellers to price discriminate and report WTA that is higher than their own WTP.…”

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confidence: 99%

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A Social Perception Theory of the Endowment Effect

Ziano¹,

Villanova²

2021

Preprint

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In nine experiments (total N = 2107, with British, French, and U.S. American participants), this paper proposes and tests a social perception theory of the endowment effect. First, the authors show that buyers are more likely to focus on themselves, and that sellers are more likely to focus on buyers. Then, the authors show that the endowment effect is mediated by misperceptions that sellers have about buyers’ features. Sellers base their willingness-to-accept in part on their biased perceptions of the buyers. Since individuals misconstrue others in many ways that contribute to increases in features linked with willingness-to-pay, this contributes to the endowment effect. Consistent with this explanation, the authors find that selling prices can be moderated by changing the description of the counterpart in several ways, to the point of reversing the endowment effect for positively valued goods. Further, the authors find a stronger endowment effect for products considered highly materialistic. Theoretically, these findings support a new explanation for the endowment effect and connect research on the endowment effect with research about misperceptions of others. Practically, the authors discuss ways of improving negotiations and pricing centered around correcting misperceptions of others.

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Overestimating the valuations and preferences of others.

Jung¹,

Moon

Nelson³

2020

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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People often make judgments about their own and others’ valuations and preferences. Across 12 studies (N = 17,594), we find a robust bias in these judgments such that people overestimate the valuations and preferences of others. This overestimation arises because, when making predictions about others, people rely on their intuitive core representation of the experience (e.g., is the experience generally positive?) in lieu of a more complex representation that might also include countervailing aspects (e.g., is any of the experience negative?). We first demonstrate that the overestimation bias is pervasive for a wide range of positive (Studies 1–5) and negative experiences (Study 6). Furthermore, the bias is not merely an artifact of how preferences are measured (Study 7). Consistent with judgments based on core representations, the bias significantly reduces when the core representation is uniformly positive (Studies 8A–8B). Such judgments lead to a paradox in how people see others trade off between valuation and utility (Studies 9A–9B). Specifically, relative to themselves, people believe that an identically paying other will get more enjoyment from the same experience, but paradoxically, that an identically enjoying other will pay more for the same experience. Finally, consistent with a core representation explanation, explicitly prompting people to consider the entire distribution of others’ preferences significantly reduced or eliminated the bias (Study 10). These findings suggest that social judgments of others’ preferences are not only largely biased, but they also ignore how others make trade-offs between evaluative metrics.

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More Useful to You: Believing That Others Find the Same Objects More Useful

Cited by 5 publications

References 39 publications

Replication and Extension of Alicke (1985) Better-Than-Average Effect for Desirable and Controllable Traits

Replication and Extension of Alicke (1985) Better-Than-Average Effect for Desirable and Controllable Traits

A Social Perception Theory of the Endowment Effect

Overestimating the valuations and preferences of others.

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