Our judgments are not trustworthy, recent studies show. We misjudge objects’ proximity to us because of our wish to possess them, the time between events because of our perceived connection between them, and the value of prices because of how they are pronounced.
How Far Away Is a Desired Object?
In a study published in Psychological Science in December (available at www.pss.sagepub.com), Dr. Emily Balcetis of New York University and Dr. David Dunning of Cornell University conducted a series of experiments to examine the effect of our desire for a certain object on how we estimate its proximity to us.
In the first experiment, participants were asked to estimate how far a bottle of water was from them. Those who were given a serving of pretzels to eat beforehand estimated the water to be closer than those who were given water to drink beforehand.
To show that the effect is not only present when the object provides immediate physiological benefits, the researchers conducted the second and third experiments. In the second experiment, half of the participants were given a chance to win a $100 bill, and they perceived the bill to be closer than the other participants did.
In the third experiment, graded humor tests that participants completed earlier were clipped to a stand. Those who got an “A” on the test perceived the test to be closer than those who got a “D.”
The researchers went on to show the difference in behavior affected by the biased judgment. They put a Visa gift card in a hallway and asked participants to throw beanbags at it, offering the gift card to the person whose beanbag was the closest to the gift card. The participants who competed for a $25 gift card threw their beanbags at a significantly shorter distance than those who competed for a gift card with no value.
In the last experiment, the researchers put on a wall two pieces of tapes that were 90.5 inches apart, and placed an object on the table below the tape. Standing 150 inches from the table, half the participants saw a package of chocolates on the table, while the other half saw a bag which they were told contained dog feces. They were then asked to move closer to or farther from the table so that the distance they were from the table would be the same as the distance between the two pieces of tape.
Although the participants reported a desire for chocolates and aversion to feces, those who thought there were feces positioned themselves farther away from the table (101.3 inches on average) than those who saw chocolates (88 inches on average), and the researchers found that the participants’ moods did not affect their perception of how far the objects were.
How Did Time Fly?
A recent study by Dr. David Faro of the London Business School suggests that we also underestimate the time between two related events.
“People sometimes feel the effect of product consumption almost instantaneously—within an unrealistically short time after consumption,” Faro wrote in his research paper. “Such placebo-like effects are typically attributed to conditioning, wishful thinking, or expectations about product efficacy.”
The study consisted of two experiments that show people perceive the time between two events to be shorter if they were told the events were related.
In the first experiment, two groups of participants listened to music and later were given a creativity task. The first group was told that the music could enhance creativity, while the other group was not given the information.
“When asked to recollect the amount of time that elapsed between listening to music and the creativity task, the first group thought that the time was significantly shorter,” Faro reported. “Hence, even though both groups had the same experience with the music and with the creativity task, believing that the two things were related made participants connect them more closely in time.”
Similarly, in the second experiment, participants chewed a stick of gum and later participated in an attention-related task, being told that chewing gum enhances attention. Faro found that the participants who thought chewing gum was the only factor influencing their performance gave shorter estimates of the time between chewing the gum and performing the task than those who thought that practice with the task would also affect their performance.
How Much Is It Again?
Another study by Dr. Keith S. Coulter of Clark University and Dr. Robin A. Coulter of the University of Connecticut found that we judge prices not by the numbers, but by how they sound.
Previous research has shown that certain sounds can influence our perception of physical size. Front vowels like a, e, and i and fricatives like f, z, and s convey smallness, and back vowels like o and u convey largeness.
“Phonetic symbolism affects price perceptions because consumers typically process, encode, and retain numbers in memory in multiple formats,” the researchers wrote in their research paper. “Thus, sounds associated with the auditory representation can impact the numeric value associated with the analog representation—that is, small sounds can create the impression of big deals.”
In the study, the participants perceived a $10 product discounted to $7.66 to be a better deal than the same product discounted to $7.22.
“Number sounds impact price magnitude perceptions only when consumers mentally rehearse a sale price, as they might do when comparing items on a shopping trip,” the researchers wrote. “Further, mental rehearsal of the same sale prices characterized by small phonemes in one language and large phonemes in another language can yield differential effects.”
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