Expectancy Neglect: Why Superstitious Acts Increase Risk Seeking in Gains but Risk Avoidance in Losses

Ping Dong and Aparna A. Labroo

Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2018, vol. 3, issue 4, 527 - 539

Abstract: Consumers are known to be loss averse—they seek risk when facing losses but avoid risk when anticipating gains. In this research, we posit that engaging in a superstitious act can reverse these effects by invoking fatalistic notions (e.g., “it is meant to be”) and reducing deliberation. Reduced deliberation is known to increase the use of extreme values as reference points and to lower the consideration of outcome expectancy. Consequently, consumers consider the best possible gain (worst possible loss) rather than expected gain (loss) and become more risk seeking (risk averse) in gains (losses). Four experiments involving real behavioral measures provide support for our proposition. We thus offer a new perspective on how engaging in superstitious behaviors reduces deliberation and affects risky choice.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/698494 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/698494 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jacres:doi:10.1086/698494

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of the Association for Consumer Research from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().