Days-of-the-week effect in temporal judgments
Sokolova,Tatiana
Sokolova,Tatiana
Abstract
Consumers often receive and evaluate temporal information, such as the number of days it will take a package to arrive or the number of days a vacation will last. Across eight preregistered studies (N ¼ 4,758), we examine how using days-of-the-week information in descriptions of temporal intervals (e.g., “ordered on Monday, February 1, delivered on Saturday, February 6” vs. “ordered on February 1, delivered on February 6”) affects consumers’ duration perceptions. We propose that the days-of-the-week framing prompts people to rely on narrow-span implicit scales characterized by lower thresholds for magnitude categories. These implicit scales lead people to judge objectively equivalent temporal intervals to be longer, which in turn has downstream consequences for consumers’ time-versus-money tradeoffs, work planning, and provider-switching decisions. This research adds to our understanding of how decision context can activate different implicit scales and how these scales shape consumer judgments.
Description
Date
2023-06
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Keywords
temporal judgments, framing effects, implicit scales
Citation
Sokolova, T 2023, 'Days-of-the-week effect in temporal judgments', Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 50, no. 1, ucac044, pp. 167-189. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucac044
License
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess