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Publications & Revisions
Biases in improvement decisions: People focus on the relative reduction in bad outcomes.
Ryan, W. H., Baum, S. M., & Evers, E. R. K. * (2024, Psychological Science).
*first two authors contributed equally; this paper was my dissertation
When people can improve their likelihood of realizing a good outcome, they appear to ask themselves: “If something bad happens, how much would it be my fault?” This leads to a variety of violations of rational choice theory.
Wang, Y., Baum, S. M., & Critcher, C. R. (2024, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology).
People prefer to consolidate disjunctive risks into fewer component events and to spread conjunctive risks across more component events.
O’Donnell, M., Dev, A. S., Antonoplis, S., Baum, S. M., [and 20 others]. (2021, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).
We introduce the empirical audit and review; we apply it to the literature on scarcity. Many scarcity studies do not appear to be replicable.
Baum, S. M., & Critcher, C. R. (2020, Current Opinion in Psychology).
Non-disclosure can have personal and social costs. People who refrain from disclosing often don’t anticipate this.
Working Papers
The competing preferences illusion.
Baum, S. M., & Nelson, L. D. (Working paper, draft available).
People erroneously see certain preferences as competing. Consumers and marketers think there are “Coke people” and “Pepsi people.” This is wrong. There are just people who like soda.
Perceived exploitation in quality discrimination.
Baum, S. M., Evers, E. R. K., & Inbar, Y. (Working paper, draft available).
Firms sometimes make products worse and sell them at cheaper prices. This has a host of benefits for consumers. Consumers think this is exploitative.
Baum, S. M., Rosenzweig, E., & Critcher, C. R. (Working paper, draft available).
People don’t like being treated unfairly by firms. But, unfair treatment is particularly egregious when a firm is apologizing for a misdeed.
The privileged information effect.
Baum, S. M., & Critcher, C. R. (Working paper, draft available).
Better-informed agents overestimate the prefactual influence of privileged information on others’ judgments and valuations.
Caught in the middle of social exclusion: A misguided and counterproductive reluctance to speak up.
Baum, S. M., Critcher, C. R., Lee, R. T., & Zayas, V. (Working paper, draft available).
People who are excluded by others make highly cynical, incorrect inferences about people who are included by others. People who are included by others are capable of correcting these misperceptions. They do not.
Work in Progress
Preparing for the worst as much as the best: Consumers ignore the probability of bad outcomes when making backup plans.
Ryan, W. H., Baum, S. M., & Evers, E. R. K. (Work in progress, draft available upon request).
When evaluating hedges, consumers are highly insensitive to the likelihood of a bad outcome occurring. This leads to a puzzling pattern of valuations of insurance, product warranties, and the like.
Likert scales are broken for probabilistic outcomes.
Cho, K. M., Baum, S. M., & Evers, E. R. K. (Work in progress, draft available upon request).
Researchers can use Likert-type scales to ask participants about how attractive they find uncertain outcomes. They shouldn’t; doing so leads participants to respond as if they are almost entirely outcome-insensitive.