Department of Marketing, INSEAD.
Department of Marketing, Boston College.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2017 Feb;146(2):250-268. doi: 10.1037/xge0000259.
Five studies show that people, including experts such as professional chefs, estimate quantity decreases more accurately than quantity increases. We argue that this asymmetry occurs because physical quantities cannot be negative. Consequently, there is a natural lower bound (zero) when estimating decreasing quantities but no upper bound when estimating increasing quantities, which can theoretically grow to infinity. As a result, the "accuracy of less" disappears (a) when a numerical or a natural upper bound is present when estimating quantity increases, or (b) when people are asked to estimate the (unbounded) ratio of change from 1 size to another for both increasing and decreasing quantities. Ruling out explanations related to loss aversion, symbolic number mapping, and the visual arrangement of the stimuli, we show that the "accuracy of less" influences choice and demonstrate its robustness in a meta-analysis that includes previously published results. Finally, we discuss how the "accuracy of less" may explain asymmetric reactions to the supersizing and downsizing of food portions, some instances of the endowment effect, and asymmetries in the perception of increases and decreases in physical and psychological distance. (PsycINFO Database Record
五项研究表明，包括专业厨师在内的人们在估计数量减少时比估计数量增加时更为准确。我们认为这种不对称性的出现是因为物理数量不能为负。因此，在估计减少的数量时，存在自然的下界（零），而在估计增加的数量时，不存在上限，因为理论上它可以增长到无穷大。结果，当估计数量增加时存在数字或自然上限时，或者当人们被要求估计从一种尺寸到另一种尺寸的变化比例时，“较少的准确性”就会消失（a），无论是对于增加还是减少的数量。排除了与损失厌恶、符号数字映射和刺激的视觉排列有关的解释后，我们表明“较少的准确性”会影响选择，并在包括先前发表的结果的元分析中证明了其稳健性。最后，我们讨论了“较少的准确性”如何解释食物份量的超大规模和小规模、禀赋效应的某些实例以及物理和心理距离增加和减少的感知不对称。
