Scholars@Duke
John W. Payne

John W. Payne

Joseph J. Ruvane, Jr. Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Fuqua School of Business
jpayne@duke.edu
Box 90120, Durham, NC 27708-0120
Fuqua Sch of Bus, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications

Do risk information programs promote mitigating behavior?

Chapter · December 13, 2022 This article reports the results of a panel study investigating the effects of different radon risk information booklets on households' decisions to undertake mitigation. Multinomial logit models are used to describe how differences in the design of the in ... Full text Cite

The pivotal role of fairness: Which consumers like annuities?

Journal Article Financial Planning Review · September 1, 2018 Decumulation of wealth in retirement is a difficult task, requiring tradeoffs between longevity risks and immediate consumption needs. Economists have long argued that life annuities can be a valuable part of decumulation and that most retirees should annu ... Full text Cite

Time preferences and mortgage choice

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · June 1, 2017 Mortgage decisions have important consequences for consumers, lenders, and the state of the economy more generally. Mortgage decisions are also prototypical of consumer financial choices that involve a stream of expenditures and consumption occurring acros ... Full text Cite

Consumer preferences for annuity attributes: Beyond net present value

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · April 1, 2016 Decisions about life annuities are an important part of consumer decumulation of retirement assets, yet they are relatively underexplored by marketing researchers studying consumer financial decision making. In this article, the authors propose and estimat ... Full text Cite

The rational adolescent: Strategic information processing during decision making revealed by eye tracking

Journal Article Cognitive Development · October 2015 Abstract Adolescence is often viewed as a time of irrational, risky decision-making—despite adolescents’ competence in other cognitive domains. In this study, we examined the strategies used by adolescents (N = 30) and young adults (N = 47) to resolve comp ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Outsmart Your Own Biases

Journal Article HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW · May 1, 2015 Link to item Cite

An overall probability of winning heuristic for complex risky decisions: Choice and eye fixation evidence

Journal Article Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · November 1, 2014 When faced with multi-outcome gambles involving possibilities of both gains and losses, people often use a simple heuristic that maximizes the overall probability of winning (Pwin). Across three different studies, using choice data as well as process data ... Full text Cite

Let's be honest about the attraction effect

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · January 1, 2014 Frederick, Lee, and Baskin (2014) and Yang and Lynn (2014) argue that the conditions for obtaining the attraction effect are so restrictive that the practical validity of the attraction effect should be questioned. In this commentary, the authors first gro ... Full text Cite

Life expectancy as a constructed belief: Evidence of a live-to or die-by framing effect

Journal Article Journal of Risk and Uncertainty · February 1, 2013 Life expectations are essential inputs for many important personal decisions. We propose that longevity beliefs are responses constructed at the time of judgment, subject to irrelevant task and context factors, and leading to predictable biases. Specifical ... Full text Cite

Comparison selection: An approach to the study of consumer judgment and choice

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · January 1, 2013 We introduce an alternative perspective on the study of consumer judgment and decision making, which is based on the notion that judgment and choice problems consist of comparisons that decision makers might select. Our new perspective proposes that if we ... Full text Cite

Directions for judgment and decision making research based on comparison selection: Reply to Arkes, Johnson, and Kardes

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · January 1, 2013 Our target article proposed an alternative perspective for studying consumer judgment and decision making, focusing on the types and weights of comparisons consumers select. In this response we consider the major points made by each of the commentators and ... Full text Cite

Beyond nudges: Tools of a choice architecture

Journal Article Marketing Letters · June 1, 2012 The way a choice is presented influences what a decision-maker chooses. This paper outlines the tools available to choice architects, that is anyone who present people with choices. We divide these tools into two categories: those used in structuring the c ... Full text Cite

Neuroeconomics of risky decisions: From variables to strategies

Chapter · May 1, 2011 We make a variety of decisions throughout our lives. Some decisions involve outcomes whose values can be readily compared, especially when those outcomes are simple, immediate, and familiar. Other decisions involve imperfect knowledge about their potential ... Full text Cite

Sleep deprivation biases the neural mechanisms underlying economic preferences.

Journal Article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · March 2011 A single night of sleep deprivation (SD) evoked a strategy shift during risky decision making such that healthy human volunteers moved from defending against losses to seeking increased gains. This change in economic preferences was correlated with the mag ... Full text Cite

Separate neural mechanisms underlie choices and strategic preferences in risky decision making.

Journal Article Neuron · May 2009 Adaptive decision making in real-world contexts often relies on strategic simplifications of decision problems. Yet, the neural mechanisms that shape these strategies and their implementation remain largely unknown. Using an economic decision-making task, ... Full text Cite

Integrating neural and decision sciences: Convergence and constraints

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · January 1, 2009 Full text Cite

Boundary conditions on unconscious thought in complex decision making.

Journal Article Psychological science · November 2008 Should individuals delegate thinking about complex choice problems to the unconscious? We tested two boundary conditions on this suggestion. First, we found that in a decision environment similar to those studied previously, self-paced conscious thought an ... Full text Cite

Biased but efficient: An investigation of coordination facilitated by asymmetric dominance

Journal Article Marketing Science · September 1, 2008 In several marketing contexts, strategic complementarity between the actions of individual players demands that players coordinate their decisions to reach efficient outcomes. Yet coordination failure is a common occurrence. We show that the well-establish ... Full text Cite

Preference construction and preference stability: Putting the pillow to rest

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · July 1, 2008 We advocate a different approach to the important questions that Simonson raises regarding preference construction. First, we argue that existing literature both acknowledges and addresses preference stability. In particular, we show that stable preference ... Full text Cite

Appraising the appraisal-tendency framework

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Psychology · January 1, 2007 This article considers the consumer research implications of the Appraisal-Tendency Framework (ATF; Han, Lerner, & Keltner, 2007). This article outlines how the ATF approach could be applied to sequential consumer choices (e.g., effects of emotional respon ... Full text Cite

Mutual Fund Expense Disclosures: A Behavioral Perspective

Journal Article Washington University Law Quarterly · 2005 Link to item Cite

It is whether you win or lose: The importance of the overall probabilities of winning or losing in risky choice

Journal Article Journal of Risk and Uncertainty · January 1, 2005 Imagine that you own a five-outcome gamble with the following payoffs and probabilities: ($100, .20; $50, .20; $0, .20; -$25, .20; -$50, .20). What happens when the opportunity to improve such a gamble is provided by a manipulation that adds value to one o ... Full text Cite

Does elaboration increase or decrease the effectiveness of negatively versus positively framed messages?

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · June 1, 2004 A robust finding in research on message framing is that negatively framed messages are more (less) effective than positively framed ones when the level of cognitive elaboration is high (low). However, recent research presents evidence that is contrary to p ... Full text Cite

Choice selection

Chapter · 2002 Cite

The Emotional Nature of Decision Trade-offs

Chapter · March 28, 2001 "This is a superb book that provides valuable insights for managers at all levels. No matter how many critical decisions we make, it is useful to be reminded of the intricacies of the process. Wharton on Making Decisions does just that. ... Cite

Coping with Unfavorable Attribute Values in Choice.

Journal Article Organizational behavior and human decision processes · March 2000 This paper examines how decision makers cope when faced with trade-offs between a higher quality alternative and a lower price alternative in situations where both alternatives involve relatively unfavorable versus relatively favorable values for quality. ... Full text Cite

Valuation of Multiple Environmental Programs

Journal Article Journal of Risk and Uncertainty · January 1, 2000 We examined sequence effects on willingness-to-pay (WTP) when people evaluate a series of environmental goods. Each respondent evaluated five different environmental goods using WTP and four evaluative attitude ratings. There was a strong sequence effect: ... Full text Cite

Attribute Identities Matter: Subjective Perceptions of Attribute Characteristics

Journal Article Marketing Letters · January 1, 2000 Recent research indicates that attributes vary along multiple dimensions with implications for how trade-offs are resolved during choice. We present an exploratory study of the dimensionality underlying naïve subjects' ratings of attributes on the characte ... Full text Cite

Juror judgments in civil cases: Hindsight effects on judgments of liability for punitive damages

Journal Article Law and Human Behavior · September 13, 1999 An experiment was conducted to investigate whether hindsight bias influences an important class of legal decisions - civil jurors' judgments of liability for punitive damages. Jury-eligible citizens were shown a videotaped summary of the circumstances surr ... Full text Cite

Juror judgments in civil cases: Effects of plaintiff's requests and plaintiff's identity on punitive damage awards

Journal Article Law and Human Behavior · August 5, 1999 Two experiments were conducted to study the manner in which civil jurors assess punitive damage awards. Jury-eligible citizens were shown a videotaped summary of an environmental damage lawsuit and told that the defendant had already paid compensatory dama ... Full text Cite

Emotional Trade-Off Difficulty and Choice

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · May 1, 1999 In this article, the authors explore whether choice patterns are sensitive to the potential of relevant trade-offs to elicit negative emotion. Across three experiments, decision makers increasingly use a choice strategy that maximizes quality at the expens ... Full text Cite

Reply to Vidmar

Journal Article Law and Human Behavior · 1999 Cite

Measuring Constructed Preferences: Towards a Building Code

Journal Article Journal of Risk and Uncertainty · January 1, 1999 A "building code" for preference measurement is needed in a world in which many expressions of preference are constructed when people are asked a valuation question. Construction of preferences means that preference measurement is best viewed as architectu ... Full text Cite

Emotional trade-off difficulty and choice

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · January 1, 1999 In this article, the authors explore whether choice patterns are sensitive to the potential of relevant trade-offs to elicit negative emotion. Across three experiments, decision makers increasingly use a choice strategy that maximizes quality at the expens ... Full text Cite

A study of juror and jury judgments in civil cases: Deciding liability for punitive damages

Journal Article Law and Human Behavior · June 20, 1998 A study was conducted to investigate civil juries' decisions concerning defendants' liability for punitive damages in tort cases. A total of 121 six- member mock juries composed of jury-service-eligible citizens were presented summaries of previously decid ... Full text Cite

Product Familiarity and the Expression of Preferences

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · February 25, 1998 Cite

Behavioral Decision Research: An Overview

Chapter · 1998 Any psychologist who manipulates an independent variable that affects a psychological construct or who uses a numerical dependent variable to measure a psychological construct will want to study this book. ... Cite

Constructive consumer choice processes

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · January 1, 1998 Consumer decision making has been a focal interest in consumer research, and consideration of current marketplace trends (e.g., technological change, an information explosion) indicates that this topic will continue to be critically important. We argue tha ... Full text Cite

Product category familiarity and preference construction

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · January 1, 1998 Marketers often base decisions about marketing strategies on the results of research designed to elicit information about consumers' preferences. A large body of research indicates, however, that preferences often are labile. That is, preferences can be re ... Full text Cite

Choice processing in emotionally difficult decisions.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition · March 1997 Choice conflicts between one's important values may cause negative emotion. This article extends the standard effort-accuracy approach to explaining task influences on decision processing by arguing that coping goals will interact with effort minimization ... Full text Cite

Factors affecting the impact of negatively and positively framed ad messages

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · January 1, 1997 This article examines the effects of negative and positive framing of ad claims on consumers' choices and attitudes. Propositions about how the extent of processing before choice affects the relative impact of claims-related versus advertising tactics-rela ... Full text Cite

When time is money: Decision behavior under opportunity-cost time pressure

Journal Article Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · January 1, 1996 Decison-making dilemmas can arise because errors may result either from deciding too soon or from delaying decisions too long. Delay can result in lost opportunities or reductions in payoffs from the most accurate decision. This paper investigates decision ... Full text Cite

Do risk information programs promote mitigating behavior?

Journal Article Journal of Risk and Uncertainty · May 1, 1995 This article reports the results of a panel study investigating the effects of different radon risk information booklets on households' decisions to undertake mitigation. Multinomial logit models are used to describe how differences in the design of the in ... Full text Cite

Issues in ecosystem valuation: improving information for decision making

Journal Article Ecological Economics · January 1, 1995 In Spring 1991, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency convened an expert group of ecologists, economists and other social scientists for the purpose of advancing the state of the art of ecosystem valuation methods. This Ecosystem Valuation Forum was org ... Full text Cite

A Perspective on Using Computers to Monitor Information Acquisition

Journal Article Advances in Consumer Research · 1995 Cite

An Information Processing Perspective on Choice

Journal Article Psychology of Learning and Motivation Advances in Research and Theory · January 1, 1995 This chapter discusses that people use a variety of strategies to solve decision problems, and it depends on the properties of the choice task as to which strategies they use. Selecting a particular strategy, or deciding how to decide, results from a trade ... Full text Cite

Thinking Aloud: Insights Into Information Processing

Journal Article Psychological Science · January 1, 1994 Full text Cite

How people respond to contingent valuation questions: A verbal protocol analysis of willingness to pay for an environmental regulation

Journal Article Journal of Environmental Economics and Management · January 1, 1994 This paper investigates what a respondent is thinking when answering a willingness-to-pay question in a contingent valuation, using a "think aloud" technique from psychology called verbal protocol analysis. The willingness-to-pay responses we observed seem ... Full text Cite

The costs and benefits of alternative measures of search behavior: Comments on Böckenholt and Hynan

Journal Article Journal of Behavioral Decision Making · January 1, 1994 Full text Cite

The Adaptive Decision Maker

Book · May 28, 1993 Demonstrates how decision makers balance effort and accuracy considerations and predict the particular choice of strategy. ... Cite

Correlation, Conflict, and Choice

Journal Article Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition · January 1, 1993 We examined the degree to which individuals adapt their decision processes to the degree of interattribute correlation and conflict characterizing a decision problem. On the basis of an effort-accuracy framework for adaptive decision making, we predicted t ... Full text Cite

Behavioral decision research: A constructive processing perspective

Journal Article Annual Review of Psychology · January 1, 1992 Full text Cite

A constructive process view of decision making: Multiple strategies in judgment and choice

Journal Article Acta Psychologica · January 1, 1992 A viewpoint that has recently emerged in decision research is that preferences for objects of any complexity are often constructed - not merely revealed - in generating a response to a judgement or choice task. This paper reviews a program of research that ... Full text Cite

The Impact of accuracy and effort feedback and goals on adaptive decision behavior

Journal Article Journal of Behavioral Decision Making · January 1, 1990 This paper examines the impact of accuracy feedback, effort feedback, and emphasis on either a goal of maximizing accuracy relative to effort or minimizing effort relative to accuracy on decision processes. Feedback on the accuracy of decisions leads to mo ... Full text Cite

Understanding Contingent Choice: A Computer Simulation Approach

Journal Article IEEE Transactions on Systems Man and Cybernetics · January 1, 1990 When making choices, people use a variety of information processing strategies, contingent upon a number of task and context variables. An approach to investigating contingent decision behavior using an effort/accuracy framework, production system modeling ... Full text Cite

A componential analysis of cognitive effort in choice

Journal Article Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · January 1, 1990 We examine the effort required to execute decision strategies and propose a set of elementary information processes (EIPs) (e.g., reads, additions, comparisons) as a common language for describing these strategies. Based upon these component processes, a m ... Full text Cite

Information displays and preference reversals

Journal Article Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · January 1, 1988 Preference reversals occur when a decision maker prefers one option to another in one response mode but reverses that ordering when preferences are elicited in another response mode. We report the results of two experiments which significantly impact the f ... Full text Cite

Adaptive Strategy Selection in Decision Making

Journal Article Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition · January 1, 1988 The role of effort and accuracy in the adaptive use of decision processes is examined. A computer simulation using the concept of elementary information processes identified heuristic choice strategies that approximate the accuracy of normative procedures ... Full text Cite

How important is information format? An experimental study of home energy audit programs

Journal Article Journal of Policy Analysis and Management · January 1986 AbstractAmong alternative regulatory responses, information provision programs are receiving increasing attention despite the decidedly mixed evidence about their effectiveness. This paper provides detailed experimental evi ... Full text Cite

COGNITIVE CONSIDERATIONS IN DESIGNING EFFECTIVE LABELS FOR PRESENTING RISK INFORMATION

Journal Article JOURNAL OF PUBLIC POLICY & MARKETING · January 1, 1986 Link to item Cite

EFFORT AND ACCURACY IN CHOICE.

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 1985 It has been hypothesized that strategy selection is, in part, a function of (1) the ability of a strategy to produce an accurate response and (2) the strategy's demand for mental resources or effort. The authors examine effort and accuracy and their role i ... Full text Cite

MULTIATTRIBUTE RISKY CHOICE BEHAVIOR: THE EDTING OF COMPLEX PROSPECTS.

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 1984 This investigation draws upon concepts from prospect theory and multiattribute utility theory in an examination of the multiattribute risky choice behavior of 128 managers. The questions of how managers edit multiatribute prospects and how editing relates ... Full text Cite

Risk Attitudes in the Telecommunications Industry

Journal Article The Bell Journal of Economics · 1983 Full text Cite

Contingent decision behavior

Journal Article Psychological Bulletin · September 1, 1982 Reviews the literature showing the effects of task and context variables on decision behavior and evaluates alternative theories for handling task and context effects. These frameworks include (a) cost/benefit principles, (b) perceptual processes, and (c) ... Full text Cite

Note—Further Tests of Aspiration Level Effects in Risky Choice Behavior

Journal Article Management Science · August 1981 This Note extends the work reported in Payne, Laughhunn, and Crum (Payne, J. W., D. J. Laughhunn, R. Crum. 1980. Translation of gambles and aspiration level effects in risky choice behavior. Management Sci. 26 1039–1060.) on the need to incorporat ... Full text Cite

MANAGERIAL RISK PREFERENCES FOR BELOW-TARGET RETURNS.

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 1980 A report is presented on the risk preferences for below target returns of 224 managers from the U. S. , Canada, and Europe. When only non-ruinous losses were involved, 71% of the managers were risk seeking for below target returns. The distribution of risk ... Full text Cite

TRANSLATION OF GAMBLES AND ASPIRATION LEVEL EFFECTS IN RISKY CHOICE BEHAVIOR.

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 1980 Two recent models of risky decision-making have emphasized the importance of a target return or a reference point in determining preferences and choices among gambles. Target returns and reference points represent variations on the concept of an aspiration ... Full text Cite

Risky choice: An examination of information acquisition behavior.

Journal Article Memory & cognition · September 1978 The monitoring of information acquisition behavior, along with other process tracing measures such as response times, was used to examine how individuals process information about gambles into a decision. Subjects indicated preferences among specially cons ... Full text Cite

Exploring predecisional behavior: An alternative approach to decision research

Journal Article Organizational Behavior and Human Performance · January 1, 1978 A trend in the study of decision behavior is the increased emphasis being placed on understanding the psychological processes underlying observed judgments or choices. Unfortunately, the input-output analyses that have been used by most decision researcher ... Full text Cite

Crime seriousness, recidivism risk, and causal attributions in judgments of prison term by students and experts

Journal Article Journal of Applied Psychology · October 1, 1977 Two important factors in determining the assignment of prison term are crime seriousness and risk of recidivism. Although seriousness can be judged from the crime category, risk judgments require further details about the offense and the offender. 64 colle ... Full text Cite

Task complexity and contingent processing in decision making: An information search and protocol analysis

Journal Article Organizational Behavior and Human Performance · January 1, 1976 Two process tracing techniques, explicit information search and verbal protocols, were used to examine the information processing strategies subjects use in reaching a decision. Subjects indicated preferences among apartments. The number of alternatives av ... Full text Cite

Relation of perceived risk to preferences among gambles

Journal Article Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance · January 1, 1975 Investigated the concept of risk and its role in determining preferences, using pairs of specifically constructed 3-outcome gambles. Ss were 47 undergraduates. The risk dimensions, probabilities of winning and losing, and amounts to be won or lost were dif ... Full text Cite

Alternative approaches to decision making under risk: Moments versus risk dimensions

Journal Article Psychological Bulletin · December 1, 1973 Suggests that the literature on individual decision making under risk is characterized by 2 approaches to the description of gambles. The 1st describes gambles as probability distributions over sets of outcomes. Models of decision making developed within t ... Full text Cite

Preferences among gambles with equal underlying distributions

Journal Article Journal of Experimental Psychology · January 1, 1971 Explored the relative merit of risk dimension (probabilities of winning and losing, and amounts to be won or lost) and moment (expected value, variance, and skewness) explanations of decision making under risk, using pairs of specially constructed duplex g ... Full text Cite

Perspective and form ratio as determinants of relative slant judgments

Journal Article Journal of Experimental Psychology · September 1, 1969 Elicited judgments of relative slant by a paired-comparison method from 24 undergraduates Ss in each of 3 experiments. The stimuli were computer-generated slides representing regular dot patterns (Exp. I), regular line patterns (Exp. II), or random dot pat ... Full text Cite

Perspective and the rotating trapezoid.

Journal Article Journal of the Optical Society of America · March 1968 Full text Cite