title: The Evaluative Advantage of Novel Alternatives: An Information-Sampling Account.
abstract: New products, services, and ideas are often evaluated more favorably than similar but older ones. Although several explanations of this phenomenon have been proposed, we identify an overlooked asymmetry in information about new and old items that emerges when people seek positive experiences and learn about the qualities of (noisy) alternatives by experiencing them. The reason for the asymmetry is that people avoid rechoosing alternatives that previously led to poor outcomes; hence, additional feedback on their qualities is precluded. Negative quality estimates, even when caused by noise, thus tend to persist. This negative bias takes time to develop, and affects old alternatives more strongly than similar but newer alternatives. We analyze a simple learning model and demonstrate the process by which people would tend to evaluate a new alternative more positively than an older alternative with the same payoff distribution. The results from two experimental studies (Ns = 769 and 805) support the predictions of our model.
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona Graduate School of Economics Barcelona School of Management, Universitat Pompeu Fabra gael.le-mens@upf.edu.
authors.forename: Gaël
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Le Mens
authors.affiliation: The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, The Hebrew University.
authors.forename: Yaakov
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kareev
authors.affiliation: The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, The Hebrew University.
authors.forename: Judith
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Avrahami
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making; D030141:Feedback, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008960:Models, Psychological
keywords: attitudes; information sampling; judgment; learning; novelty; open data