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Rank-based alternatives to mean-based ensemble models of satisfaction with earnings : comment on Putnam-Farr and Morewedge (2020)
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Wort, Finnian, Walasek, Lukasz and Brown, Gordon D. A. (2022) Rank-based alternatives to mean-based ensemble models of satisfaction with earnings : comment on Putnam-Farr and Morewedge (2020). Journal of Experimental Psychology : General, 151 (11). pp. 2963-2967. doi:10.1037/xge0001237 ISSN 0096-3445.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001237
Abstract
How much satisfaction do we derive from a new salary or from receiving a bonus payment in an experiment? People do not judge monetary amounts in isolation but compare them to other amounts—judgments are context sensitive. A key question is, however, how context affects judgment. Across eight experiments, Putnam-Farr and Morewedge (2020) showed that people’s self-reported satisfaction with a sum of money is predicted by the difference between that amount and the highest or lowest amount received by others. The authors found no evidence that people’s judgments are sensitive to the ranked position of a monetary amount among other rewards. Putnam-Farr and Morewedge explained their results with reference to the ensemble representation literature, which shows that people can accurately estimate summary statistics, such as the maximum or mean, of stimulus distributions. In this commentary, we argue that their proposed interpretation is inconsistent with extensive theoretical and empirical research showing that judgments of stimuli reflect the relative ranked position of those stimuli within a comparison context. Building on this research, we show that the experimental results reported by Putnam-Farr and Morewedge can be explained on the assumption that people use contextual information to infer a distribution of monetary amounts and judge individual amounts by their relative ranked position within that inferred distribution. This inferred distribution theory accounts for empirical results reported in the original study while remaining consistent with the general and well-established principle of rank-based judgment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HF Commerce |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Psychology | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Wages--Psychological aspects, Happiness , Income distribution -- Psychological aspects, Job satisfaction | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Experimental Psychology : General | ||||||||
| Publisher: | American Psychological Association | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0096-3445 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | November 2022 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 151 | ||||||||
| Number: | 11 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 2963-2967 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1037/xge0001237 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | ©American Psychological Association, 2022. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published in the APA journal. Please do not copy or cite without author's permission. The final article is available, upon publication, at: https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001237 | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 23 March 2022 | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 23 March 2022 |
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