Stephen Worchel
Social psychologist whose cookie jar experiments are cited constantly for a claim cruder than the one they made.
Who they are
Worchel, with Jerry Lee and Akanbi Adewole, did not simply compare scarce with abundant. They varied how the scarcity came about, which is the part that makes the finding useful and the part that rarely survives retelling.
Key papers
Worchel, S., Lee, J., & Adewole, A. (1975). Effects of supply and demand on ratings of object value. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(5), 906-914.
Key ideas
Cookies in scarce supply were rated more desirable than cookies in abundant supply.
Cookies were rated more valuable when their supply changed from abundant to scarce than when they were constantly scarce.
Cookies scarce because of high demand were rated higher than cookies scarce because of an accident, and constantly abundant cookies beat cookies that began scarce and became abundant. A second study addressed demand characteristics.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- doi:10.1037/0022-3514.32.5.906