Inferiority, not similarity of the decoy to target, is what drives the transfer of attention underlying the attraction effect: Evidence from an eye-tracking study with real choices.
Krol and Krol address a specific problem in the decoy literature: recent studies had reported that the attraction effect fails to replicate when options are presented pictorially rather than as abstract numbers. Their argument is that the pictorial setting makes the similarity between decoy and target salient, while the abstract setting emphasises the inferiority relationship between them, and that inferiority is what the effect actually depends on. They designed a study in which both similarity and inferiority are equally easy to judge, their relative strength simple to manipulate, and the choices incentivised rather than hypothetical. Using eye-tracking, they found that the transfer of attention towards an undesirable option, and the effect itself, tracked inferiority rather than similarity. This publication cites it for the mechanism behind the decoy effect and as a partial reconciliation of the demonstrations with the failures to replicate.
Krol and Krol address a specific problem in the decoy literature: recent studies had reported that the attraction effect fails to replicate when options are presented pictorially rather than as abstract numbers. Their argument is that the pictorial setting makes the similarity between decoy and target salient, while the abstract setting emphasises the inferiority relationship between them, and that inferiority is what the effect actually depends on. They designed a study in which both similarity and inferiority are equally easy to judge, their relative strength simple to manipulate, and the choices incentivised rather than hypothetical. Using eye-tracking, they found that the transfer of attention towards an undesirable option, and the effect itself, tracked inferiority rather than similarity. This publication cites it for the mechanism behind the decoy effect and as a partial reconciliation of the demonstrations with the failures to replicate.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Krol, M., & Krol, M. E. (2019). 'Inferiority, not similarity of the decoy to target, is what drives the transfer of attention underlying the attraction effect.' Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics, 12(2), 88-104. Eye-tracking with incentivised rather than hypothetical choices. doi:10.1037/npe0000104
Where we use it
- The Option You Were Never Meant to Buy, Why We Act
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1037/npe0000104
DOI: 10.1037/npe0000104