L D Nelson
Biographic Data
| ID | 102853 |
|---|---|
| NAME | L D Nelson |
| GIVEN NAMES | L D |
| FAMILY NAME | Nelson |
| SIGNATURE | NELSON L D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1148-4461 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 170 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1973 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Brief Commentary: Is “4 for $16” Better than “4 for $15.30”? Testing the Replicability of the Price Divisibility Effect
Although higher prices generally lead to lower demand, research on the price divisibility effect suggests that consumers are sometimes willing to pay more for a multipack if its price is divisible by the number of units it contains. For instance, a seven-pack of shoelaces might be more appealing at the divisible price of $14 than at the lower, but non-divisible, price of $13. The original Journal of Consumer Research (JCR) article documenting thi…
Evaluations are inherently comparative, but are compared to what
Understanding how objective quantities are translated into subjective evaluations has long been of interest to social scientists, medical professionals, and policymakers with an interest in how people process and act on quantitative information. The theory of decision by sampling proposes a comparative procedure: Values seem larger or smaller based on how they rank in a comparison set, the decision sample. But what values are included in this dec…
Retracted Article: High replicability of newly discovered social-behavioural findings is achievable
Failures to replicate evidence of new discoveries have forced scientists to ask whether this unreliability is due to suboptimal implementation of methods or whether presumptively optimal methods are not, in fact, optimal. This paper reports an investigation by four coordinated laboratories of the prospective replicability of 16 novel experimental findings using rigour-enhancing practices: confirmatory tests, large sample sizes, preregistration an…
Bundle Selection and Variety Seeking: The Importance of Combinatorics
When consumers select bundles of goods, they may construct those sequentially (e.g., building a bouquet one flower at a time) or make a single choice of a prepackaged bundle (e.g., selecting an already-complete bouquet). Previous research suggested that the sequential construction of bundles encourages variety seeking. The present research revisits this claim and offers a theoretical explanation rooted in combinatorics and norm communication. Whe…
Specification curve analysis
Psychology's Renaissance
In 2010–2012, a few largely coincidental events led experimental psychologists to realize that their approach to collecting, analyzing, and reporting data made it too easy to publish false-positive findings. This sparked a period of methodological reflection that we review here and call Psychology's Renaissance. We begin by describing how psychologists’ concerns with publication bias shifted from worrying about file-drawered studies to worrying a…
Rejecting a bad option feels like choosing a good one
Across 4,151 participants, the authors demonstrate a novel framing effect, attribute matching, whereby matching a salient attribute of a decision frame with that of a decision's options facilitates decision-making. This attribute matching is shown to increase decision confidence and, ultimately, consensus estimates by increasing feelings of metacognitive ease. In Study 1, participants choosing the more attractive of two faces or rejecting the les…
P-curve: A key to the file-drawer.
Because scientists tend to report only studies (publication bias) or analyses (p-hacking) that "work," readers must ask, "Are these effects true, or do they merely reflect selective reporting?" We introduce p-curve as a way to answer this question. P-curve is the distribution of statistically significant p values for a set of studies (ps < .05). Because only true effects are expected to generate right-skewed p-curves-containing more low (.01s) th…
P -Curve and Effect Size: Correcting for Publication Bias Using Only Significant Results
Journals tend to publish only statistically significant evidence, creating a scientific record that markedly overstates the size of effects. We provide a new tool that corrects for this bias without requiring access to nonsignificant results. It capitalizes on the fact that the distribution of significant p values, p-curve, is a function of the true underlying effect. Researchers armed only with sample sizes and test results of the published find…
Paying more when paying for others
Social behavior is heavily influenced by the perception of the behaviors of others. We considered how perceptions (and misperceptions) of kindness can increase generosity in economic transactions. We investigated how these perceptions can alter behavior in a novel real-life situation that pitted kindness against selfishness. That situation, consumer elective pricing, is defined by an economic transaction allowing people to purchase goods or servi…
Life after P-Hacking
Commitment and Behavior Change: Evidence from the Field
Influencing behavior change is an ongoing challenge in psychology, economics, and consumer behavior research. Building on previous work on commitment, self-signaling, and the principle of consistency, a large, intensive field experiment (N = 2,416) examined the effect of hotel guests' commitment to practice environmentally friendly behavior during their stay. Notably, commitment was symbolic-guests were unaware of the experiment and of the fact t…
Correcting the past: Failures to replicate psi
Across 7 experiments (N = 3,289), we replicate the procedure of Experiments 8 and 9 from Bem (2011), which had originally demonstrated retroactive facilitation of recall. We failed to replicate that finding. We further conduct a meta-analysis of all replication attempts of these experiments and find that the average effect size (d = 0.04) is no different from 0. We discuss some reasons for differences between the results in this article and those…
False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant
In this article, we accomplish two things. First, we show that despite empirical psychologists’ nominal endorsement of a low rate of false-positive findings (≤ .05), flexibility in data collection, analysis, and reporting dramatically increases actual false-positive rates. In many cases, a researcher is more likely to falsely find evidence that an effect exists than to correctly find evidence that it does not. We present computer simulations and …
Intuitive Biases in Choice versus Estimation: Implications for the Wisdom of Crowds
Although researchers have documented many instances of crowd wisdom, it is important to know whether some kinds of judgments may lead the crowd astray, whether crowds’ judgments improve with feedback over time, and whether crowds’ judgments can be improved by changing the way judgments are elicited. We investigated these questions in a sports gambling context (predictions against point spreads) believed to elicit crowd wisdom. In a season-long ex…
The virtues of opaque prose: How lay beliefs about fluency influence perceptions of quality
The effect of accuracy motivation on anchoring and adjustment: Do people adjust from provided anchors
Increasing accuracy motivation (e.g., by providing monetary incentives for accuracy) often fails to increase adjustment away from provided anchors, a result that has led researchers to conclude that people do not effortfully adjust away from such anchors. We challenge this conclusion. First, we show that people are typically uncertain about which way to adjust from provided anchors and that this uncertainty often causes people to believe that the…
Affirmed yet unaware: Exploring the role of awareness in the process of self-affirmation
Three studies investigated whether self-affirmation can proceed without awareness, whether people are aware of the influence of experimental self-affirmations, and whether such awareness facilitates or undermines the self-affirmation process. The authors found that self-affirmation effects could proceed without awareness, as implicit self-affirming primes (utilizing sentence-unscrambling procedures) produced standard self-affirmation effects (Stu…
Enhancing the Television-Viewing Experience through Commercial Interruptions
Consumers prefer to watch television programs without commercials. Yet, in spite of most consumers' extensive experience with watching television, we propose that commercial interruptions can actually improve the television-viewing experience. Although consumers do not foresee it, their enjoyment diminishes over time. Commercial interruptions can disrupt this adaptation process and restore the intensity of consumers' enjoyment. Six studies demons…
The downside of feeling better: Self-regard repair harms performance
View retraction statement:Statement of Retraction
From student to superhero: Situational primes shape future helping
Seeing approach motivation in the avoidance behavior of others: Implications for an understanding of pluralistic ignorance
Four studies tested the hypothesis that observers tend to interpret others' actions as approach motivated even when they recognize that their own identical choices were motivated by avoidance. Study 1 found that voters in the 2000 U.S. Presidential election who chose a candidate primarily because of their aversion to the alternative thought that others who voted for the same candidate liked him more than they themselves did. In Studies 2, 3, and …
Do Messages about Health Risks Threaten the Self? Increasing the Acceptance of Threatening Health Messages Via Self-Affirmation
Two studies demonstrate that self-image maintenance processes affect the acceptance of personally relevant health messages. Participants who completed a self-affirmation were less defensive and more accepting of health information. In Study 1, female participants (high vs. low relevance) read an article linking caffeine consumption to breast cancer. High-relevance women rejected the information more than did low-relevance women; however, affirmed…
Structural Conduciveness, Personality Characteristics and Death Anxiety
Several writers suggest that social integration attenuates death anxiety. This hypothesized relationship is conceptualized as being a result of efforts to relieve cognitive dissonance. Since the magnitude of reward derived from social participation varies with social status, it is hypothesized that death anxiety varies directly with social status. Since position in the life cycle affects the salience of death and consequently the possibility of a…
Religiosity and Death Anxiety: A Multi-Dimensional Analysis
Specification curve analysis
The effect of accuracy motivation on anchoring and adjustment: Do people adjust from provided anchors
Increasing accuracy motivation (e.g., by providing monetary incentives for accuracy) often fails to increase adjustment away from provided anchors, a result that has led researchers to conclude that people do not effortfully adjust away from such anchors. We challenge this conclusion. First, we show that people are typically uncertain about which way to adjust from provided anchors and that this uncertainty often causes people to believe that the…
Commitment and Behavior Change: Evidence from the Field
Influencing behavior change is an ongoing challenge in psychology, economics, and consumer behavior research. Building on previous work on commitment, self-signaling, and the principle of consistency, a large, intensive field experiment (N = 2,416) examined the effect of hotel guests' commitment to practice environmentally friendly behavior during their stay. Notably, commitment was symbolic-guests were unaware of the experiment and of the fact t…
From student to superhero: Situational primes shape future helping
Affirmed yet unaware: Exploring the role of awareness in the process of self-affirmation
Three studies investigated whether self-affirmation can proceed without awareness, whether people are aware of the influence of experimental self-affirmations, and whether such awareness facilitates or undermines the self-affirmation process. The authors found that self-affirmation effects could proceed without awareness, as implicit self-affirming primes (utilizing sentence-unscrambling procedures) produced standard self-affirmation effects (Stu…
Enhancing the Television-Viewing Experience through Commercial Interruptions
Consumers prefer to watch television programs without commercials. Yet, in spite of most consumers' extensive experience with watching television, we propose that commercial interruptions can actually improve the television-viewing experience. Although consumers do not foresee it, their enjoyment diminishes over time. Commercial interruptions can disrupt this adaptation process and restore the intensity of consumers' enjoyment. Six studies demons…
Correcting the past: Failures to replicate psi
Across 7 experiments (N = 3,289), we replicate the procedure of Experiments 8 and 9 from Bem (2011), which had originally demonstrated retroactive facilitation of recall. We failed to replicate that finding. We further conduct a meta-analysis of all replication attempts of these experiments and find that the average effect size (d = 0.04) is no different from 0. We discuss some reasons for differences between the results in this article and those…
The virtues of opaque prose: How lay beliefs about fluency influence perceptions of quality
Seeing approach motivation in the avoidance behavior of others: Implications for an understanding of pluralistic ignorance
Four studies tested the hypothesis that observers tend to interpret others' actions as approach motivated even when they recognize that their own identical choices were motivated by avoidance. Study 1 found that voters in the 2000 U.S. Presidential election who chose a candidate primarily because of their aversion to the alternative thought that others who voted for the same candidate liked him more than they themselves did. In Studies 2, 3, and …
Intuitive Biases in Choice versus Estimation: Implications for the Wisdom of Crowds
Although researchers have documented many instances of crowd wisdom, it is important to know whether some kinds of judgments may lead the crowd astray, whether crowds’ judgments improve with feedback over time, and whether crowds’ judgments can be improved by changing the way judgments are elicited. We investigated these questions in a sports gambling context (predictions against point spreads) believed to elicit crowd wisdom. In a season-long ex…
Religiosity and Death Anxiety: A Multi-Dimensional Analysis
The Impact of Devotionalism and Attendance on Ordinary and Emergency Helping Behavior
L. D. Nelson, Russell R. Dynes, The Impact of Devotionalism and Attendance on Ordinary and Emergency Helping Behavior, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Mar., 1976), pp. 47-59
Retracted Article: High replicability of newly discovered social-behavioural findings is achievable
Failures to replicate evidence of new discoveries have forced scientists to ask whether this unreliability is due to suboptimal implementation of methods or whether presumptively optimal methods are not, in fact, optimal. This paper reports an investigation by four coordinated laboratories of the prospective replicability of 16 novel experimental findings using rigour-enhancing practices: confirmatory tests, large sample sizes, preregistration an…
Rejecting a bad option feels like choosing a good one
Across 4,151 participants, the authors demonstrate a novel framing effect, attribute matching, whereby matching a salient attribute of a decision frame with that of a decision's options facilitates decision-making. This attribute matching is shown to increase decision confidence and, ultimately, consensus estimates by increasing feelings of metacognitive ease. In Study 1, participants choosing the more attractive of two faces or rejecting the les…
Paying more when paying for others
Social behavior is heavily influenced by the perception of the behaviors of others. We considered how perceptions (and misperceptions) of kindness can increase generosity in economic transactions. We investigated how these perceptions can alter behavior in a novel real-life situation that pitted kindness against selfishness. That situation, consumer elective pricing, is defined by an economic transaction allowing people to purchase goods or servi…
Bundle Selection and Variety Seeking: The Importance of Combinatorics
When consumers select bundles of goods, they may construct those sequentially (e.g., building a bouquet one flower at a time) or make a single choice of a prepackaged bundle (e.g., selecting an already-complete bouquet). Previous research suggested that the sequential construction of bundles encourages variety seeking. The present research revisits this claim and offers a theoretical explanation rooted in combinatorics and norm communication. Whe…
Social Class and Helping Behavior
In the search for useful predictor variables of helping behavior, the ef fect of social class has been repeatedly investigated. Yet no relationship between social class and helping has been consistently demonstrated. Some type of relationship has generally been found or implied, but researchers are divided on the direction of the relationship. The two dominant themes evident in inquiries into the effect of social class on unreciprocated helping b…
Proximity to Emergency and Helping Behavior: Data from the Lubbock Tornado Disaster
Social Class and Helping Behavior
In the search for useful predictor variables of helping behavior, the ef fect of social class has been repeatedly investigated. Yet no relationship between social class and helping has been consistently demonstrated. Some type of relationship has generally been found or implied, but researchers are divided on the direction of the relationship. The two dominant themes evident in inquiries into the effect of social class on unreciprocated helping b…
Functions and Dimensions of Religion
The vitality of religion's frustration reduction function is examined in terms of death fear and self-esteem, and the utility of religion in promoting norm adherence is assessed through analysis of the effects of religion on orientations toward the social responsibility norm. Religion is dimensionalized into public and private ritual activity (church attendance and devotionalism), religious experience and religious orthodoxy. Results from a state…
Personality Correlates of Helping Behavior
571 male members of volunteer groups and 699 nonvolunteers scored significantly differently on Cattell's 16 PF scale, volunteers being extroverted (out-going, happy-go-lucky, venturesome, and tenderminded), and scoring lower on shrewd, liberal, and self-sufficient
A Factor Analytic Inquiry into the Multidimensionality of Death Anxiety
The multidimensionality of the concept of death anxiety is highlighted and previous attempts to clarify the concept are reviewed. Advantages of the factor analytic method of concept elaboration are presented. A study is reported in which four dimensions of death anxiety were identified and a test instrument for the measurement of each dimension constructed. A group of 135 students and a statewide probability sample of 1279 respondents were used i…
After Suicide
Religion and Society in Interaction: The Sociology of Religion
The Impact of Devotionalism and Attendance on Ordinary and Emergency Helping Behavior
L. D. Nelson, Russell R. Dynes, The Impact of Devotionalism and Attendance on Ordinary and Emergency Helping Behavior, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Mar., 1976), pp. 47-59
Continuity in Helping Roles: A Comparison of Everyday and Emergency Role Performance
Structural Conduciveness, Personality Characteristics and Death Anxiety
Several writers suggest that social integration attenuates death anxiety. This hypothesized relationship is conceptualized as being a result of efforts to relieve cognitive dissonance. Since the magnitude of reward derived from social participation varies with social status, it is hypothesized that death anxiety varies directly with social status. Since position in the life cycle affects the salience of death and consequently the possibility of a…
Religiosity and Death Anxiety: A Multi-Dimensional Analysis
Do Messages about Health Risks Threaten the Self? Increasing the Acceptance of Threatening Health Messages Via Self-Affirmation
Two studies demonstrate that self-image maintenance processes affect the acceptance of personally relevant health messages. Participants who completed a self-affirmation were less defensive and more accepting of health information. In Study 1, female participants (high vs. low relevance) read an article linking caffeine consumption to breast cancer. High-relevance women rejected the information more than did low-relevance women; however, affirmed…
Seeing approach motivation in the avoidance behavior of others: Implications for an understanding of pluralistic ignorance
Four studies tested the hypothesis that observers tend to interpret others' actions as approach motivated even when they recognize that their own identical choices were motivated by avoidance. Study 1 found that voters in the 2000 U.S. Presidential election who chose a candidate primarily because of their aversion to the alternative thought that others who voted for the same candidate liked him more than they themselves did. In Studies 2, 3, and …
From student to superhero: Situational primes shape future helping
The downside of feeling better: Self-regard repair harms performance
View retraction statement:Statement of Retraction
Affirmed yet unaware: Exploring the role of awareness in the process of self-affirmation
Three studies investigated whether self-affirmation can proceed without awareness, whether people are aware of the influence of experimental self-affirmations, and whether such awareness facilitates or undermines the self-affirmation process. The authors found that self-affirmation effects could proceed without awareness, as implicit self-affirming primes (utilizing sentence-unscrambling procedures) produced standard self-affirmation effects (Stu…
Enhancing the Television-Viewing Experience through Commercial Interruptions
Consumers prefer to watch television programs without commercials. Yet, in spite of most consumers' extensive experience with watching television, we propose that commercial interruptions can actually improve the television-viewing experience. Although consumers do not foresee it, their enjoyment diminishes over time. Commercial interruptions can disrupt this adaptation process and restore the intensity of consumers' enjoyment. Six studies demons…
The virtues of opaque prose: How lay beliefs about fluency influence perceptions of quality
The effect of accuracy motivation on anchoring and adjustment: Do people adjust from provided anchors
Increasing accuracy motivation (e.g., by providing monetary incentives for accuracy) often fails to increase adjustment away from provided anchors, a result that has led researchers to conclude that people do not effortfully adjust away from such anchors. We challenge this conclusion. First, we show that people are typically uncertain about which way to adjust from provided anchors and that this uncertainty often causes people to believe that the…
False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant
In this article, we accomplish two things. First, we show that despite empirical psychologists’ nominal endorsement of a low rate of false-positive findings (≤ .05), flexibility in data collection, analysis, and reporting dramatically increases actual false-positive rates. In many cases, a researcher is more likely to falsely find evidence that an effect exists than to correctly find evidence that it does not. We present computer simulations and …
Intuitive Biases in Choice versus Estimation: Implications for the Wisdom of Crowds
Although researchers have documented many instances of crowd wisdom, it is important to know whether some kinds of judgments may lead the crowd astray, whether crowds’ judgments improve with feedback over time, and whether crowds’ judgments can be improved by changing the way judgments are elicited. We investigated these questions in a sports gambling context (predictions against point spreads) believed to elicit crowd wisdom. In a season-long ex…
Correcting the past: Failures to replicate psi
Across 7 experiments (N = 3,289), we replicate the procedure of Experiments 8 and 9 from Bem (2011), which had originally demonstrated retroactive facilitation of recall. We failed to replicate that finding. We further conduct a meta-analysis of all replication attempts of these experiments and find that the average effect size (d = 0.04) is no different from 0. We discuss some reasons for differences between the results in this article and those…
Life after P-Hacking
Commitment and Behavior Change: Evidence from the Field
Influencing behavior change is an ongoing challenge in psychology, economics, and consumer behavior research. Building on previous work on commitment, self-signaling, and the principle of consistency, a large, intensive field experiment (N = 2,416) examined the effect of hotel guests' commitment to practice environmentally friendly behavior during their stay. Notably, commitment was symbolic-guests were unaware of the experiment and of the fact t…
P-curve: A key to the file-drawer.
Because scientists tend to report only studies (publication bias) or analyses (p-hacking) that "work," readers must ask, "Are these effects true, or do they merely reflect selective reporting?" We introduce p-curve as a way to answer this question. P-curve is the distribution of statistically significant p values for a set of studies (ps < .05). Because only true effects are expected to generate right-skewed p-curves-containing more low (.01s) th…
Psychology (29 works) · Social Psychology (22 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (6 works) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (6 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (6 works) · Cognitive psychology (5 works) · Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion (5 works) · Epistemology (5 works)