Simona Botti
Biographic Data
| ID | 112884 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Simona Botti |
| GIVEN NAMES | Simona |
| FAMILY NAME | Botti |
| SIGNATURE | BOTTI S |
| AFFILIATIONS | London Business School |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9135-1644 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 157 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 10 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Physician, know thyself: Applying brand management principles to professional identity in academic medicine
Seeking Structure in Collections: Desire for Control Motivates Engagement in Collecting
Across six studies, we provide converging and robust lab and field evidence that the fundamental human desire for control motivates consumer engagement in collecting, defined as the act of acquiring items that belong to an existing collection. This is because consumers who desire control seek structure, which is created when interconnected components form a holistic entity. A collection can provide such a structure, as it comprises related items …
An Aversion to Intervention: How the Protestant Work Ethic Influences Preferences for Natural Healthcare
The term “natural” is ubiquitous in advertising and branding, but limited research has investigated how consumers respond and relate to naturalness. Some researchers have documented preferences for natural products, specifically food, but there has been scant investigation of the psychological antecedents of such preferences, especially in the critical, multi-trillion-dollar domain of healthcare. Using publicly available country-level data from 4…
How Political Ideology Shapes Preferences for Observably Inferior Products
While existing consumer research on political ideology often focuses on ideological differences in preferences for high-status, typically observably superior products, little is known about how political ideology may shape preferences for observably inferior products in non-status-signaling domains. Observably inferior products are product options that are dominated by alternatives along observable dimensions. We propose that, in non-status-signa…
Why Are Donors More Generous with Time Than Money? The Role of Perceived Control over Donations on Charitable Giving
Solicitation of time and money donations are central to the success of nonprofit organizations like charities and political groups. Although nonprofits tend to prefer money, experimental and field data demonstrate that donors prefer to donate time, even when doing so does less good for the cause. However, despite the importance of this asymmetry, little is known about its psychological underpinnings. In the current investigation, we identify a pr…
Consumers and Artificial Intelligence: An Experiential Perspective
Artificial intelligence (AI) helps companies offer important benefits to consumers, such as health monitoring with wearable devices, advice with recommender systems, peace of mind with smart household products, and convenience with voice-activated virtual assistants. However, although AI can be seen as a neutral tool to be evaluated on efficiency and accuracy, this approach does not consider the social and individual challenges that can occur whe…
Hoping for the Worst? A Paradoxical Preference for Bad News
Nine studies investigate when and why people may paradoxically prefer bad news—for example, hoping for an objectively worse injury or a higher-risk diagnosis over explicitly better alternatives. Using a combination of field surveys and randomized experiments, the research demonstrates that people may hope for relatively worse (vs. better) news in an effort to preemptively avoid subjectively difficult decisions (studies 1 and 2). This is because w…
Company Worth Keeping: Personal Control and Preferences for Brand Leaders
Brand leaders possess tremendous agency, with the ability to shape a sweeping variety of outcomes. Does this fact confer psychological value to consumers? We posit that external conditions that undermine feelings of personal control cause consumers to affiliate more with brand leaders. This occurs because affiliating with such high-agency brands gives consumers a sense of personal agency and thereby restores feelings of control. An initial study …
It’s the End of the Competition: When Social Comparison Is Not Always Motivating for Goal Achievement
Nowadays consumers can easily connect with others who are pursuing similar goals via smart devices and mobile apps. This technology also enables them to compare how well they are doing relative to others in a variety of contexts, ranging from online gaming to losing weight to loyalty programs. This research investigates consumers’ motivation to achieve a goal when they compare themselves with a superior other who has already attained the goal. Bu…
Wine for the Table: Self-Construal, Group Size, and Choice for Self and Others
This research examines how consumers make unilateral decisions on behalf of the self and multiple others, in situations where the chosen option will be shared and consumed jointly by the group-for instance, choosing wine for the table. Results across six studies using three different choice contexts (wine, books, and movies) demonstrate that such choices are shaped by the decision-maker's self-construal (independent vs. interdependent) and by the…
Seeking and Avoiding Choice Closure to Enhance Outcome Satisfaction
Consumers gain choice closure when they perceive a sense of finality over a past decision and limit comparisons between the selected and the forgone options. We investigate consumers’ ability to make strategic use of choice closure to enhance outcome satisfaction. Seven studies show that consumers experience greater satisfaction when they achieve choice closure with an inferior outcome and when they do not achieve choice closure with a superior o…
The Effect of an Interruption on Risk Decisions
Interruptions during consumer decision making are ubiquitous. In seven studies, we examine the consequences of a brief interruption during a financial risk decision. We identify a fundamental feature inherent in an interruption's temporal structure-a repeat exposure to the decision stimuli-and find that this re-exposure reduces decision stimuli's subjective novelty. This reduced novelty in turn reduces decision makers' apprehension and increases …
Feeling Economically Stuck: The Effect of Perceived Economic Mobility and Socioeconomic Status on Variety Seeking
Five studies provide converging evidence for the joint effect of perceived economic mobility and socioeconomic status (SES) on compensatory behavior, such that low SES consumers who perceive low economic mobility (i.e., economically stuck consumers) seek more variety than other consumers. We trace this effect to these consumers' desire to compensate for their low sense of personal control. Furthermore, we show that these consumers' variety-seekin…
Turning the Page: The Impact of Choice Closure on Satisfaction
After having made a purchase decision, consumers often revisit their choice and ponder forgone alternatives. This tendency can lower satisfaction with the selected alternative, especially when choices are difficult. We introduce the concept of "choice closure"--defined as the psychological process by which consumers come to perceive a decision to be final--and show that specific physical acts that are metaphorically associated with the concept of…
Power and Choice: Their Dynamic Interplay in Quenching the Thirst for Personal Control
Power and choice represent two fundamental forces that govern human behavior. Scholars have largely treated power as an interpersonal construct involving control over other individuals, whereas choice has largely been treated as an intrapersonal construct that concerns the ability to select a preferred course of action. Although these constructs have historically been studied separately, we propose that they share a common foundation—that both ar…
Decision speed and choice regret: When haste feels like waste
The Locus of Choice: Personal Causality and Satisfaction with Hedonic and Utilitarian Decisions
Consumers may consume the same products or services with different goals, for example, for their own pleasure—a hedonic goal—or to achieve some higher level purpose—a utilitarian goal. This article investigates whether this difference in goals influences satisfaction with an outcome that was either self-chosen or externally determined. In four experiments we manipulate consumption goals, controlling for the outcomes, the option valence, and wheth…
Tragic Choices: Autonomy and Emotional Responses to Medical Decisions
We investigate how making highly consequential, highly undesirable decisions affects emotions and preference for autonomy. We examine individuals facing real or hypothetical decisions to discontinue their infants' life support who either choose personally or have physicians choose for them. Findings from a multidisciplinary approach consisting of a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews and three laboratory studies reveal that perceived pers…
The Dark Side of Choice: When Choice Impairs Social Welfare
The provision of choice in terms of how people use goods and services has been proposed as a vehicle of improvement of social welfare. This article highlights some of the costs and benefits of creating choice, and it discusses how much choice policy makers and other agents (e.g., employers, retailers) should ideally grant and in what form they should grant it
When Choosing Is Not Deciding: The Effect of Perceived Responsibility on Satisfaction
Prior research has found differences in satisfaction for choosers and nonchoosers of the same outcome. Two studies show that differentiability of the choice-set options moderates this effect. When options are more differentiated, choice enhances consumers' satisfaction with positive and dissatisfaction with negative outcomes; when options are less differentiated, choosers experience the same level of satisfaction as nonchoosers, regardless of the…
The Psychological Pleasure and Pain of Choosing: When People Prefer Choosing at the Cost of Subsequent Outcome Satisfaction
This empirical investigation tested the hypothesis that the benefits of personal choosing are restricted to choices made from among attractive alternatives. Findings from vignette and laboratory studies show that contrary to people's self-predictions prior to actually choosing, choosers only proved more satisfied than nonchoosers when selecting from among more preferred alternatives. When selecting from among less preferred alternatives, nonchoos…
The Psychological Pleasure and Pain of Choosing: When People Prefer Choosing at the Cost of Subsequent Outcome Satisfaction
This empirical investigation tested the hypothesis that the benefits of personal choosing are restricted to choices made from among attractive alternatives. Findings from vignette and laboratory studies show that contrary to people's self-predictions prior to actually choosing, choosers only proved more satisfied than nonchoosers when selecting from among more preferred alternatives. When selecting from among less preferred alternatives, nonchoos…
The Locus of Choice: Personal Causality and Satisfaction with Hedonic and Utilitarian Decisions
Consumers may consume the same products or services with different goals, for example, for their own pleasure—a hedonic goal—or to achieve some higher level purpose—a utilitarian goal. This article investigates whether this difference in goals influences satisfaction with an outcome that was either self-chosen or externally determined. In four experiments we manipulate consumption goals, controlling for the outcomes, the option valence, and wheth…
Tragic Choices: Autonomy and Emotional Responses to Medical Decisions
We investigate how making highly consequential, highly undesirable decisions affects emotions and preference for autonomy. We examine individuals facing real or hypothetical decisions to discontinue their infants' life support who either choose personally or have physicians choose for them. Findings from a multidisciplinary approach consisting of a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews and three laboratory studies reveal that perceived pers…
When Choosing Is Not Deciding: The Effect of Perceived Responsibility on Satisfaction
Prior research has found differences in satisfaction for choosers and nonchoosers of the same outcome. Two studies show that differentiability of the choice-set options moderates this effect. When options are more differentiated, choice enhances consumers' satisfaction with positive and dissatisfaction with negative outcomes; when options are less differentiated, choosers experience the same level of satisfaction as nonchoosers, regardless of the…
Turning the Page: The Impact of Choice Closure on Satisfaction
After having made a purchase decision, consumers often revisit their choice and ponder forgone alternatives. This tendency can lower satisfaction with the selected alternative, especially when choices are difficult. We introduce the concept of "choice closure"--defined as the psychological process by which consumers come to perceive a decision to be final--and show that specific physical acts that are metaphorically associated with the concept of…
Decision speed and choice regret: When haste feels like waste
Wine for the Table: Self-Construal, Group Size, and Choice for Self and Others
This research examines how consumers make unilateral decisions on behalf of the self and multiple others, in situations where the chosen option will be shared and consumed jointly by the group-for instance, choosing wine for the table. Results across six studies using three different choice contexts (wine, books, and movies) demonstrate that such choices are shaped by the decision-maker's self-construal (independent vs. interdependent) and by the…
Feeling Economically Stuck: The Effect of Perceived Economic Mobility and Socioeconomic Status on Variety Seeking
Five studies provide converging evidence for the joint effect of perceived economic mobility and socioeconomic status (SES) on compensatory behavior, such that low SES consumers who perceive low economic mobility (i.e., economically stuck consumers) seek more variety than other consumers. We trace this effect to these consumers' desire to compensate for their low sense of personal control. Furthermore, we show that these consumers' variety-seekin…
How Political Ideology Shapes Preferences for Observably Inferior Products
While existing consumer research on political ideology often focuses on ideological differences in preferences for high-status, typically observably superior products, little is known about how political ideology may shape preferences for observably inferior products in non-status-signaling domains. Observably inferior products are product options that are dominated by alternatives along observable dimensions. We propose that, in non-status-signa…
Company Worth Keeping: Personal Control and Preferences for Brand Leaders
Brand leaders possess tremendous agency, with the ability to shape a sweeping variety of outcomes. Does this fact confer psychological value to consumers? We posit that external conditions that undermine feelings of personal control cause consumers to affiliate more with brand leaders. This occurs because affiliating with such high-agency brands gives consumers a sense of personal agency and thereby restores feelings of control. An initial study …
The Effect of an Interruption on Risk Decisions
Interruptions during consumer decision making are ubiquitous. In seven studies, we examine the consequences of a brief interruption during a financial risk decision. We identify a fundamental feature inherent in an interruption's temporal structure-a repeat exposure to the decision stimuli-and find that this re-exposure reduces decision stimuli's subjective novelty. This reduced novelty in turn reduces decision makers' apprehension and increases …
Why Are Donors More Generous with Time Than Money? The Role of Perceived Control over Donations on Charitable Giving
Solicitation of time and money donations are central to the success of nonprofit organizations like charities and political groups. Although nonprofits tend to prefer money, experimental and field data demonstrate that donors prefer to donate time, even when doing so does less good for the cause. However, despite the importance of this asymmetry, little is known about its psychological underpinnings. In the current investigation, we identify a pr…
Seeking and Avoiding Choice Closure to Enhance Outcome Satisfaction
Consumers gain choice closure when they perceive a sense of finality over a past decision and limit comparisons between the selected and the forgone options. We investigate consumers’ ability to make strategic use of choice closure to enhance outcome satisfaction. Seven studies show that consumers experience greater satisfaction when they achieve choice closure with an inferior outcome and when they do not achieve choice closure with a superior o…
The Psychological Pleasure and Pain of Choosing: When People Prefer Choosing at the Cost of Subsequent Outcome Satisfaction
This empirical investigation tested the hypothesis that the benefits of personal choosing are restricted to choices made from among attractive alternatives. Findings from vignette and laboratory studies show that contrary to people's self-predictions prior to actually choosing, choosers only proved more satisfied than nonchoosers when selecting from among more preferred alternatives. When selecting from among less preferred alternatives, nonchoos…
The Dark Side of Choice: When Choice Impairs Social Welfare
The provision of choice in terms of how people use goods and services has been proposed as a vehicle of improvement of social welfare. This article highlights some of the costs and benefits of creating choice, and it discusses how much choice policy makers and other agents (e.g., employers, retailers) should ideally grant and in what form they should grant it
When Choosing Is Not Deciding: The Effect of Perceived Responsibility on Satisfaction
Prior research has found differences in satisfaction for choosers and nonchoosers of the same outcome. Two studies show that differentiability of the choice-set options moderates this effect. When options are more differentiated, choice enhances consumers' satisfaction with positive and dissatisfaction with negative outcomes; when options are less differentiated, choosers experience the same level of satisfaction as nonchoosers, regardless of the…
Tragic Choices: Autonomy and Emotional Responses to Medical Decisions
We investigate how making highly consequential, highly undesirable decisions affects emotions and preference for autonomy. We examine individuals facing real or hypothetical decisions to discontinue their infants' life support who either choose personally or have physicians choose for them. Findings from a multidisciplinary approach consisting of a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews and three laboratory studies reveal that perceived pers…
Power and Choice: Their Dynamic Interplay in Quenching the Thirst for Personal Control
Power and choice represent two fundamental forces that govern human behavior. Scholars have largely treated power as an interpersonal construct involving control over other individuals, whereas choice has largely been treated as an intrapersonal construct that concerns the ability to select a preferred course of action. Although these constructs have historically been studied separately, we propose that they share a common foundation—that both ar…
Decision speed and choice regret: When haste feels like waste
The Locus of Choice: Personal Causality and Satisfaction with Hedonic and Utilitarian Decisions
Consumers may consume the same products or services with different goals, for example, for their own pleasure—a hedonic goal—or to achieve some higher level purpose—a utilitarian goal. This article investigates whether this difference in goals influences satisfaction with an outcome that was either self-chosen or externally determined. In four experiments we manipulate consumption goals, controlling for the outcomes, the option valence, and wheth…
Turning the Page: The Impact of Choice Closure on Satisfaction
After having made a purchase decision, consumers often revisit their choice and ponder forgone alternatives. This tendency can lower satisfaction with the selected alternative, especially when choices are difficult. We introduce the concept of "choice closure"--defined as the psychological process by which consumers come to perceive a decision to be final--and show that specific physical acts that are metaphorically associated with the concept of…
Seeking and Avoiding Choice Closure to Enhance Outcome Satisfaction
Consumers gain choice closure when they perceive a sense of finality over a past decision and limit comparisons between the selected and the forgone options. We investigate consumers’ ability to make strategic use of choice closure to enhance outcome satisfaction. Seven studies show that consumers experience greater satisfaction when they achieve choice closure with an inferior outcome and when they do not achieve choice closure with a superior o…
The Effect of an Interruption on Risk Decisions
Interruptions during consumer decision making are ubiquitous. In seven studies, we examine the consequences of a brief interruption during a financial risk decision. We identify a fundamental feature inherent in an interruption's temporal structure-a repeat exposure to the decision stimuli-and find that this re-exposure reduces decision stimuli's subjective novelty. This reduced novelty in turn reduces decision makers' apprehension and increases …
Feeling Economically Stuck: The Effect of Perceived Economic Mobility and Socioeconomic Status on Variety Seeking
Five studies provide converging evidence for the joint effect of perceived economic mobility and socioeconomic status (SES) on compensatory behavior, such that low SES consumers who perceive low economic mobility (i.e., economically stuck consumers) seek more variety than other consumers. We trace this effect to these consumers' desire to compensate for their low sense of personal control. Furthermore, we show that these consumers' variety-seekin…
It’s the End of the Competition: When Social Comparison Is Not Always Motivating for Goal Achievement
Nowadays consumers can easily connect with others who are pursuing similar goals via smart devices and mobile apps. This technology also enables them to compare how well they are doing relative to others in a variety of contexts, ranging from online gaming to losing weight to loyalty programs. This research investigates consumers’ motivation to achieve a goal when they compare themselves with a superior other who has already attained the goal. Bu…
Wine for the Table: Self-Construal, Group Size, and Choice for Self and Others
This research examines how consumers make unilateral decisions on behalf of the self and multiple others, in situations where the chosen option will be shared and consumed jointly by the group-for instance, choosing wine for the table. Results across six studies using three different choice contexts (wine, books, and movies) demonstrate that such choices are shaped by the decision-maker's self-construal (independent vs. interdependent) and by the…
Company Worth Keeping: Personal Control and Preferences for Brand Leaders
Brand leaders possess tremendous agency, with the ability to shape a sweeping variety of outcomes. Does this fact confer psychological value to consumers? We posit that external conditions that undermine feelings of personal control cause consumers to affiliate more with brand leaders. This occurs because affiliating with such high-agency brands gives consumers a sense of personal agency and thereby restores feelings of control. An initial study …
Consumers and Artificial Intelligence: An Experiential Perspective
Artificial intelligence (AI) helps companies offer important benefits to consumers, such as health monitoring with wearable devices, advice with recommender systems, peace of mind with smart household products, and convenience with voice-activated virtual assistants. However, although AI can be seen as a neutral tool to be evaluated on efficiency and accuracy, this approach does not consider the social and individual challenges that can occur whe…
Hoping for the Worst? A Paradoxical Preference for Bad News
Nine studies investigate when and why people may paradoxically prefer bad news—for example, hoping for an objectively worse injury or a higher-risk diagnosis over explicitly better alternatives. Using a combination of field surveys and randomized experiments, the research demonstrates that people may hope for relatively worse (vs. better) news in an effort to preemptively avoid subjectively difficult decisions (studies 1 and 2). This is because w…
Why Are Donors More Generous with Time Than Money? The Role of Perceived Control over Donations on Charitable Giving
Solicitation of time and money donations are central to the success of nonprofit organizations like charities and political groups. Although nonprofits tend to prefer money, experimental and field data demonstrate that donors prefer to donate time, even when doing so does less good for the cause. However, despite the importance of this asymmetry, little is known about its psychological underpinnings. In the current investigation, we identify a pr…
How Political Ideology Shapes Preferences for Observably Inferior Products
While existing consumer research on political ideology often focuses on ideological differences in preferences for high-status, typically observably superior products, little is known about how political ideology may shape preferences for observably inferior products in non-status-signaling domains. Observably inferior products are product options that are dominated by alternatives along observable dimensions. We propose that, in non-status-signa…
An Aversion to Intervention: How the Protestant Work Ethic Influences Preferences for Natural Healthcare
The term “natural” is ubiquitous in advertising and branding, but limited research has investigated how consumers respond and relate to naturalness. Some researchers have documented preferences for natural products, specifically food, but there has been scant investigation of the psychological antecedents of such preferences, especially in the critical, multi-trillion-dollar domain of healthcare. Using publicly available country-level data from 4…
Physician, know thyself: Applying brand management principles to professional identity in academic medicine
Seeking Structure in Collections: Desire for Control Motivates Engagement in Collecting
Across six studies, we provide converging and robust lab and field evidence that the fundamental human desire for control motivates consumer engagement in collecting, defined as the act of acquiring items that belong to an existing collection. This is because consumers who desire control seek structure, which is created when interconnected components form a holistic entity. A collection can provide such a structure, as it comprises related items …
Psychology (19 works) · Social Psychology (17 works) · Economics (14 works) · Business (9 works) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (8 works) · Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification (7 works) · Marketing (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (6 works) · Microeconomics (6 works)