Marcel Zeelenberg
Biographic Data
| ID | 129079 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marcel Zeelenberg |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marcel |
| FAMILY NAME | Zeelenberg |
| SIGNATURE | ZEELENBERG M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tilburg University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7100-4223 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 94 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 416 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 94 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Factors associated with the perception of greed
Regret: On the egotistic basis of a moral emotion
Regret is often viewed as an emotion aimed at regulating future behavior for the better. However, selfishness may undermine this positive function and interfere with behavioral adjustment after experiencing regret. Using self-reports from a sample of adults from the general population ( N = 396; M age = 41.52, SD = 12.11; 46.5% female), it was examined to what extent egocentricity and self-interest were associated with how often people feel regre…
Are regret and disappointment differentially associated with norm compliant and norm deviant failures
People compare actual decision outcomes with what might, could, or should have been, and they experience negative emotions when the foregone outcomes are better. We hypothesised that the normativity of a decision, whether it is norm-compliant or norm-deviant, also shapes emotional experiences to the outcomes. We expected that norm-deviant decisions would result in more regret than disappointment, because there would be more blame associated with …
Hungry Ghosts Eat Casino Chips: Associations Between Dispositional Greed and Gambling
Dispositional greed is characterized as the insatiable desire for more. Although greed may be a driving force for wealth accumulation, it can also relate to increased financial difficulties and risk-taking. Across two studies in different countries, The Netherlands (Study 1, N = 1,118) and England, Study 2, N = 4,855), we tested the degree to which dispositional greed was associated with gambling outcomes. Greedy individuals reported greater gamb…
Friends as Tools: Exploring the Role of Dispositional Greed in Social Relationships
Greed is the insatiable desire for more. Greed research has mainly focused on economic decisions, and little is known about greed in the realm of social relationships, despite these being essential to people’s well-being. We explored in four studies how dispositional greed is associated with various aspects of social relationships. We analyzed survey data from the Dutch Representative LISS-panel (2013-wave, N = 2,299–4,943; 2019-wave, N = 694–892…
Dispositional greed and moral emotions
Greed is the insatiable desire for more of the things that one values, combined dissatisfaction over what one currently has. Research found that greedy people find dishonest, unethical, and immoral behaviour more acceptable, disregard the negative outcomes for others, and are more likely to engage in such behaviours. The current research examined whether being greedy is associated with lower scores on moral emotions (guilt and shame) related to d…
Unobscuring the Concept of Tax Morale: A Systematic Review of the Literature
Enhancing tax morale is considered crucial for increasing tax compliance, reducing tax evasion, and decreasing the shadow economy. Despite its clear importance within tax research and policy development, there is surprisingly little consensus about what tax morale is. To address this problem, a systematic literature review of 323 articles was conducted. The review summarizes the many different definitions and operationalizations of tax morale, re…
Lottery incentives for smoking cessation at the workplace: A cluster randomized trial
The trial protocol and materials were reviewed and approved by the Radboud University Ethical Review Board (ECSW-2019-114). The study was registered in the Dutch Trial Register (trial registration number: NTR NL84632, 17 March 2020) and lottery drawings were performed by an independent notary
A note on psychological harm as a policy instrument
Psychological harm is real, can be severe, and may be caused by many factors, including products with internet connectivity. The question as to whether preventing psychological harm should be used as a policy imperative is, however, a difficult one. We discuss two problematic issues related to that question. The first is the difficulty of objectively assessing psychological harm, and the associated possibility of fraud. The second is the unpredic…
Exploring the Morality of Tax Morale
Tax morale, commonly measured as a moral evaluation of cheating on taxes, is important for shaping policy to increase voluntary compliance. Although tax morale is commonly understood as citizens' moral responsibility to pay taxes, there is a dearth of empirical research on whether and how differences in basic morality shape tax morale. Three studies investigated associations between moral ideals, as defined by Moral Foundations Theory, and tax mo…
Greed: What Is It Good for
What is greed good for? Greed is ubiquitous, suggesting that it must have some benefits, but it is also often condemned. In a representative sample of the Dutch population ( N = 2,367, 51.3% female, M age = 54.06, SD = 17.90), we examined two questions. First, inspired by Eriksson et al., we studied whether greedy people generate more personal and household income (economic outcomes), have more sexual partners, longer relationships, and more offs…
Examining the role of relational utility in guilt and regret
Relational utility refers to the value of another person for the attainment of one's future goals through social interaction. Nelissen (2014) found that relational utility influences the intensity of guilt feelings. Specifically, people would feel stronger guilt for hurting a person if this person has high relational utility compared to low relational utility. Guilt is thus not only sensitive to how much another person is hurt, but also to one's …
The acceptability of behavioural interventions in financial decision-making
Financial policymakers increasingly rely on behavioural insights to protect the interests of consumers. However, little is known about how citizens feel about interventions designed to nudge their financial behaviour. Most literature on the acceptability of behavioural interventions focuses on the health domain. To address this gap, we present the results of an experiment on the acceptability of seven financial behavioural interventions ( N = 684…
Further tests of the scarcity and luxury hypotheses in dispositional greed: Evidence from two large-scale Dutch and American samples
A recent, large-scale study among Chinese adolescents found that childhood socioeconomic status (CSES) was positively related to dispositional greed (i.e., the “luxury hypothesis”), instead of negatively related (i.e., the “scarcity hypothesis”; Liu et al., 2019c). This relationship was found for only-children, not for children with siblings. The generalizability of these findings may be limited, due to China’s one-child policy and socioeconomic …
I Want More! The Role of Child, Family and Maternal Characteristics on Child Dispositional Greed and Sharing Behavior
Greed is often regarded as a negative trait that impedes prosocial behavior in adults. Yet, relatively little is known about the development of greed and its effects on children. We examine the effect of dispositional greed on sharing behavior in 4-to-6-year-olds. In addition, we identified potential factors associated with child greed, including child, family, and maternal characteristics. This study with 63 mother–child dyads ( Age child = 5.11…
Why do people (not) share guilt with others
Do people share their feelings of guilt with others and, if so, what are the reasons for doing this or not doing this? Even though the social sharing of negative emotional experiences, such as regret, has been extensively studied, not much is known about whether people share feelings of guilt and why. We report three studies exploring these questions. In Study 1, we re-analysed data about sharing guilt experiences posted on a social website calle…
Emotional consequences of social debt sharing in communal relationships
Whereas previous research has often struggled to disentangle the behavioral effects of gratitude and indebtedness felt in response to favors received by individuals, the present article clearly manifests their unique functions by investigating what happens if not just the individual but also their romantic partner is involved in a mutual exchange of favors. We propose that people in communal relationships share each other's social debt toward oth…
Lottery incentives for smoking cessation at the workplace: Design and protocol of the smoke-free lottery - a cluster randomized trial
Netherlands Trial Register Identifier: NL8463 . Date of registration: 17-03-2020
The effect of transparent unequal penalty rates on safety compliance for different-sized businesses
The present study investigates the relation of procedural transparency and compliance with authorities’ regulations. The underlying assumption is that procedural transparency encourages compliance with regulations. In an incentivized experiment, 666 participants took on the role of a business owner and had to fill in a form and spend a certain amount of their income as compliance costs to adhere to safety rules. In a 2 (Business Size: small vs bi…
Regret, Self-regulatory Abilities, and Well-Being: Their Intricate Relationships
Emotions, like regret, have been heralded as instruments of self-regulation, by instigating reflection, learning and feedback for betterment and thus increasing well-being. Yet, this view neglects taking the frequency of regret into consideration. Frequently experiencing regret may instead be a sign of repeatedly failing to achieve betterment. Previous work has shown that people who experience regret often have lower life satisfaction. We suggest…
Not every dissatisfaction is the same: The impact of electoral regret, disappointment, and anger on subsequent electoral behavior
We investigate varieties of dissatisfaction by examining how the similar, yet distinct emotions of regret, disappointment, and anger are related to electoral behavior. In a 2-wave longitudinal study conducted around the UK General Election of 2017 (N1 = 817, N2 = 768), we measured these emotions in response to 3 levels of electoral decision-making (individual party preference, individual electoral participation, and election results) and tested t…
A dark side of hope: Understanding why investors cling onto losing stocks
Investors are often inclined to keep losing stocks too long, despite this being irrational. This phenomenon is part of the disposition effect (“people ride losers too long, and sell winners too soon”). The current research examines the role of hope as a potential explanation of why people ride losers too long. Three correlational studies (1A, 1B, and 2) find that people's trait hope is positively associated with their inclination to keep losing s…
Anticipated guilt and going against one’s self-interest
To lend money to someone and to later ask this same person to pay the money back should be relatively unproblematic in modern, monetized societies. Still, some people find it difficult to ask for lent money to be paid back, even though it is in their own interest that this happen and they have the legitimate right to ask their money back. In this article, we examine 1 reason why people might experience such difficulties: the anticipation of guilt…
The role of self-discrepancies in distinguishing regret from guilt
Regret and guilt are self-conscious emotions. They stem from negative events for which people feel responsible. Both emotions reflect discrepancies between how people are (their “actual” self) and how they would like to be (their “ideal” or “ought” self). We examined whether regret and guilt were related to different self-discrepancies (i.e., “ideal” and “ought” self-discrepancies). Two studies (total N = 1998) with Chinese and US participants fo…
What we talk about when we talk about hope: A prototype analysis
Although hope is a well-studied topic, there is no consensus on its definition. Using a prototype analysis (a bottom-up approach collecting laypeople's views on hope), the present research defines hope and provides insights into its associations with other related constructs. Study 1 identified a list of features of hope derived from characteristics generated by laypeople in the Netherlands and the United States when asked to think about hope. St…
Dynamics of multiple-goal pursuit
The authors propose and test a model of multiple-goal pursuit that specifies how individuals allocate effort among multiple goals over time. The model predicts that whether individuals decide to step up effort, coast, abandon the current goal, or switch to pursue another goal is determined jointly by the emotions that flow from prior goal progress and the proximity to future goal attainment, and proximally determined by changes in expectancies ab…
Not so ugly after all: When shame acts as a commitment device
Most psychological theories and research on shame focus on the ugly aspects and negative consequences of this emotion. Theories on moral emotions, however, assume that shame acts as a commitment device motivating prosocial behavior. To solve this apparent paradox, the authors studied the effects of shame on prosocial behavior. Shame was hypothesized to motivate prosocial behavior when it was relevant for the decision at hand (endogenous). In cont…
The inaction effect in the psychology of regret
Previous research showed that decisions to act (i.e., actions) produce more regret than decisions not to act (i.e., inactions).This previous research focused on decisions made in isolation and ignored that decisions are often made in response to earlier outcomes.The authors show in 4 experiments that these prior outcomes may promote action and hence make inaction more abnormal.They manipulated information about a prior outcome.As hypothesized, wh…
Option Attachment: When Deliberating Makes Choosing Feel like Losing
Common sense suggests that consumers make more satisfying decisions as they consider their options more closely. Yet we argue that such close consideration can have undesirable consequences because it may induce attachment to the options—a sense of prefactual ownership of the choice options. When consumers then select one option, they effectively lose this prefactual possession of the other, nonchosen options. This yields a feeling of discomfort …
Regret in Repeat Purchase versus Switching Decisions: The Attenuating Role of Decision Justifiability
The decision-making literature has consistently reported that decisions to maintain the status quo tend to be regretted less than decisions to change it. We examine the consequences of repeat purchasing (maintaining the status quo) versus switching in the context of information regarding the reason for the decision (e.g., prior consumption episode, brand history), and we argue that there are situations in which repeat purchasing may cause as much…
Blessed are those who expect nothing: Lowering expectations as a way of avoiding disappointment
What is moral about guilt? Acting “prosocially” at the disadvantage of others
For centuries economists and psychologists have argued that the morality of moral emotions lies in the fact that they stimulate prosocial behavior and benefit others in a person's social environment. Many studies have shown that guilt, arguably the most exemplary moral emotion, indeed motivates prosocial behavior in dyadic social dilemma situations. When multiple persons are involved, however, the moral and prosocial nature of this emotion can be…
Flying under the Radar: Perverse Package Size Effects on Consumption Self-Regulation
Consumers believe that small package formats of hedonic, but not of utilitarian, products help to regulate consumption—especially when their self-regulatory concerns are activated. These beliefs may backfire and increase consumption of hedonic products. Specifically, activating self-regulatory concerns had no consumption effects when tempting products came in small package formats. Yet, when tempting products came in large package formats, consum…
The Envy Premium in Product Evaluation
Consumers are willing to pay a premium for products that elicit their envy. The more people compared themselves to a superior other, the higher the envy premium was. Yet, the emotion envy and not the upward comparison drove the final effects. The envy premium only emerged for a desirable product that the superior other owned (iPhone) when people experienced benign envy. Benign envy is elicited when the other's superior position is deserved, and m…
Dispositional greed
Greed is an important motive: it is seen as both productive (a source of ambition; the motor of the economy) and destructive (undermining social relationships; the cause of the late 2000s financial crisis). However, relatively little is known about what greed is and does. This article reports on 5 studies that develop and test the 7-item Dispositional Greed Scale (DGS). Study 1 (including 4 separate samples from 2 different countries, total N = 6…
A different kind of honor culture: Family honor and aggression in Turks
Masculine honor has been found to explain the relationship between insults and aggression in the USA. However, detailed accounts of Mediterranean honor cultures suggest that family honor may be more important in explaining cross-cultural differences in aggression. Two studies revealed that people from Turkish honor culture intended to aggress more after being insulted than Dutch people from a nonhonor culture (Study 1), and that this effect was d…
The discounting of ambiguous information in economic decision making
In three experimental studies we investigated how decision makers respond to ambiguous information about costs and benefits. In Experiment 1, we studied the effect of ambiguity about prior costs. Experiments 2 and 3 focused on the effect of ambiguity about future outcomes. The collective results of the three studies suggest that decision makers discount ambiguous information. The findings are related to insights on the disjunction effect, the sun…
Multilevel Emotion Transfer on YouTube: Disentangling the Effects of Emotional Contagion and Homophily on Video Audiences
Why do connected users in online social networks express similar emotions? Past approaches have suggested situational emotion transfers (i.e., contagion) and the phenomenon that emotionally similar users flock together (i.e., homophily). We analyze these mechanisms in unison by exploiting the hierarchical structure of YouTube through multilevel analyses, disaggregating the video- and channel-level effects of YouTuber emotions on audience comments…
Decoupling the past from the present attenuates inaction inertia
Inaction inertia is the phenomenon that one is not likely to act upon an attractive opportunity after having bypassed an even more attractive opportunity. We investigated the boundary conditions of this inaction inertia effect. Based on the mental accounting literature and the transaction decoupling literature we predicted and found in three experiments that tight coupling of the forgone to the current opportunity is a necessary condition for ina…
The impact of accuracy motivation on interpretation, comparison, and correction processes: Accuracy × knowledge accessibility effects
When curiosity killed regret: Avoiding or seeking the unknown in decision-making under uncertainty
The role of emotions in tax compliance behavior: A mixed-methods approach
Numeracy and wealth
Three Attempts to Replicate the Moral Licensing Effect
The present work includes three attempts to replicate the moral licensing effect by Sachdeva, Iliev, and Medin (2009) . The original authors found that writing about positive traits led to lower donations to charity and decreased cooperative behavior. The first two replication attempts (student samples, 95% power based on the initial findings, NStudy1= 105, NStudy2= 150), did not confirm the original results. The third replication attempt (MTurk …
Dealing with missed opportunities: Action vs. state orientation moderates inaction inertia
When and why do we want to know? How experienced regret promotes post‐decision information search
The effect of emotional and situational factors on the decision to seek out post‐decision information about un‐chosen alternative was examined in five experiments. Experiment 1 tested participants' willingness to find out the outcome of an un‐chosen investment that was likely to have a higher value than the chosen investment. It was found that participants were more willing to acquire information when they were responsible for the decision. Exper…
A reverse sunk cost effect in risky decision making: Sometimes we have too much invested to gamble
When ignorance is not bliss: How feelings of discomfort promote the search for negative information
Negative Returns on Positive Emotions: The Influence of Pride and Self-Regulatory Goals on Repurchase Decisions
Contrary to the common assumption that positive emotions generally lead to favorable behavioral intentions, feelings of pride can decrease consumers' repurchase intentions. Results from three experimental studies demonstrate that the impact of pride on repurchase intentions is contingent on consumers' self-regulatory goals but that this is so only among consumers with high levels of pride. Specifically, consumers with high prevention pride are le…
What do you think is ‘fair’? Effects of ingroup norms and outcome control on fairness judgments
Two studies are reported that examine whether fairness judgments in dyadic exchange situations are influenced by descriptive ingroup norms or the interdependence structure of the exchange situation. In both studies, these factors were varied within a minimal group categorization paradigm. Results showed that ingroup norms affected fairness judgments when participants interacted with another group member and interaction outcomes could be affected …
Consequences of Regret Aversion: Effects of Expected Feedback on Risky Decision Making
Affect, Attitudes and Decisions: Let's Be More Specific
This chapter focuses on the role of affect in attitudes and decision-making. First we will briefly discuss the role of affect in attitude-formation and -change processes. Two issues have played an important role in this research area: first, the distinction between affect-based and cognition-based attitudes; second, the effects of mood on persuasion. Generally these traditions rely on a crude dichotomy between positive and negative affect and rat…
A reverse sunk cost effect in risky decision making: Sometimes we have too much invested to gamble
Emotional Reactions to the Outcomes of Decisions: The Role of Counterfactual Thought in the Experience of Regret and Disappointment
The Experience of Regret and Disappointment
Regret and disappointment have in common the fact that they are experienced when the outcome of a decision is unfavourable: They both concern “what might have been”, had things been different. However, some regret and disappointment theorists regard the differences between these emotions as important, arguing that they differ with respect to the conditions under which they are felt, and how they affect decision making. The goal of the present res…
The impact of accuracy motivation on interpretation, comparison, and correction processes: Accuracy × knowledge accessibility effects
Anticipated regret, expected feedback and behavioral decision making
This paper addresses the effects of the anticipation of regret on decision making under uncertainty. Regret is a negative, cognitively based emotion that we experience when realizing or imagining that our present situation would have been better, had we decided differently. The experience of post-decisional regret is for a large part conditional on the knowledge of the outcomes of the rejected alternatives. A series of studies is reviewed in whic…
On bad decisions and disconfirmed expectancies: The psychology of regret and disappointment
Decision outcomes sometimes result in negative emotions. This can occur when a decision appears to be wrong in retrospect, and/or when the obtained decision outcome does not live up to expectations. Regret and disappointment are the two emotions that are of central interest in the present article. Although these emotions have a lot in common, they also differ in ways that are relevant to decision making. In this article we review theories and emp…
Regret in Decision Making
Decision research has only recently started to take seriously the role of emotions in choices and decisions. Regret is the emotion that has received the most attention. In this article, we sample a number of the initial regret studies from psychology and economics, and trace some of the complexities and contradictions to which they led. We then sketch a new theory, decision justification theory (DJT), which synthesizes several apparently conflict…
What do you think is ‘fair’? Effects of ingroup norms and outcome control on fairness judgments
Two studies are reported that examine whether fairness judgments in dyadic exchange situations are influenced by descriptive ingroup norms or the interdependence structure of the exchange situation. In both studies, these factors were varied within a minimal group categorization paradigm. Results showed that ingroup norms affected fairness judgments when participants interacted with another group member and interaction outcomes could be affected …
The inaction effect in the psychology of regret
Previous research showed that decisions to act (i.e., actions) produce more regret than decisions not to act (i.e., inactions).This previous research focused on decisions made in isolation and ignored that decisions are often made in response to earlier outcomes.The authors show in 4 experiments that these prior outcomes may promote action and hence make inaction more abnormal.They manipulated information about a prior outcome.As hypothesized, wh…
Regret in Repeat Purchase versus Switching Decisions: The Attenuating Role of Decision Justifiability
The decision-making literature has consistently reported that decisions to maintain the status quo tend to be regretted less than decisions to change it. We examine the consequences of repeat purchasing (maintaining the status quo) versus switching in the context of information regarding the reason for the decision (e.g., prior consumption episode, brand history), and we argue that there are situations in which repeat purchasing may cause as much…
Angry Customers don't Come Back, They Get Back: The Experience and Behavioral Implications of Anger and Dissatisfaction in Services
The discounting of ambiguous information in economic decision making
In three experimental studies we investigated how decision makers respond to ambiguous information about costs and benefits. In Experiment 1, we studied the effect of ambiguity about prior costs. Experiments 2 and 3 focused on the effect of ambiguity about future outcomes. The collective results of the three studies suggest that decision makers discount ambiguous information. The findings are related to insights on the disjunction effect, the sun…
Blessed are those who expect nothing: Lowering expectations as a way of avoiding disappointment
Option Attachment: When Deliberating Makes Choosing Feel like Losing
Common sense suggests that consumers make more satisfying decisions as they consider their options more closely. Yet we argue that such close consideration can have undesirable consequences because it may induce attachment to the options—a sense of prefactual ownership of the choice options. When consumers then select one option, they effectively lose this prefactual possession of the other, nonchosen options. This yields a feeling of discomfort …
Beyond valence in customer dissatisfaction
Buying and selling exchange goods: Outcome information, curiosity and the endowment effect
Negative Returns on Positive Emotions: The Influence of Pride and Self-Regulatory Goals on Repurchase Decisions
Contrary to the common assumption that positive emotions generally lead to favorable behavioral intentions, feelings of pride can decrease consumers' repurchase intentions. Results from three experimental studies demonstrate that the impact of pride on repurchase intentions is contingent on consumers' self-regulatory goals but that this is so only among consumers with high levels of pride. Specifically, consumers with high prevention pride are le…
When and why do we want to know? How experienced regret promotes post‐decision information search
The effect of emotional and situational factors on the decision to seek out post‐decision information about un‐chosen alternative was examined in five experiments. Experiment 1 tested participants' willingness to find out the outcome of an un‐chosen investment that was likely to have a higher value than the chosen investment. It was found that participants were more willing to acquire information when they were responsible for the decision. Exper…
Decoupling the past from the present attenuates inaction inertia
Inaction inertia is the phenomenon that one is not likely to act upon an attractive opportunity after having bypassed an even more attractive opportunity. We investigated the boundary conditions of this inaction inertia effect. Based on the mental accounting literature and the transaction decoupling literature we predicted and found in three experiments that tight coupling of the forgone to the current opportunity is a necessary condition for ina…
The dampening effect of uncertainty on positive and negative emotions
In this article we investigate how uncertainty about outcomes affects feelings with respect to these outcomes. The results of two experimental studies suggest that uncertainty about positive outcomes (Experiment 1) and negative outcomes (Experiment 2) leads to a dampening of emotions that are felt in response to these outcomes. The results are interpreted in terms of the ‘disjunction effect’ (Shafir & Tversky, 1992 ; Tversky & Shafir, 1992 ). Cop…
Multiple reference points in investor regret
When curiosity killed regret: Avoiding or seeking the unknown in decision-making under uncertainty
Moral sentiments and cooperation: Differential influences of shame and guilt
For centuries economists and psychologists (Frank, 1988 Frank , R. H. (1988) . Passions within reason: The strategic role of the emotions . New York : Norton . (Originally published 1988) [Google Scholar]; Ketelaar, 2004 Ketelaar, T. 2004. “Ancestral emotions, current decisions: Using evolutionary game theory to explore the role of emotions in decision-making”. In Evolutionary psychology, public policy and personal decisions, Edited by: Crawford,…
Psychology (80 works) · Social Psychology (72 works) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (38 works) · Economics (36 works) · Social Psychology (36 works) · Regret (30 works) · Emotions and Moral Behavior (28 works) · Computer Science (25 works) · Microeconomics (19 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (18 works)