Adam L Alter
Biographic Data
| ID | 94347 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Adam L Alter |
| GIVEN NAMES | Adam L |
| FAMILY NAME | Alter |
| SIGNATURE | ALTER A L |
| AFFILIATIONS | New York University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4698-8742 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 113 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
How and Why Our Eating Decisions Neglect Infrequently Consumed Foods
This article introduces a novel distinction between foods as a function of the frequency with which consumers eat them, and investigates how this distinction influences dietary beliefs and decisions. It compares food types perceived to be consumed relatively infrequently (i.e., infrequent foods) to those perceived to be consumed relatively frequently (i.e., frequent foods). Across an analysis of archival data from a popular calorie tracking app a…
Difficult training improves team performance: An empirical case study of US college basketball
One major challenge facing policy-makers is to design education and workplace training programs that are appropriately challenging. We review previous research that suggests that difficult training is better than easy training. However, surveys we conducted of students and of expert sport coaches showed that many prescribed easy rather than difficult training for those they coached. We analyzed the performance of National Collegiate Athletic Asso…
Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
An urgent and expert investigation into behavioral addiction, the dark flipside of today's unavoidable digital technologies, and how we can turn the tide to regain control. Behavioral addiction may prove to be one of the most important fields of social, medical, and psychological research in our lifetime. The idea that behaviors can be being addictive is new, but the threat is near universal. Experts are just beginning to acknowledge that we are …
Consuming Experiential Categories
How do we maximize enjoyment and minimize displeasure over a variety of events? Previous research has discussed how consumers might focus on savoring individual events or distribute appealing and unappealing events across time to maximize happiness. Building on this work, the current research shows that consumers track not just individual events but also “categories” of events. Consequently, a person who visits a modern art gallery, a classic art…
Financial Insecurity and Deprivation Life Satisfaction, Self Determination, and Consumption Adequacy at the Bottom of the Pyramid How Economic Contractions and Expansions Affect Expenditure Patterns L…
Consumers worldwide are struggling with serious economic challenges. In virtually every nation, the disparity is growing between the wealthy and the poor. Consumer researchers are responding by trying to understand how consumers experience and cope with financial insecurity and deprivation. They are using an array of psychological, economic, and sociological theories coupled with methodological approaches ranging from experiments to econometrics …
The Exception Is the Rule: Underestimating and Overspending on Exceptional Expenses
Purchases fall along a continuum from ordinary (common or frequent) to exceptional (unusual or infrequent), with many of the largest expenses (e.g., electronics, celebrations) being the most exceptional. Across seven studies, we show that, while people are fairly adept at budgeting and predicting how much they will spend on ordinary items, they both underestimate their spending on exceptional purchases overall and overspend on each individual pur…
The name-pronunciation effect: Why people like Mr. Smith more than Mr. Colquhoun
Fondness makes the distance grow shorter: Desired locations seem closer because they seem more vivid
Missing the trees for the forest: A construal level account of the illusion of explanatory depth
An illusion of explanatory depth (IOED) occurs when people believe they understand a concept more deeply than they actually do. To date, IOEDs have been identified only in mechanical and natural domains, occluding why they occur and suggesting that their implications are quite limited. Six studies illustrated that IOEDs occur because people adopt an inappropriately abstract construal style when they assess how well they understand concrete concep…
Uniting the Tribes of Fluency to Form a Metacognitive Nation
Processing fluency, or the subjective experience of ease with which people process information, reliably influences people’s judgments across a broad range of social dimensions. Experimenters have manipulated processing fluency using a vast array of techniques, which, despite their diversity, produce remarkably similar judgmental consequences. For example, people similarly judge stimuli that are semantically primed (conceptual fluency), visually …
Rising to the threat: Reducing stereotype threat by reframing the threat as a challenge
Cultural sharing in a global village: Evidence for extracultural cognition in European Americans
The authors examined the effects of exposure to foreign cultural environments and symbols on decision making among European Americans. Although European Americans predicted change less frequently than East Asians did (Pilot Study A), European Americans anticipated greater change when primed with East Asian culturally-laden locations (Pilot Study B and Study 1) and the East Asian yin-yang symbol (Studies 2-7). These effects held in the domains of …
When the association between appearance and outcome contaminates social judgment: A bidirectional model linking group homogeneity and collective treatment
Group formation is an inevitable consequence of social life, and the tendency to perceive people as a collective unit persists once they have been categorized as a group. Drawing on the concept of homogeneity, the authors propose a model suggesting that groups may endure in part because people who are perceived as homogeneous attract collective treatment (e.g., monetary rewards and punishment), and such treatment further reinforces the perception…
Overcoming intuition: Metacognitive difficulty activates analytic reasoning.
Humans appear to reason using two processing styles: System 1 processes that are quick, intuitive, and effortless and System 2 processes that are slow, analytical, and deliberate that occasionally correct the output of System 1. Four experiments suggest that System 2 processes are activated by metacognitive experiences of difficulty or disfluency during the process of reasoning. Incidental experiences of difficulty or disfluency--receiving inform…
Morality Influences How People Apply the Ignorance of the Law Defense
In four empirical studies, we showed that laypeople apply the ignorance of the law defense differently depending on the perceived morality of the defendant's course of conduct at the time of the illegal act. Moral and neutral defendants who pled ignorance of the law were afforded leniency, whereas immoral defendants were sentenced as though they were not ignorant, even when defendants in all three conditions violated identical laws. These finding…
On being happy but fearing failure: The effects of mood on self-handicapping strategies
The name-pronunciation effect: Why people like Mr. Smith more than Mr. Colquhoun
Rising to the threat: Reducing stereotype threat by reframing the threat as a challenge
Cultural sharing in a global village: Evidence for extracultural cognition in European Americans
The authors examined the effects of exposure to foreign cultural environments and symbols on decision making among European Americans. Although European Americans predicted change less frequently than East Asians did (Pilot Study A), European Americans anticipated greater change when primed with East Asian culturally-laden locations (Pilot Study B and Study 1) and the East Asian yin-yang symbol (Studies 2-7). These effects held in the domains of …
The Exception Is the Rule: Underestimating and Overspending on Exceptional Expenses
Purchases fall along a continuum from ordinary (common or frequent) to exceptional (unusual or infrequent), with many of the largest expenses (e.g., electronics, celebrations) being the most exceptional. Across seven studies, we show that, while people are fairly adept at budgeting and predicting how much they will spend on ordinary items, they both underestimate their spending on exceptional purchases overall and overspend on each individual pur…
Missing the trees for the forest: A construal level account of the illusion of explanatory depth
An illusion of explanatory depth (IOED) occurs when people believe they understand a concept more deeply than they actually do. To date, IOEDs have been identified only in mechanical and natural domains, occluding why they occur and suggesting that their implications are quite limited. Six studies illustrated that IOEDs occur because people adopt an inappropriately abstract construal style when they assess how well they understand concrete concep…
How and Why Our Eating Decisions Neglect Infrequently Consumed Foods
This article introduces a novel distinction between foods as a function of the frequency with which consumers eat them, and investigates how this distinction influences dietary beliefs and decisions. It compares food types perceived to be consumed relatively infrequently (i.e., infrequent foods) to those perceived to be consumed relatively frequently (i.e., frequent foods). Across an analysis of archival data from a popular calorie tracking app a…
Fondness makes the distance grow shorter: Desired locations seem closer because they seem more vivid
Morality Influences How People Apply the Ignorance of the Law Defense
In four empirical studies, we showed that laypeople apply the ignorance of the law defense differently depending on the perceived morality of the defendant's course of conduct at the time of the illegal act. Moral and neutral defendants who pled ignorance of the law were afforded leniency, whereas immoral defendants were sentenced as though they were not ignorant, even when defendants in all three conditions violated identical laws. These finding…
On being happy but fearing failure: The effects of mood on self-handicapping strategies
When the association between appearance and outcome contaminates social judgment: A bidirectional model linking group homogeneity and collective treatment
Group formation is an inevitable consequence of social life, and the tendency to perceive people as a collective unit persists once they have been categorized as a group. Drawing on the concept of homogeneity, the authors propose a model suggesting that groups may endure in part because people who are perceived as homogeneous attract collective treatment (e.g., monetary rewards and punishment), and such treatment further reinforces the perception…
On being happy but fearing failure: The effects of mood on self-handicapping strategies
Overcoming intuition: Metacognitive difficulty activates analytic reasoning.
Humans appear to reason using two processing styles: System 1 processes that are quick, intuitive, and effortless and System 2 processes that are slow, analytical, and deliberate that occasionally correct the output of System 1. Four experiments suggest that System 2 processes are activated by metacognitive experiences of difficulty or disfluency during the process of reasoning. Incidental experiences of difficulty or disfluency--receiving inform…
Morality Influences How People Apply the Ignorance of the Law Defense
In four empirical studies, we showed that laypeople apply the ignorance of the law defense differently depending on the perceived morality of the defendant's course of conduct at the time of the illegal act. Moral and neutral defendants who pled ignorance of the law were afforded leniency, whereas immoral defendants were sentenced as though they were not ignorant, even when defendants in all three conditions violated identical laws. These finding…
Uniting the Tribes of Fluency to Form a Metacognitive Nation
Processing fluency, or the subjective experience of ease with which people process information, reliably influences people’s judgments across a broad range of social dimensions. Experimenters have manipulated processing fluency using a vast array of techniques, which, despite their diversity, produce remarkably similar judgmental consequences. For example, people similarly judge stimuli that are semantically primed (conceptual fluency), visually …
Rising to the threat: Reducing stereotype threat by reframing the threat as a challenge
Cultural sharing in a global village: Evidence for extracultural cognition in European Americans
The authors examined the effects of exposure to foreign cultural environments and symbols on decision making among European Americans. Although European Americans predicted change less frequently than East Asians did (Pilot Study A), European Americans anticipated greater change when primed with East Asian culturally-laden locations (Pilot Study B and Study 1) and the East Asian yin-yang symbol (Studies 2-7). These effects held in the domains of …
When the association between appearance and outcome contaminates social judgment: A bidirectional model linking group homogeneity and collective treatment
Group formation is an inevitable consequence of social life, and the tendency to perceive people as a collective unit persists once they have been categorized as a group. Drawing on the concept of homogeneity, the authors propose a model suggesting that groups may endure in part because people who are perceived as homogeneous attract collective treatment (e.g., monetary rewards and punishment), and such treatment further reinforces the perception…
Fondness makes the distance grow shorter: Desired locations seem closer because they seem more vivid
Missing the trees for the forest: A construal level account of the illusion of explanatory depth
An illusion of explanatory depth (IOED) occurs when people believe they understand a concept more deeply than they actually do. To date, IOEDs have been identified only in mechanical and natural domains, occluding why they occur and suggesting that their implications are quite limited. Six studies illustrated that IOEDs occur because people adopt an inappropriately abstract construal style when they assess how well they understand concrete concep…
The name-pronunciation effect: Why people like Mr. Smith more than Mr. Colquhoun
The Exception Is the Rule: Underestimating and Overspending on Exceptional Expenses
Purchases fall along a continuum from ordinary (common or frequent) to exceptional (unusual or infrequent), with many of the largest expenses (e.g., electronics, celebrations) being the most exceptional. Across seven studies, we show that, while people are fairly adept at budgeting and predicting how much they will spend on ordinary items, they both underestimate their spending on exceptional purchases overall and overspend on each individual pur…
Financial Insecurity and Deprivation Life Satisfaction, Self Determination, and Consumption Adequacy at the Bottom of the Pyramid How Economic Contractions and Expansions Affect Expenditure Patterns L…
Consumers worldwide are struggling with serious economic challenges. In virtually every nation, the disparity is growing between the wealthy and the poor. Consumer researchers are responding by trying to understand how consumers experience and cope with financial insecurity and deprivation. They are using an array of psychological, economic, and sociological theories coupled with methodological approaches ranging from experiments to econometrics …
Consuming Experiential Categories
How do we maximize enjoyment and minimize displeasure over a variety of events? Previous research has discussed how consumers might focus on savoring individual events or distribute appealing and unappealing events across time to maximize happiness. Building on this work, the current research shows that consumers track not just individual events but also “categories” of events. Consequently, a person who visits a modern art gallery, a classic art…
Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
An urgent and expert investigation into behavioral addiction, the dark flipside of today's unavoidable digital technologies, and how we can turn the tide to regain control. Behavioral addiction may prove to be one of the most important fields of social, medical, and psychological research in our lifetime. The idea that behaviors can be being addictive is new, but the threat is near universal. Experts are just beginning to acknowledge that we are …
Difficult training improves team performance: An empirical case study of US college basketball
One major challenge facing policy-makers is to design education and workplace training programs that are appropriately challenging. We review previous research that suggests that difficult training is better than easy training. However, surveys we conducted of students and of expert sport coaches showed that many prescribed easy rather than difficult training for those they coached. We analyzed the performance of National Collegiate Athletic Asso…
How and Why Our Eating Decisions Neglect Infrequently Consumed Foods
This article introduces a novel distinction between foods as a function of the frequency with which consumers eat them, and investigates how this distinction influences dietary beliefs and decisions. It compares food types perceived to be consumed relatively infrequently (i.e., infrequent foods) to those perceived to be consumed relatively frequently (i.e., frequent foods). Across an analysis of archival data from a popular calorie tracking app a…
Psychology (14 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (7 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (4 works) · Cognition (4 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (4 works) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (4 works) · Perception (4 works) · Social Psychology (4 works) · Cognitive psychology (3 works)