Aner Sela
Biographic Data
| ID | 98739 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Aner Sela |
| GIVEN NAMES | Aner |
| FAMILY NAME | Sela |
| SIGNATURE | SELA A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ben-Gurion University of the Negev |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2272-2077 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 78 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Simple is Eco-Friendly but Complex is Effective
Package design is an important form of point-of-purchase advertising that often conveys information about product characteristics. But can the mere level of its visual complexity produce specific inferences? We suggest that consumers prefer products with visually complex package designs when product efficacy considerations are salient but prefer products with visually simple designs when eco-friendliness considerations are salient. This effect ha…
Unsolicited prizes in contests
We study two identical contests in which players compete against each other in each contest. A player is awarded a prize if he wins one of the contests, and an additional prize if he wins both contests. We show that in the symmetric equilibrium of either simultaneous or sequential contests, each player’s expected payoff decreases with the value of the additional prize for winning both contests, implying that each player would prefer to be rewarde…
Computational thematics
What are the best methods of capturing thematic similarity between literary texts? Knowing the answer to this question would be useful for automatic clustering of book genres, or any other thematic grouping. This paper compares a variety of algorithms for unsupervised learning of thematic similarities between texts, which we call “computational thematics”. These algorithms belong to three steps of analysis: text pre-processing, extraction of text…
Intermediate prizes in multi-dimensional contests
Long-term country-level evidence of major but uneven ruptures in the landscape of industrial modernity
Strategic manipulations in round-robin tournaments
We study round-robin tournaments with four symmetric players and two identical prizes where players compete against each other in games modeled as an all-pay contest. We demonstrate that in this common structure players may have an incentive to manipulate the results, namely, depending on the outcomes of the first round, a player may have an incentive to lose in the second round in order to maximize his expected payoff in the tournament
Erinevused, kaugused ja sõrmejäljed. Stilomeetria ja mitmemõõtmelise tekstianalüüsi alused
Arvutuslikud meetodid ja töövahendid on viimasel ajal jõudsalt humanitaarteadustesse levinud. See on taaskäivitanud arutelu uurimisobjekti ning selle matemaatilise esituse või analüüsis kasutatava mudeli vahelise suhte üle. Kas midagi niivõrd kompleksset nagu romaan saab uurida nii lihtsal moel nagu selles esinevate sõnade loendamine? Ehkki mõned uurijad leiavad, et tänapäevased loomuliku keele töötluse tehnikad on kirjandusteaduse ja [...]
Deep Transitions
Beowulf single-authorship claim is unsupported
On the optimal allocation of prizes in best-of-three all-pay auctions
All-pay auctions with asymmetric effort constraints
Prebidding first-price auctions with and without head starts
Not My Type
Why are people often uncomfortable dealing with financial decisions? We propose that people perceive financial decisions—more so than decisions in many other equally complex and important domains—as compatible with a cold, analytical mode of thinking and as highly incompatible with feelings and emotions. Consequently, the more people perceive themselves as inclined to rely on affect in their decisions, the more they experience self-concept incong…
How Self-Control Shapes the Meaning of Choice
Self-control is an important driver of choice, but might it also change choice's meaning, making it seem less indicative of preference? Decades of research suggest that preference and choice are often intertwined. Choice often originates from one's preferences. As a result, choice is often seen as a reflection of preference, leading people to infer their preferences by observing their own choices. We suggest that self-control attenuates this proc…
We Are Not the Same as You and I
Can subtle wording changes in marketing communications, such as saying “you and [the brand]” as opposed to “we,” affect people's evaluations of real-world brands? Despite their importance in interpersonal communication, the effects of such variations in relationship-implying language on consumers' perceptions of brands have received little research attention. Four experiments demonstrate that closeness-implying pronouns (e.g., saying “we” rather …
Decision Quicksand
People often get unnecessarily mired in trivial decisions. Four studies support a metacognitive account for this painful phenomenon. Our central premise is that people use subjective experiences of difficulty while making a decision as a cue to how much further time and effort to spend. People generally associate important decisions with difficulty. Consequently, if a decision feels unexpectedly difficult, due to even incidental reasons, people m…
On the Heritability of Consumer Decision Making
While constructed preferences have received a great deal of attention, there has been virtually no research regarding the genetic basis of consumer judgment and choice. In this research, we examine a wide range of previously unexplored heritable effects on consumer choices and judgments. Moreover, whereas prior research on heritable traits has typically employed a piecemeal approach, demonstrating each heritable trait separately, we propose an al…
Unraveling Priming
Consumers are constantly exposed to subtle situational cues that can influence behavior by priming either goals or “mere” semantic representations such as personality traits. However, little is known about when exactly such priming leads to goal activation, which can have enduring behavioral effects, and when the same prime leads to semantic activation, characterized by short-lived effects. This research proposes an activation-striving model, whi…
Variety, Vice, and Virtue
Assortment size has been shown to influence whether consumers make a choice, but could it also influence what they choose? Five studies demonstrate that because choosing from larger assortments is often more difficult, it leads people to select options that are easier to justify. Virtues and utilitarian necessities are generally easier to justify than indulgences; consequently, choosing from larger assortments often shifts choice from vices to vi…
Contests for Status
We study the optimal design of organizations under the assumption that agents in a contest care about their relative position. A judicious definition of status categories can be used by a principal in order to influence the agents’ performance. We first consider a pure status case where there are no tangible prizes. Our main results connect the optimal partition in status categories to various properties of the distribution of ability among conte…
Contests for Status
Unraveling Priming
Consumers are constantly exposed to subtle situational cues that can influence behavior by priming either goals or “mere” semantic representations such as personality traits. However, little is known about when exactly such priming leads to goal activation, which can have enduring behavioral effects, and when the same prime leads to semantic activation, characterized by short-lived effects. This research proposes an activation-striving model, whi…
Variety, Vice, and Virtue
Assortment size has been shown to influence whether consumers make a choice, but could it also influence what they choose? Five studies demonstrate that because choosing from larger assortments is often more difficult, it leads people to select options that are easier to justify. Virtues and utilitarian necessities are generally easier to justify than indulgences; consequently, choosing from larger assortments often shifts choice from vices to vi…
We Are Not the Same as You and I
Can subtle wording changes in marketing communications, such as saying “you and [the brand]” as opposed to “we,” affect people's evaluations of real-world brands? Despite their importance in interpersonal communication, the effects of such variations in relationship-implying language on consumers' perceptions of brands have received little research attention. Four experiments demonstrate that closeness-implying pronouns (e.g., saying “we” rather …
Decision Quicksand
People often get unnecessarily mired in trivial decisions. Four studies support a metacognitive account for this painful phenomenon. Our central premise is that people use subjective experiences of difficulty while making a decision as a cue to how much further time and effort to spend. People generally associate important decisions with difficulty. Consequently, if a decision feels unexpectedly difficult, due to even incidental reasons, people m…
Contests for Status
We study the optimal design of organizations under the assumption that agents in a contest care about their relative position. A judicious definition of status categories can be used by a principal in order to influence the agents’ performance. We first consider a pure status case where there are no tangible prizes. Our main results connect the optimal partition in status categories to various properties of the distribution of ability among conte…
How Self-Control Shapes the Meaning of Choice
Self-control is an important driver of choice, but might it also change choice's meaning, making it seem less indicative of preference? Decades of research suggest that preference and choice are often intertwined. Choice often originates from one's preferences. As a result, choice is often seen as a reflection of preference, leading people to infer their preferences by observing their own choices. We suggest that self-control attenuates this proc…
Deep Transitions
On the Heritability of Consumer Decision Making
While constructed preferences have received a great deal of attention, there has been virtually no research regarding the genetic basis of consumer judgment and choice. In this research, we examine a wide range of previously unexplored heritable effects on consumer choices and judgments. Moreover, whereas prior research on heritable traits has typically employed a piecemeal approach, demonstrating each heritable trait separately, we propose an al…
Not My Type
Why are people often uncomfortable dealing with financial decisions? We propose that people perceive financial decisions—more so than decisions in many other equally complex and important domains—as compatible with a cold, analytical mode of thinking and as highly incompatible with feelings and emotions. Consequently, the more people perceive themselves as inclined to rely on affect in their decisions, the more they experience self-concept incong…
Beowulf single-authorship claim is unsupported
Prebidding first-price auctions with and without head starts
Contests for Status
Contests for Status
We study the optimal design of organizations under the assumption that agents in a contest care about their relative position. A judicious definition of status categories can be used by a principal in order to influence the agents’ performance. We first consider a pure status case where there are no tangible prizes. Our main results connect the optimal partition in status categories to various properties of the distribution of ability among conte…
Unraveling Priming
Consumers are constantly exposed to subtle situational cues that can influence behavior by priming either goals or “mere” semantic representations such as personality traits. However, little is known about when exactly such priming leads to goal activation, which can have enduring behavioral effects, and when the same prime leads to semantic activation, characterized by short-lived effects. This research proposes an activation-striving model, whi…
Variety, Vice, and Virtue
Assortment size has been shown to influence whether consumers make a choice, but could it also influence what they choose? Five studies demonstrate that because choosing from larger assortments is often more difficult, it leads people to select options that are easier to justify. Virtues and utilitarian necessities are generally easier to justify than indulgences; consequently, choosing from larger assortments often shifts choice from vices to vi…
On the Heritability of Consumer Decision Making
While constructed preferences have received a great deal of attention, there has been virtually no research regarding the genetic basis of consumer judgment and choice. In this research, we examine a wide range of previously unexplored heritable effects on consumer choices and judgments. Moreover, whereas prior research on heritable traits has typically employed a piecemeal approach, demonstrating each heritable trait separately, we propose an al…
We Are Not the Same as You and I
Can subtle wording changes in marketing communications, such as saying “you and [the brand]” as opposed to “we,” affect people's evaluations of real-world brands? Despite their importance in interpersonal communication, the effects of such variations in relationship-implying language on consumers' perceptions of brands have received little research attention. Four experiments demonstrate that closeness-implying pronouns (e.g., saying “we” rather …
Decision Quicksand
People often get unnecessarily mired in trivial decisions. Four studies support a metacognitive account for this painful phenomenon. Our central premise is that people use subjective experiences of difficulty while making a decision as a cue to how much further time and effort to spend. People generally associate important decisions with difficulty. Consequently, if a decision feels unexpectedly difficult, due to even incidental reasons, people m…
How Self-Control Shapes the Meaning of Choice
Self-control is an important driver of choice, but might it also change choice's meaning, making it seem less indicative of preference? Decades of research suggest that preference and choice are often intertwined. Choice often originates from one's preferences. As a result, choice is often seen as a reflection of preference, leading people to infer their preferences by observing their own choices. We suggest that self-control attenuates this proc…
Prebidding first-price auctions with and without head starts
Not My Type
Why are people often uncomfortable dealing with financial decisions? We propose that people perceive financial decisions—more so than decisions in many other equally complex and important domains—as compatible with a cold, analytical mode of thinking and as highly incompatible with feelings and emotions. Consequently, the more people perceive themselves as inclined to rely on affect in their decisions, the more they experience self-concept incong…
All-pay auctions with asymmetric effort constraints
On the optimal allocation of prizes in best-of-three all-pay auctions
Erinevused, kaugused ja sõrmejäljed. Stilomeetria ja mitmemõõtmelise tekstianalüüsi alused
Arvutuslikud meetodid ja töövahendid on viimasel ajal jõudsalt humanitaarteadustesse levinud. See on taaskäivitanud arutelu uurimisobjekti ning selle matemaatilise esituse või analüüsis kasutatava mudeli vahelise suhte üle. Kas midagi niivõrd kompleksset nagu romaan saab uurida nii lihtsal moel nagu selles esinevate sõnade loendamine? Ehkki mõned uurijad leiavad, et tänapäevased loomuliku keele töötluse tehnikad on kirjandusteaduse ja [...]
Deep Transitions
Beowulf single-authorship claim is unsupported
Long-term country-level evidence of major but uneven ruptures in the landscape of industrial modernity
Strategic manipulations in round-robin tournaments
We study round-robin tournaments with four symmetric players and two identical prizes where players compete against each other in games modeled as an all-pay contest. We demonstrate that in this common structure players may have an incentive to manipulate the results, namely, depending on the outcomes of the first round, a player may have an incentive to lose in the second round in order to maximize his expected payoff in the tournament
Computational thematics
What are the best methods of capturing thematic similarity between literary texts? Knowing the answer to this question would be useful for automatic clustering of book genres, or any other thematic grouping. This paper compares a variety of algorithms for unsupervised learning of thematic similarities between texts, which we call “computational thematics”. These algorithms belong to three steps of analysis: text pre-processing, extraction of text…
Intermediate prizes in multi-dimensional contests
Unsolicited prizes in contests
We study two identical contests in which players compete against each other in each contest. A player is awarded a prize if he wins one of the contests, and an additional prize if he wins both contests. We show that in the symmetric equilibrium of either simultaneous or sequential contests, each player’s expected payoff decreases with the value of the additional prize for winning both contests, implying that each player would prefer to be rewarde…
Simple is Eco-Friendly but Complex is Effective
Package design is an important form of point-of-purchase advertising that often conveys information about product characteristics. But can the mere level of its visual complexity produce specific inferences? We suggest that consumers prefer products with visually complex package designs when product efficacy considerations are salient but prefer products with visually simple designs when eco-friendliness considerations are salient. This effect ha…
Economics (12 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (8 works) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (7 works) · Mathematics (6 works) · Microeconomics (6 works) · Political science (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Auction Theory and Applications (4 works)