Date of Award

Spring 2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology

Committee Director

Philip Langlais

Committee Member

Poornima Madhavan

Committee Member

J. Christopher Brill

Abstract

When making decisions, people are often presented with a default option. Across many different domains, individuals show an inflated preference for the default option, a phenomenon known as the default effect. The current research examined the default effect and the role of loss aversion and implied endorsement in the context of environmental policy. Two hundred nineteen undergraduate participants were asked to vote on an ostensible ballot question regarding the enactment of seven environmental policies. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions based on a manipulation of the default option: a default to enact the policy (the opt-out condition), a default to not enact the policy (the opt-in condition), and a forced-choice control condition. The current study found default effects to be present for three of the seven policies. Of these three policies, participants in the opt-out default condition endorsed the policy more often than participants in the opt-in or forced-choice condition. This pattern of results supports the endowment effect (i.e., an extension of loss aversion) as an explanation of default effects, but an explicit measure of loss aversion did not. Perceptions of policymaker endorsement did not differ across default conditions and political affiliation did not predict voting behavior.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/5d6q-nz09

ISBN

9781303994128

Download

Share

COinS