Abstract
The less-is-better effect emerges when an option of lesser quantitative value is preferred or overvalued relative to a quantitively greater alternative (e.g., 24-piece dinnerware set > 24-piece dinnerware set with 16 additional broken dishes; Hsee, 1998, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 11, 107–121). This decisional bias emerges when the option of lesser quantitative value is perceived as qualitatively better (e.g., smaller set of intact dishes > larger set of partially broken dishes). Interestingly, this effect emerges for adult humans when options are evaluated separately but dissipates when options are considered simultaneously. The less-is-better bias has been attributed to the evaluability hypothesis: individuals judge objects on the basis of easy-to-evaluate attributes when judged in isolation, such as the brokenness of items within a set, yet shift to quantitative information when evaluated jointly, such as the overall number of dishes. This bias emerges for adult humans and chimpanzees in a variety of experimental settings but has not yet been evaluated among children. In the current study, we presented a joint evaluation task (larger yet qualitatively inferior option vs. smaller yet qualitatively superior option) to children aged 3 to 9 years old to better understand the developmental trajectory of the less-is-better effect. Children demonstrated the bias across all choice trials, preferring an objectively smaller set relative to a larger yet qualitatively poorer alternative. These developmental findings suggest that young children rely upon salient features of a set to guide decision-making under joint evaluation versus more objective attributes such as quantity/value.
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Author note
Research support was sponsored by a research grant via the School of Humanities and Social Science at The Citadel. We have no conflicts of interest to disclose. The authors thank the parents and museum staff for their assistance.
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All raw data for choice behavior as a function of trial type are freely available online (https://osf.io/5hpq6/).
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Parrish, A.E., Sandgren, E.E. The less-is-better effect: a developmental perspective. Psychon Bull Rev 30, 2363–2370 (2023). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-023-02318-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-023-02318-x