Focusing Illusion Research Articles

The Analysis of Focusing Illusion and Irrational Behavior in the Field of Consumption

The focusing illusion is perhaps one of the most important factors for the occurrence of biases in intuitive predictions. This paper investigates the cognitive bias in detail, and exactly how focusing illusion affects an individuals irrationality in daily life. The study also demonstrates how would focusing illusion affect the selection and purchase of private cars of individuals. To figure out whether focusing illusion occurs and whether it is the major factor affecting customers mind and thinking, the paper explores the customers consumption behaviors and the sellers marketing strategies when choosing in between potential available options within the allowance of their ability to purchase. To some extent, the viewpoints of existing researches and this study are basically consistent. Both clearly point out the irrational consumption behavior caused by the focusing illusion. In consider of this, potential theoretical methods are proposed to rectify consumers and societys point of view, avoid the trap and consequences brought by the focusing illusion. These includes solutions such as defocusing and delay in decision-making.

Age differences in affective forecasting accuracy.

Affective forecasts are people's predictions of their future feelings in response to future events. In this study, we examined whether younger and older adults differ in their affective forecasting accuracy. To do so, we recruited younger and older American voters and asked them to predict how they would feel following the 2020 U.S. presidential election. In the general feelings condition, participants predicted how they would feel, in general, following an election victory or loss. In the event-related feelings condition, participants predicted their future feelings specifically about an election victory and about an election loss. Later, these same participants reported their experienced feelings (either in general or about the election outcome). In the general feelings condition, age differences in affective forecasting accuracy varied as a function of whether participants' preferred candidate won or lost the election. Among election victors, there were age-related improvements in affective forecasting accuracy of negative feelings. In contrast, among election losers there were age-related declines in affective forecasting accuracy of both negative and positive feelings. A different pattern emerged for participants in the event-related feelings condition. These participants were highly accurate in their affective forecasts, and there were minimal age differences in forecasting accuracy. Together, these results show that age differences in affective forecasting accuracy depend upon both the type of future event, and the type of future feeling being predicted. When considered together, these results also suggest that the focusing illusion plays a key role in modulating age differences in affective forecasting accuracy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Sawang-sinawang: Focusing Illusion in Disability Context


 
 
 In predicting the future (future forecasting), individuals tend to overestimate the impact they might experience if there is a significant change in one aspect of their life. This study seeks to determine the best strategy to reduce the focusing illusion that occurs when participants are asked to imagine a worse situation (disability setting). This study is a quantitative randomized controlled trial (RCT), comparing three defocusing illusion scenarios (concrete events, change for better and worse and time-weighted) and the effect on the level of quality of life (QoL) of the participants. The results of this study showed a significant effect between the three treatments on the quality of life. The ‘change for the better and worse’ scenario is shown to be more effective at reducing the effect of the focusing illusion.
 Keywords: disability, future forecasting, focusing illusion, defocusing illusion
 
 

Video Conferencing Impact on Facial Appearance: Looking Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Video Conferencing Impact on Facial Appearance: Looking Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Would you be happier if you moved more? Physical activity focusing illusion

Research shows that individuals who are more physically active also report greater happiness. However, subjective well-being is prone to cognitive biases. For instance, people overrate the influence of single factors (e.g., money) on their happiness; a phenomenon termed the focusing illusion. In this study, we examined whether the relationship between physical activity and subjective well-being is stronger when individuals focus on physical activity explicitly compared to individuals with no specific focus. We experimentally manipulated the physical activity focus by varying the order of scales administration. Participants (N = 200) completed questionnaires that measured physical activity and subjective well-being placed in separate envelopes and provided in a random order. We found that individuals with higher levels of vigorous physical activity were more satisfied with life regardless of the order of scale presentation (no focusing effect). However, we found evidence of a possible focusing illusion for moderate-intensity physical activity. Individuals with higher levels of moderate-intensity physical activity reported higher subjective well-being when they were asked about physical activity first but not when they reported their well-being unaware of the upcoming physical activity questions. Thus, subjective well-being judgments can be biased by a prior focus on moderate-intensity physical activity. The order of scale administration when assessing subjective well-being should be carefully considered.

(Mis)imagining the good life and the bad life: Envy and pity as a function of the focusing illusion

Envy is a negative state arising when we encounter others with more desirable circumstances than our own. Its converse is pity, a negative state elicited by downward comparisons towards worse-off others. Both classes of emotions first require us to infer what a person's life as a whole must be like. However, the “focusing illusion” suggests these impressions of others are incomplete: we may overweight extreme features (the exceptionally good circumstances of envied others and exceptionally bad circumstances of pitied others) at the cost of overlooking the smaller ups and downs of daily life, which inevitably dilute the other person's overall experience. If so, envy and pity could involve misperceiving that envied others have lives that are uniformly wonderful (overlooking that they still face smaller annoyances) and pitied others have lives that are uniformly awful (overlooking that they still enjoy smaller pleasures). Five studies support this possibility. First, participants evaluated different peers. Consistent with focalism, the more envy and pity they felt, the more disparities they perceived (Study 1)—yet the actual everyday lives of envied and pitied others were similar (Study 2). Participants then completed various defocusing tasks designed to bring to mind others' smaller ups and downs. This indeed reduced envy and pity (Studies 3–4a–4b–5), but pity proved harder to reduce (Studies 4b–5). These studies suggest the same underlying focalism may inflate feelings of envy and pity, with asymmetric regulation strategies: small annoyances spoil perceptions of a good life more than small pleasures enhance perceptions of a bad life.

Environmental issues: managing product switching intentions among Indonesian consumers

PurposeThis study aims to explore the factors that make Indonesian consumers differ in their intentions to switch to products that are more eco-friendly than their current products.Design/methodology/approachConsumers’ experiences with their current product and evaluation of its more eco-friendly alternative were simulated; the effects on intention to switch to the better product were then investigated.FindingsThis study found that the differences in intentions to switch are attributable to loss aversion and focusing illusion. When consumers follow the principle of loss aversion (exaggeration of greater loss than gain), they are more likely to switch to leave unattractive product (i.e. a product that they perceive as contributing to environmental degradation) than when they do not. Also, when consumers experience focusing illusion concerning the environment (determining happiness based on environmental conditions), they are more likely to switch to make their lives happier than when they do not.Practical implicationsIn managing consumer intention to switch, companies should effectively communicate how their products save the environment. This communication could make their customers less likely to give up their current products to live happier lives. Similarly, companies could encourage target customers to switch to their products by arguing that giving up their current products would help them live happier lives.Originality/valueThis study provides empirical evidence that perceived budget constraints may not inhibit consumers from switching to more eco-friendly products to live happier lives.

Back to Bentham, Should We? Large-Scale Comparison of Experienced Versus Decision Utility

Subjective well-being (SWB) data is increasingly used to perform welfare analyses. Interpreted as 'experienced utility', SWB has recently been compared to 'decision utility' using specific experiments, most often based on stated preferences. Results point to an overall congruence between these two types of welfare measures. We question whether these findings hold in the more general framework of non-experimental and large-scale data, i.e. the setting commonly used for policy analysis. For individuals in the British household panel, we compare the ordinal preferences either revealed from their labor supply decisions or elicited from their reported SWB. The results show striking similarities on average, reflecting the fact that a majority of individuals made decisions that are consistent with SWB maximization. Differences between the two welfare measures arise for particular subgroups, lending themselves to intuitive explanations that we illustrate for specific factors (health and labor market constraints, 'focusing illusion', aspirations).

Examining the Focusing Illusion as a Cognitive Mechanism Underlying Catastrophic Perceptions of Social Blunders in Socially Anxious Individuals

The current study examined whether high socially anxious individuals overestimate the cost of committing social blunders due to the mental heuristic known as the focusing illusion, specifically that they may focus on salient blunder-related information without considering other inconspicuous blunder-unrelated information. Two hundred and fifty-nine undergraduate participants across the social anxiety spectrum imagined and estimated costs associated with committing hypothetical blunders. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: (1) No defocusing; (2) indirect defocusing; (3) direct defocusing; and (4) indirect plus direct defocusing. Indirect defocusing involved participants generating factors that they thought would influence how they would be judged such that they could potentially consider the impact of blunder-unrelated information on others’ judgments. Direct defocusing involved participants being directly provided with blunder-unrelated information as part of the hypothetical bl...

Would You Be Happier If You Looked Better? A Focusing Illusion

Some people might believe that individuals who are more satisfied with their body are also happier. However, people tend to overrate the influence of some factors (e.g. money or health) on their happiness; a phenomenon termed the focusing illusion. Our aim was to examine the focusing illusion in relation to body satisfaction. We experimentally manipulated body satisfaction and life satisfaction focus by varying the order of relevant measurement scales. Volunteers (N = 97) completed two questionnaires placed in separate envelopes to control the order of scales administration. Participants either completed the Body Satisfaction Scale followed by the Satisfaction with Life Scale or vice versa. In line with the focusing illusion the association between body satisfaction and life satisfaction was significantly stronger when participants were asked about their body satisfaction first. Body satisfaction as a focusing illusion may need to be considered by scientist as well as lay people who try to look better and be happier.

The Focusing Illusion and Happiness: Evidence Using College Basketball Championship

The analyses of two online surveys involving college students found evidence that using a college basketball championship as focal event resulted in unstable subjective evaluations of happiness. However, the analyses also found that the focusing illusion had modest spillover on subjective evaluations for the other life domains in which a college basketball championship was immaterial in the consideration. The analyses therefore confirmed the separability of subjective evaluations across life domains and sustained their usefulness both as inputs to analysis and yardstick for policy and intervention.

Focusing illusion in satisfaction with life among college students living in Brazil

Literature shows that there are significant associations between health and happiness. Various countries are considering, contemplating or formally incorporating the happiness variable into their public health policies. Moreover, the private sector has shown interest in the topic. Based on that This article examines the biases in the perception of satisfaction with life among young adults in two Brazilian cities. The study explores the associations between aspects of life and perception of happiness because public policies associated with happiness require an improved understanding of the subjectivity of the sense of well-being. A survey conducted among 368 college students enabled analysis through Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) and linear regression. The results suggest that, although there were no significant differences in general satisfaction with life between the two cities, there were indications of focusing illusion in the perception of happiness caused by expectations arising from the feeling of personal insecurity in a metropolis.

Focusing Illusion in Affective Forecasting

Focusing illusion refers to a tendency that individuals fail to estimate how focal event would affect their emotion when they are making an affective forecasting. Focusing illusion is a major explanation for affective forecasting bias. There are two psychological mechanisms of focusing illusion: intuitive prediction and accessibility model. The factors to influence focusing illusion are: valence and feature of the predicted event, context, habit and cultural difference and so on. The strategies to deal with the focusing illusion are: defocusing and affective averaging. Future research shall clarify the relationship between focusing illusion and fail to considerate emotional adaptation, to deepen our understanding of its original roots and to clarify the relationship between focusing illusion and other focusing effects.

Treatment Decisions After Severe Stroke

Stroke demands our attention because it is common, disabling, and deadly. One in 15 patients requires mechanical ventilation on admission, 1 in 20 patients is discharged from the acute care hospital with a feeding tube, and 1 in 5 patients requires institutional care at 3 months after stroke.1 Most patients with severe stroke who die, do so in the setting of withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment (LST),2 and this decision is typically made by physicians who predict a poor outcome and surrogates who are asked to articulate the patient’s preferences3: "she would not want to live like that." When prognosis is certain and the outcome unacceptable, the decision to withdraw or withhold LST may be relatively straightforward, although emotionally challenging. In most severe strokes, however, decisions are made when prognosis is uncertain and when what constitutes an acceptable outcome is unknown. In this article, we explore the uncertainties and biases that influence these life-and-death decisions. Such biases can lead to errors in decision making and ultimately the overuse or underuse of LST. Hence, the need is urgent to understand better the factors that contribute to optimal -decision making.4 Surviving a severe stroke means living with disability. Treatment decisions, thus, frequently involve trade-offs.5 Three typical preference-sensitive decisions after severe stroke are mechanical ventilation, artificial nutrition, and surgical decompression for hemorrhagic or ischemic strokes with life-threatening mass effect. All of these LSTs reduce the risk of death but increase the chance of survival.6–8 Although one individual may choose life at all costs, even when evidence predicts severe disability, another may refuse LSTs despite a prospect of surviving with a modest deficit, trading off the possibility of survival in an undesirable health state for the more desirable outcome of death. In the acute setting, withdrawal …

Counteracting the focusing illusion: Effects of defocusing on car users’ predicted satisfaction with public transport

Car users underestimate their potential satisfaction with public transport due to a focusing illusion (i.e., focusing on a too narrow range of aspects related to the focal event). To investigate whether a defocusing technique would increase car users’ predicted satisfaction with public transport, the effects of defocusing techniques, generic (Study 1) and self-relevant (Study 2), were investigated. In Study 1 (estimate daily time spent on ten pre-selected activities), the generic defocusing technique did not generate higher predicted satisfaction with public transport. In Study 2, the self-relevant defocusing technique generated higher predicted satisfaction on quality attributes, namely satisfaction with the number of departures, the number of available seats and the condition of the vehicles, in comparison with controls. It is concluded that the self-relevant defocusing technique applied in Study 2 (state your various everyday activities and describe how much time you engage in them) was successful in making car users take into account activities in life that will remain unchanged if they were to use public transport for their daily travel. Additionally, in Studies 1 and 2, it was found that car-use habit, regardless of the experimental condition, influenced the magnitude of predicted satisfaction, that is, the higher the car-use habit, the lower the predicted satisfaction with public transport.

Pain and Suffering Damages Based on QALYs: Circumventing Victims' (and Juries') Hedonic Misperceptions

Insights from psychology have recently found their way into tort law, suggesting that both victims and juries suffer from hedonic misperceptions which are attributed to the psychological phenomena of hedonic adaptation neglect and the focusing illusion, causing victims to exaggerate their physical and emotional harm, and juries to award excessive damages for pain and suffering. This article argues that a framework based on the measure of Quality Adjusted Life Year from the domain of health economics, is better suited to aid juries in the assessment of pain and suffering damages because it can allow hedonic adaptation to be reflected in the amounts to the extent (and if) it occurs and can deal with the problem of focusing illusion. In doing so, the proposed framework does not compromise its other important qualities, namely its ability to yield amounts corresponding to the severity and duration of the physical and emotional harm.

The Continuing Health Burden of Congenital Hypothyroidism in the Era of Neonatal Screening

Biochemical screening of neonates for congenital hypothyroidism (CH), followed by appropriate treatment, results in the disappearance of overt intellectual disability among those affected by this condition (1). However, this does not mean that neonatal screening necessarily results in the same health outcomes as among unaffected individuals. Indeed, numerous studies have reported subtle neurological and cognitive differences in cohorts of children with CH detected by screening (2). Few studies, however, have assessed health status, educational attainment, and labor market outcomes among adults with CH in populations that have benefited from screening for the disorder. Such studies necessarily reflect the screening, diagnostic, and initial treatment practices of more than two decades ago, practices that are continually evolving. Nevertheless, findings from such studies are important to guide how practices can be “fine tuned” to optimize outcome even in severely affected subjects. In the present issue of JCEM, Leger et al. (3) report the result of a large postal questionnaire survey of 1202 French patients with CH at an average age of 23.4 yr. This survey was carried out in 2007–2008, and its results are compared with those of face-to-face interviews for a national sample of 5718 control subjects aged 18–30 yr. Patients with CH significantly more often reported having another chronic disease or hearing impairment, or being overweight; they were less likely to have attained the highest socioeconomic category, to be in full-time employment, and to be living independently; lastly, their mental health score calculated from the Short-Form Health Survey-36 was 0.35 SD below that of the comparison sample. All of the differences were modest in magnitude, mostly less than 5 percentage points, between cases and controls. The authors speculate that the nonresponders (31% of sample) may have been too handicapped to participate, although the opposite hypothesis, i.e. that they felt so healthy that they did not bother responding, seems equally plausible. In addition, questionnaire studies can be influenced by the way in which they are constructed, a phenomenon that has been called a “focusing illusion” (4). What should we make of the differences found by Leger et al. (3)? Although most young adults with CH treated with levothyroxine soon after birth appear clinically indistinguishable from their peers, a minority reports modestly poorer health, educational, economic, and social outcomes. For example, 49.6% of adults with CH had higher secondary or tertiary education, compared with 51.5% of controls. These differences are not random but are concentrated among CH patients with greater severity of CH, worse treatment adequacy, and the presence of associated chronic conditions. For example, among those with CH, the percentage with higher secondary/tertiary education was 53% of those who had no other chronic disease, no hearing impairment, and were not obese, compared with 33% of those who had one or more of these associated conditions. Similarly, 54% of those with adequate treatment during early adulthood had higher educational attainment, compared with 42% of those with TSH greater than 5 mU/liter (range, 7.6–27.6 mU/liter) at the most recent assessment of thyroid function, which was within 2 yr of the questionnaire study. Not all adult patients with

Focusing illusion, adaptation and EQ‐5D health state descriptions: the difference between patients and public

Patients tend to assign higher utilities to health states compared with the general public. Several explanations have been given for this difference including focusing illusion -, caused in part by the sparseness of a health state description such as the EQ-5D -, and adaptation. We investigated whether patients and the public differ in which dimensions they find important. Furthermore, we compared whether the dimensions named by patients and the public obtained higher rankings of importance compared with the predefined EQ-5D dimensions. Within each nominated dimension we investigated whether the public used a more negative frame compared with patients. In addition, adaptation was investigated by comparing patients with high levels of adaptation and patients with low levels of adaptation. Data were collected using semistructured interviews among 124 patients with rheumatoid arthritis and 64 members of the public. Participants indicated which aspects are important to them when they think about their life having rheumatoid arthritis and rated the importance of these aspects and of the EQ-5D dimensions. In contrast to patients, the public named more often aspects related to sports and mobility, leisure activities and work and framed these aspects negatively. Compared with self-rated dimensions, the public ranked the EQ-5D dimensions as more important whereas patients found both groups of aspects equally important. Patients who showed higher levels of adaptation did not differ significantly from patients with lower levels. The public is focused on life domains that are negatively influenced by the described health state whereas patients are focused on both the positive and negative aspects of their lives.

Effects of critical incidents on car users’ predicted satisfaction with public transport

► Car users overlook factors that will influence their satisfaction with PT. ► Predicted satisfaction is altered when negative critical incidents are in focus. ► Predictions about future satisfaction with public transport are biased by a focusing illusion. The present study examines the hypothesis that car users’ affective forecasts of satisfaction with public transport are biased by a focusing illusion. In Study 1, 54 car users with a stated intent to change travel mode read descriptions of a positive, a negative or a neutral critical incident. They were asked to predict their satisfaction with public transport if the incident occurred. In Study 2, 38 car users with no stated intent to change travel mode read descriptions of a positive or a negative critical incident. They were asked to predict their satisfaction with the service if the incident occurred. The results from Studies 1 and 2 showed that focus on a negative critical incident significantly generated lower predicted satisfaction. Thus, the study show that predicted satisfaction is altered when car users focus on negative critical incidents.

Experienced Utility as a Standard of Policy Evaluation

This paper explores the possibility of basing economic appraisal on the measurement of experienced utility (utility as hedonic experience) rather than decision utility (utility as a representation of preference). Because of underestimation of the extent of hedonic adaptation to changed circumstances and because of the “focusing illusion” (exaggerating the importance of the current focus of one’s attention), individuals’ forecasts of experienced utility are subject to systematic error. Such errors induce preference anomalies which the experienced utility approach might circumvent. The “day reconstruction method” of measuring experienced utility is considered as a possible alternative to stated preference methods.