| Summary: | In “The value of nothing: asymmetric attention to opportunity
costs drives intertemporal decision making” Read, Olivola and Hardisty (2017)
proposed an asymmetric subjective opportunity cost (ASOC) effect to explain and
predict why impatience can be detected in intertemporal choice. This work
deserves to be replicated and extended for its novel and potentially important
findings. The present study aimed to examine the reliability and robustness of
the evidence presented by Read et al. by conducting precise replications of
their key findings in Study 1. The ASOC effect (Read, et al., 2017) was
important for expanding its application and reported to be typically stronger
when baseline larger-but-later option (LL) and smaller-but-sooner option (SS)
preferences were closer to 50% in the authors’ original condition. Therefore,
the present study also aimed to replicate and test the ASOC effect when
baseline LL preferences were higher or lower than those in the original
condition. We intended to set two additional conditions wherein either LL or SS
is more obviously favored (i.e., baseline LL preferences were higher or lower
than those in the original condition) by respectively applying the common
difference effect (Kirby and Herrnstein, 1995) and the unit effect (Burson,
Larrick and Lynch Jr., 2009; Pandelaere, Briers and Lembregts, 2011). Having
successfully generated two more obviously favored conditions, the ASOC effect
was replicated and confirmed under the original condition and one additional
condition wherein SS was more obviously favored. However, the ASOC effect was
not detected under the other additional condition wherein LL was more obviously
favored. The implications of these findings were discussed.
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