PSYC 3346 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Paper Clip

• School: Mount Royal University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 3346
• Professor: Naomi Grant

Document Summary

Psyc 3346 lecture 7 notes scarcity. Principle of scarcity: when commodities are perceived as rare or not easily attainable, their value is increased (brock & brannon, 1992; cialdini, 2001) Individuals rated a trait more positively when they were told it was rare compared to when they were told it was common (brannon & brock, 2001) How does scarcity operate: scarcity is a peripheral cue (cialdini, 2001) "rare is good" heuristic: works well to simplify complex decision-making, scarcity acts as a signal to attend to properties of an item (brannon & brock, 1992); this is the commodity theory, attitudes become polarized towards scarce items. Individuals felt worse about a rare illness compared to a common illness (brock & Brannon, 1992: when menu options were made scarce, scarcity increase compliance when strong arguments were present, but decreased compliance when weak arguments were present (brock & brannon, 2001, fast food study"s variables. Optimizing conditions for scarcity: newly scarce, competition for resources.