Preference for status and positional goods
Author(s):
Patrick McAlvanah
Field:
Judgment/Decision-making
Name/description of effect:
For some goods the quantity relative to others may matter more than the absolute quantity; these are referred to status or positional goods. For example, education and beauty have a strong relative positional component.
Year(s) of attempted replication(s):
2006
Number of experiments:
1
Replication status:
Abject failure
Sample size(s):
241
Brief summary of experiment(s):
The experiment attempted to quantify the strength of preferences for positional goods. I asked subjects a series of questions such as "Would you prefer to make $50,000 and your co-workers make $25,000, or would you prefer to make $100,000 and your co-workers make $200,000?". Subjects' answers were incredibly inconsistent (within subject), indicating that they did not understand the question.