The New York Times-20080128-When Neither A Nor B Looks Good

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When Neither A Nor B Looks Good

Full Text (174  words)

A study in The Journal of Consumer Research finds that people have more trouble choosing between bad alternatives than good ones. In one experiment, college students were asked to choose between a car with a poor warranty and one without air-conditioning. They took 26 percent longer to choose than students who were asked to pick between a car with good financing and one with a powerful engine.

Conversely, subjects who were asked to reject a car had an easier time selecting between the flawed cars than those who were choosing between two good cars.

Partha Krishnamurthy, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Houston and one of the study's authors, drew a parallel to voters in a nasty political race. People have a difficult time making a choice when they are faced with negative information, he said, meaning that injecting negativity into a campaign can reduce the turnout of the uncommitted voter.

[Illustration]PHOTOGRAPHIC: 50.37 Average number of seconds spent choosing among attractive alternatives 63.60 Average time spent choosing among unattractive alternatives