The Price of a Piece of Cheese: Value from Fit Between Epistemic Needs and a Learning Versus an Outcome Focus

Abstract

In decision making, people can focus on decisional outcomes (outcome focus), but they can also focus on gaining knowledge about the decisional domain (learning focus). Furthermore, people differ in the strength of their epistemic needs-their preference for developing a rich and accurate understanding of the world. We invoke the regulatory fit theory to predict that higher epistemic needs better fit a learning focus than lower epistemic needs, resulting in a greater increase in valuation of the chosen option when a learning rather than an outcome focus is induced. This general hypothesis was tested and supported in three studies, each focusing on a different proxy to epistemic needs. Thus, in..