2. The zero-sum heuristic
A heuristic is a “fast and frugal” mental shortcut.
The zero-sum heuristic is an intuitive judgment
that a situation is zero-sum: gains for one party
mean losses for another.
4. Extant literature
Chernev (2007)
Consumers show zero-sum judgments of consumer products.
Meegan (2010)
Students show zero-sum judgments of university grades.
Norton & Sommers (2011)
Whites show zero-sum judgments of racism.
8. Methods
Vignettes: (heterosexual) romantic
relationships, one individual with one or two
partners.
16 experimental
Condition(4) * Character Gender(2) * Version(2)
Conditions:
(one-partner) baseline
(two-partner) competitor, sexual competitor, romantic
competitor
Between-subjects design with randomization.
9. Baseline condition (no “competition”)
• Ethan is dating Sophie.
• Sophie is a professional actress.
Competitor condition
• Ethan is dating Olivia and Sophie.
• Sophie is a professional actress.
Sexual competitor condition
• Ethan is dating Olivia and Sophie.
• Sophie is a professional actress.
• Ethan has a great sexual connection with Olivia.
Romantic competitor condition
• Ethan is dating Olivia and Sophie.
• Sophie is a professional actress.
• Ethan has a great romantic connection with Olivia.
To what extent does Ethan love Sophie?
very little very much
13. Condition Main Effect
Condition Main Effect
20
15
*
NS, p > .05
LOVE RATING
10
5
0
Baseline Competitor Sexual Romantic
14. Future directions
Presumption of infidelity driving the effect?
1. Consensual vs. non-consensual vignettes.
Monogamous identity driving the effect?
2. Monogamous vs. polyamorous samples.
15.
16. Baseline condition (no “competition”)
• Jacob is romantically involved with Hailey.
• Hailey is a mountain biking enthusiast.
Competitor condition
• Jacob is romantically involved with Emma and Hailey.
• Hailey is a mountain biking enthusiast.
Sexual competitor condition
• Jacob is romantically involved with Emma and Hailey.
• Hailey is a mountain biking enthusiast.
• Jacob has amazing sex with Emma.
Romantic competitor condition
• Jacob is romantically involved with Emma and Hailey.
• Hailey is a mountain biking enthusiast.
• Jacob has an amazing time on his dates with Emma.
To what extent does Jacob love Hailey?
very little very much
19. Condition*ChGender*SsGender
Condition Main Effect
Condition*ChGender AT Female Character
20
LOVE RATING
15
10 *
5
0
Baseline Competitor Sexual Romantic
Male Ss Female Ss
Editor's Notes
In case you are not familiar with the term “heuristic”, it refers to a mental shortcut that conserves time and cognitive resources (i.e., it is “fast and frugal”). The zero-sum heuristic refers to an intuitive judgment that a situation is zero-sum – one person’s gains are another person’s loss.
Conceptually, it helps to think of this heuristic as specifying how the resources in a situation are being distributed or re-distributed among individuals. There are two ways that this can play out [directly zero-sum vs. indirectly zero-sum]. Let’s say we have two individuals. One individual is already in possession of the resources. This means that the other individual can only gain by taking it away from them. A less obvious possibility that neither individual is in possession of the resources, but the resource pool is of a fixed quantity. One person’s gain from this pool then translates into an indirect loss for the other, insofar as their ability to gain is diminished.Everyone with me so far?
In the literature, there are three key papers. The first is a paper by Chernev, which I’ll be talking about in the next few slides. The second is a paper by our own Dan Meegan. Dan was looking at perceptions about how grades were being distributed in a classroom. When many high grades (e.g., A’s and B’s)had been given out to some students, individuals judged that the remaining students would then be less likely to receive a high grade, because high grades were perceived as a scarce resource. Finally, Norton and Sommers were looking at discrimination targeting Blacks and Whites, as perceived by Blacks and Whites. Across time, White people perceived that Blacks were being targeted less by discrimination, and that White people were being targeted more. For White people, racism was a zero-sum game.
Chernev was interested consumer judgments of product performance, and how it would change depending on the number of functions that a product claims to perform. Let’s take an example. Let’s say you’re shopping for toothpaste that will whiten your teeth. You get to the aisle with toothpaste, and…
On the shelf you see two brands: Cogate, which says it will whiten your teeth, and Colate which says it will both whiten your teeth and fight cavities. Which brand do you choose? According to Chernev’s results, you will choose Brand A. Your perception will be that Brand A will do a better job at whitening teeth. Brand B will do a worse job because it’s also fighting cavities. The reason is that you have intuitively judged “performance” to be a fixed resource that is divided by the number of functions that the toothpaste is performing.
By now you should have a sense of what the zero-sum heuristic is, and some of the domains in which it’s been studied. One of the questions I ask in my thesis is “What about relationships?”. Would we expect to find zero-sum perceptions of some kinds of relationships? I expect we would, specifically with non-monogamous relationships – where one individual has multiple romantic partners.Let’s consider two scenarios. Scenario One: We have two individuals in an exclusive romantic relationship. Each individual receives all of the other’s love.Scenario Two: We have one individual in a romantic relationship with two others. I expect the perception would be that these individuals must “split” the love, receiving less than the total sum (and less than they would in an otherwise exclusive arrangement).Conceptually, this was my hypothesis.
I used an experimental approach to examine this question. My stimuli were vignettes that depicted romantic relationships where an individual was involved with one or two partners. There were 16 experimental vignettes, and 10 foils. The experimental vignettes were broken down into 3 factors: condition, character gender, and version. For the conditions, there was a one-partner baseline, and three two-partner “competitor” conditions. It was also a between-subjects design, so each individual received one of the experimental vignettes.
Here’s an example of a set of vignettes. In the baseline condition, Ethan is dating Sophie and Sophie is a professional actress. We then ask: to what extent does Ethan love Sophie?– from “very little” to “very much”. In the competitor condition we introduce Olivia. In the sexual competitor condition, we add a statement about Ethan’s sexual relationship with Olivia – they have a “great sexual connection”. In the romantic competitor condition, this statement is stated in terms of their “romantic connection”.So you can see that across the conditions we hold all of the information about Ethan’s relationship with Sophie constant. Any changes in response from baseline would come as a result of Ethan’s relationship with Olivia.
You may have noticed that the vignettes were missing some pieces of information (e.g., a non-relational statement about Olivia, or specifics about Ethan’s relationship with Sophie). To avoid the possibility that responses would be influenced by the missing information in itself, we used a “card flipping” paradigm. The relationship scenario was presented (Ethan is dating Olivia and Sophie), followed by three cards. Participants would then turn-over the cards to reveal the remaining information. Flipping over card 1 reveals that “Ethan has a great romantic connection with Olivia” and flipping over card 3 reveals that “Sophie is a professional actress.” The remaining card – which we prevent the participant from flipping over – then allows for the possibility that there was information relevant to their decision that they didn’t uncover, by chance.
In terms of my hypothesis, I expected to find a devaluation of the competitor conditions relative to baseline. In other words, the perception would be that “Ethan loves Sophie” less when Ethan is also involved with Olivia. No specific predictions were made regarding differences between the competitor conditions, and there was some anticipation of a possible gender interaction (in terms of the character and/or participant gender).
My analysis consisted of a four-way ANOVA: Condition-BY-character gender-BY-version-BY-subject gender.At this point I have collected my data, and I am beginning to analyze it. My sample consisted of 480 participants (30 per condition), and the demographics show that it was fairly representative of the North American population (mean age 32, half male/female, and about two-thirds reported being in a relationship).
The key result was a significant main effect for condition. On the vertical axis we have love ratings (obtained on a scale ranging from 0 to 20). We can see that the baseline condition received significantly higher ratings than each of the competitor conditions, but the competitor conditions didn’t differ from one another. This is consistent with my hypothesis, meaning that non-monogamous relationships appear to be interpreted in zero-sum terms.
However, in some sense the zero-sum heuristic is a descriptive account of these findings. What is driving the effect? I am currently considering two possibilities.First, it’s possible that this devaluation is due to a presumption of infidelity. In other words, participants might believe that Ethan is seeing Olivia without Sophie’s knowledge or consent. To examine this possibility, I propose to replicate this study using consensual and non-consensual vignettes – for example, “Ethan is dating Sophie, and with Sophie’s consent Ethan is also dating Olivia.”A second possibility is that monogamous beliefs are driving the effect. For example, characteristic monogamous beliefs include valuing exclusivity (sexual, social) and de-valuing non-exclusivity. To examine this possibility, I would like to study both monogamous and (ethically) non-monogamous populations.
