Accentuation and compatibility: Replication and extensions of Shafir (1993) to rethink choosing versus rejecting paradigms

Abstract

We conducted a replication of Shafir (1993) who showed that people are inconsistent in their ‎preferences when faced with choosing versus rejecting decision-making scenarios. The effect ‎was demonstrated using an enrichment paradigm, asking subjects to choose between enriched ‎and impoverished alternatives, with enriched alternatives having more positive and negative ‎features than the impoverished alternative. Using eight different decision scenarios, Shafir ‎found support for his compatibility principle: subjects chose and rejected enriched alternatives ‎in choose and reject decision scenarios (d = 0.32 [0.23, 0.4]), respectively, and indicated greater ‎preference for the enriched alternative in the choice task than in the rejection task (d = 0.38 ‎‎[0.29, 0.46]). In a pre-registered very close replication of the original study (N = 1026), we ‎found no consistent support for the hypotheses across the eight problems: two had similar ‎effects, two had opposite effects, and four showed no effects (overall d: -0.01 [-0.06, 0.03]). ‎Seeking alternative explanations, we tested and found support for the accentuation hypothesis (b ‎‎= −0.51(0.044), p < .001). ‎