Unpacking a time interval lengthens its perceived temporal distance

Giving more detailed information about health insurance encourages consumers to choose compromise options

Introduction

To investigate how the provision of additional information about the health events and procedures covered by a healthcare plan affect the level of coverage chosen by young adults taking their first full time job.

Methods

University students were recruited for a study at two behavioral laboratories (one located at the University of Toronto and the other located at INSEAD-Sorbonne University in Paris) in which they imagine they are making choices about the healthcare coverage associated with the taking a new job in Chicago, Illinois. Every participant made choices in four categories: Physician Care, Clinical Care, Hospital Care, and Dental Care. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: Low Detail or High Detail coverage information and they chose between three levels of coverage: Basic, Enhanced, and Superior. The study took place in March 2017 with 120 students in Toronto and 121 students in Paris.

Results

The provision of more detailed information about the health events and procedures covered by a healthcare plan leads to a compromise effect in which participants shift their choices significantly towards Enhanced (moderate coverage) from Basic (low coverage) and Superior (high coverage). The compromise effect was observed at both locations; however, Paris participants choose significantly higher levels of coverage than Toronto participants.

Discussion

Providing more detail to employees about the health events and procedures covered by a healthcare plan will increase the fraction of employees who choose the intermediate level of coverage. It is beyond the scope of this study to conclude whether this is good or bad; however, in a context where employees gravitate to either insufficient or excessive coverage, providing additional detail may reduce these tendencies.

Improving Time Estimation in Witness Memory

The present study sought to determine whether witness memory for duration could be improved. In three studies, we examined the effects of unpacking (breaking an event into its component parts), anchoring (supplying participants with a reference duration), and summation (summing component estimates). Participants watched a video-recorded mock crime and provided duration estimates for components of the crime (e.g., casing the car, unlocking the door, etc.) and for the total crime. Results indicate that bias in estimated duration was less for the sum of the parts than it was for the overall duration estimate. Further, the sum of the individual parts did not equal the total estimate, even though all estimates were given in sequence. Summing the component parts could be a more successful intervention than anchoring or unpacking and is easy to employ with witnesses.

Unpacking, summing and anchoring in retrospective time estimation

We examined whether or not interventions that have been used to try to influence predictions of future task duration - unpacking, summing and anchoring - had a similar effect on retrospective estimations of duration. In three studies, participants experienced a number of short stimuli, such as watching videos, before estimating the duration for each of the stimuli and the overall duration. The first estimation given served as an anchor for all following estimates. If the first estimation was highly biased in one direction, then subsequent estimates were more likely to also be biased in the same direction. Additionally, separate estimates for a number of individual tasks differed from the estimates for all of the tasks combined. This incongruity happened even though all estimates were given in sequence. Overall, results indicated that memories of past task duration could be influenced by the manner in which they were elicited.