How a maximizing orientation affects trade-offs between desirability and feasibility: The role of outcome- versus process-focused decision making

This research examines how maximizers make decisions when they must trade-off between desirability and feasibility attributes. Across four studies, we demonstrate that maximizers tend to prefer choices offering more desirability to those offering more feasibility and respond more favorably to a product's advertising when it highlights desirability more than feasibility attributes. Furthermore, we show that maximizers' focus on outcomes rather than processes drives their preference for desirability, such that changing from an outcome to a process focus can redirect their interest from desirability to feasibility. By contrast, satisficers do not prefer products higher in desirability to those higher in feasibility and are not more receptive to ads highlighting desirability attributes. Furthermore, because satisficers may focus on both the outcome and the process, priming either one is redundant and does not alter their preference for desirability or feasibility.     

Type A behavior, family history of hypertension, and cardiovascular responsivity among black women

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of Type A behavior and family history of hypertension on cardiovascular reactivity to mental stress in a group of employed black women. Measures of heart rate and of systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) were taken at rest, during a mental arithmetic task, and during the Type A Structured Interview (SI). Results indicated that the Type A behavior pattern was associated with SBP and DBP hyperresponsivity during the SI but not during mental arithmetic. Additionally, certain speech components of the Type A pattern, as well as features of the potential-for-hostility component, were also related to cardiovascular responses during the SI. Family history of hypertension did not influence the cardiovascular parameters either alone or in combination with Type A behavior. The results suggest that many of the cardiovascular response characteristics of the Type A pattern that have been observed in predominantly white samples also hold true for blacks. Replication of these findings with other subgroups of blacks, such as young females and middle-aged males, will help document the generality of these findings within the black population.