The Impact of “Display‐Set” Options on Decision‐Making

The way a choice set is constructed can have a significant influence on how individuals perceive and evaluate their options, and make decisions between them. Here, I examine whether a “display set” of visible but unavailable options can exert these same types of influences on whether or not to choose a single (target) item. Across a series of experiments, purchase intent is increased when the display set and target are drawn from the same category, but decreased when the display and target items are mismatched. This effect is shown to depend on perceived similarity, such that increasing display‐target similarity increases purchase intent towards the target. Furthermore, contrary to the predictions made by previous neural and behavioral research on choice sets, the relative value and/or number of display‐only items have no significant impact on these decisions. These findings reveal a novel choice behavior in commonly encountered settings such as online marketplaces. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.