Longer vs. shorter denominations of unemployment and inflation rates: an experimental survey
Gilles Grolleau et al.
What the paper says
Some researchers have provided evidence that contradicts the intuitive expectation that people perceive lower values expressed in a longer denomination (e.g., two dollars and eighty-five cents) as larger than higher values expressed in a shorter denomination (e.g., three dollars). Using an experimental survey of 637 respondents, we examine this bias in the context of messages about unemployment and inflation. Our results differ from previous research in that we found no evidence of this bias. Specifically, participants did not perceive the number of unemployed and the inflation rate as higher and more serious simply because they are presented in larger denominations. Our findings suggest that communication about these dimensions that relies on the potential of numerosity heuristics should be used cautiously.
1 citation
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.16 × 0.4 = 0.06 |
| M · momentum | 0.53 × 0.15 = 0.08 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.