CONTEXT-DEPENDENT SELECTION - THE EFFECTS OF DECOY AND PHANTOM JOB CANDIDATES

The attraction effect has historically referred to a situation in whic h an inferior alternative (i.e., a decoy) influences the relative attr activeness of other alternatives in a choice set. This investigation w as aimed at examining attraction effects in a simulated employee-selec tion context, and testing alternative hypotheses for the source of att raction effects. Experiment 1 investigated decoys along with superior, but unavailable, (i.e., phantom) alternatives in an employee-selectio n scenario. Results showed no target by alternative-type interaction, suggesting that decoys and phantoms operate similarly in affecting sel ection. This finding favors context-dependent weighting and loss-avers ion explanations for attraction effects. Experiment 2 showed that deco y effects are robust to a predetermined-weighting manipulation. (C) 19 96 Academic Press, Inc.