Trupia, Maria Giulia, and Franklin Shaddy, “‘No Time to Buy’: Asking Consumers to Spend Time to Save Money is Perceived as Fairer than Asking Consumers to Spend Money to Save Time,” accepted at Journal of Consumer Psychology

Firms often ask consumers to either spend time to save money (e.g., Lyft’s “Wait & Save”) or spend money to save time (e.g., Uber’s “Priority Pickup”). Across six preregistered studies (N = 3,631), including seven reported in the Web Appendix (N = 2,930), we find that asking consumers to spend time to save money is perceived as fairer than asking them to spend money to save time (all else equal), with downstream consequences for word-of-mouth, purchase intentions, willingness-to-pay (WTP), and incentive-compatible choice. This is because spend-time-to-save-money offers reduce concerns about firms’ profit-seeking motives, which consumers find aversive and unfair. The effect is thus mediated by inferences about profit-seeking and attenuates when concerns about those motives are less salient (e.g., for non-profits). At the same time, we find that spend-money-to-save-time offers (e.g., expedited shipping) are more common in the marketplace. This research reveals how normatively equivalent trade-offs can nevertheless yield contradictory fairness judgments, with meaningful implications for marketing theory and practice.

Trupia, Maria Giulia, Cassie Mogilner Holmes, and Isabelle Engeler, “What’s Meant vs. Heard When Communicating Busyness,” invited for resubmission at Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Busyness plagues modern society. Stressing from having too much to do and not enough time to do it, people often lament their busyness to others. However, as busyness has become a status symbol, others might perceive expressions of busyness as an attempt to impress rather than connect. Across multiple preregistered experiments (N = 7,018) and an analysis of a dataset of 1,656 real-life conversations, we find a systematic miscalibration between what people are feeling when they say they are busy and what others perceive. When busyness is communicated, receivers perceive that expressers feel greater importance and see themselves as higher in social status than expressers actually do, and it negatively affects liking (Studies 1-3). When expressers are informed about this miscommunication and asked how they would correct it, most would emphasize their situation of having a lot to do (Study 4A). However, this lay strategy proves ineffective. Instead, emphasizing their emotional experience of feeling stressed successfully attenuates receivers’ misperceptions of expressers signaling their importance and social status, which also increases liking and perceived warmth, without compromising perceived competence (Study 4B). This research contributes to prior findings on time poverty by identifying the interpersonal consequences of communicating busyness and, importantly, offers a way to express busyness without inadvertently disconnecting us from others.

Trupia, Maria Giulia, and Isabelle Engeler, “The Paradox of Unexpected Time Savings: An Underused Resource to Boost Happiness,” under review at Journal of Marketing Research

Most people in today’s society feel they do not have enough time to get everything done. Thus, if activities take less time than planned, this should make people happier. However, five preregistered experiments document that people tend to be surprisingly numb to unexpected time gains, leading to a substantial asymmetry in people’s hedonic response to unexpected time gains and losses. While finishing a task later than planned strongly decreases happiness (Average d = -1.88, completing it earlier by the same amount hardly increases happiness (Average d = 0.00 Studies 1-5). This asymmetry is weaker for money—unexpected monetary gains increase happiness significantly more than unexpected time gains (Study 2)—and replicates across various activities (Study 3). One underlying reason for this numbness is that many people fail to reinvest the time they save and let it pass by (Study 4). Notably, a simple intervention encouraging people to plan the reallocation of potential time gains increased their happiness when encountering them (Study 5). Most (if not all) people experience unexpected time deviations. By uncovering the psychology of unexpected time gains, we hope our findings encourage people to better use them and firms to guide consumers to help alleviate their time stress.

Trupia, Maria Giulia, Cassie Mogilner Holmes, and Hal Hershfield, “How Ways of Spending Time Relate to Feelings of Time Poverty,” under review at American Psychologist

Time poverty is an increasingly global issue, with many people feeling the stress of having too much to do but not enough time to do it. Though the consequences of feeling time poor are well examined, little is known about how the ways people spend their time contribute to their feelings of not having enough of it. Using a preregistered plan, we analyzed two large time use survey datasets (N = 10,959 individuals, n = 21,932 diary days) to explore how the various ways people spend their time predict feelings of time poverty. Results showed that spending more of the day on particular types of obligations (i.e., work, caregiving, and commuting) but not others (i.e., housework) is linked with feeling more time poor. Additionally, spending time on a higher number of categories of activities (but not individual activities) predicts greater time poverty. Together, these results lay the groundwork for individuals, businesses, and policymakers to devise practices that help alleviate time poverty and increase well-being in the fast-paced modern era. 

Trupia, Maria Giulia*, and Cassie Mogilner Holmes*, “Time Poverty: What It Is, How to Measure It, and Its Experience in Daily Life,” in preparation for submission to Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Trupia, Maria Giulia*, Martina Cossu*, and Zachary Estes, “Beauty is in the Iris: Constricted Pupils (Enlarged Irises) Enhance Attractiveness,” forthcoming at Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105842

Physical attractiveness profoundly affects a broad array of life experiences and outcomes, and the eyes are an important determinant of physical attractiveness. We investigated whether a particular feature of the eyes – pupil size – affects perceived attractiveness. We present competing theoretical predictions of whether dilated (larger) or constricted (smaller) pupils should appear more physically attractiveness. Youthful features tend to be attractive (i.e., neoteny), and pupil size decreases across the lifespan, so dilated (enlarged) pupils may be more attractive as a signal of youth. Alternatively, constricted (small) pupils may be more attractive because, by revealing more of the iris, they increase both color and brightness of the eyes. The present experiments demonstrate that people appear more attractive when their pupils are constricted (Experiments 1 and 2). This effect is equally large with black-and-white images, indicating that color per se is not necessary for the effect (Experiment 3). Rather, constricted pupils make eyes appear brighter, which in turn renders the face more attractive (Experiment 4). These results identify constricted pupils as a novel facial feature that enhances attractiveness.

Trupia, Maria Giulia*, Martina Cossu*, and Zachary Estes, “Face Value: Pupil Size Affects Advertising Effectiveness,” in revision for 2nd round review at Journal of Consumer Psychology