Consumer Choice Bias Due to Number Symmetry: Evidence from Real Estate Prices

Abstract

ABSTRACT Rational Consumers strive to make optimal purchasing decisions based on quality and price. However, a growing body of evidence indicates that innate psychological biases may thwart consumers in their attempts to make such decisions. One such bias is the human preference for objects that possess vertical mirror symmetry; such symmetry is exhibited by many man-made and natural objects, including the human body and, most particularly, the human face. Here we study whether this symmetry bias extends also to number sequences that possess vertical mirror symmetry. Specifically, we use a laboratory setting to study whether home buyers are biased toward real estate prices that possess relatively higher degrees of vertical mirror symmetry. We find a statistically significant result, indicating that such a bias does indeed exist. Thus, although such a bias is well established in the evolutionary psychology literature, we show that it extends into the arena of consumer preferences based purely on visual representation of product price. Although the present study looks just at real-estate price preferences, the statistically significant results clearly have implications for all consumer choice decisions based, at least in part, on the physical representation of product price. ARTICLE Introduction Understanding consumers' mental processing of price and product information is an important avenue of consumer and psychology research. Indeed, the fact that consumers may deviate from strictly rational purchase decisions is now well established. The fields of consumer psychology and behavioral marketing have identified a broad array of behavioral biases, which are often categorized into biases associated with motivation, cognition, and emotion. However they all share a common neurological origin: brain evolution has conditioned certain unconscious responses that override our conscious attempts to make rational decisions. In the present study we focus on the unconscious human bias toward objects that possess vertical mirror symmetry. The obvious example of such an object is the human face and, as we discuss below, there is a broad body of evidence showing a clear preference for facial symmetry in mate selection; and a highly evolved ability among humans to discern even very slight asymmetries in facial features. We test whether this preference for symmetry extends beyond facial features into the realm of number sequences. Just about all purchase decisions are made, at least in part, on the basis of observing numbers: the product price. Often these decisions are made in situations where a large array of price information has to be processed rapidly. Therefore it is our contention that unconscious biases - such as a bias for number symmetry in the product price - may impact such decisions. To test our hypothesis we conduct a series of simple laboratory experiments on business school students, in which students select real-estate properties based partly on price. We find that, even if the identical property is slightly more expensive, students prefer the property that displays a price in which the number sequence possesses vertical mirror symmetry (i.e., $810,018 versus $801,118). We thus provide evidence that, at least under certain conditions, the human unconscious preference for mirror symmetry extends into the realm of number sequences in product prices. Hopefully, our identification of this bias in real-estate selection will educate consumers. By becoming aware of this innate bias, consumers will be better prepared to make strictly rational purchase decisions based on price information. We conclude the paper with a discussion of the implications of our results for public policy and consumer education. Symmetry Bias Our understanding of the underlying mechanisms behind various unconscious biases has increased markedly in recent years. One of these more recent areas of neuroscientific study focuses on 'aesthetic biases'. …

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