Four Failures to Demonstrate that Scarcity Magnifies Preference for Familiarity

As economic inequality increases in the United States and around world, psychologists have begun to study how psychological experience of scarcity impacts people's decision making. Recent work psychology suggests that scarcity—the having insufficient resources accomplish a goal—makes people more strongly prefer what they already like relative dislike or less. That is, may polarize preferences. One common preference is for familiarity: systematic liking often experienced stimuli, compared less stimuli. Across four studies—three experiments one cross- sectional survey (all pre-registered; see https://osf.io/7zyfr/)—we investigated whether polarizes familiarity. Despite consistently replicating familiar, we failed show increased degree which preferred familiar unfamiliar. We discuss these results light recent failures replicate famous findings literature.