220 Understanding Intuitive Decision Making
Immediacy Effects: The Impact of Recent Trends and Events
Recent trends and events are more salient and attention getting than those that happened in the dis-
tant past or those that may happen in the distant future. The salience of the present leads audiences
to overreact to recent trends and events and to make predictions that are insuffi ciently regressive
to the mean. For example, the recent performance trends of NBA basketball players predict club
owners’ compensation decisions over and above the players’ performance means.^128 Investors often
assume a fi rm’s future earnings will be directly predictable from its recent earnings. Although
securities with good performance typically receive extremely high valuations, these valuations, on
average, return to the mean.^129
Even experts can make insuffi ciently regressive predictions and overreact to recent trends. Ina study of sales forecasting, professional retail buyers were asked to examine one week’s worth
of actual sales data from two department stores and then make sales forecasts for the follow-
ing week. Although the actual sales from the fi rst week regressed to the mean by the second
week, the forecasts of the professional buyers failed to.^130 A study of fi nancial analysts’ forecasts
that matched analysts’ earnings forecasts for one- and two-year time horizons with actual stock
returns and accounting numbers fi nds similar results. In every case, the analysts’ forecasts failed
to regress to the mean and were too extreme. The actual changes to earnings per share (EPS)
averaged only 65% of the forecasted one-year changes and only 46% of the forecasted two-year
earnings.^131 A strong overreaction to recent trends in analysts’ EPS forecasts has also been found
in subsequent studies.^132
The temporal salience of the present leads all types of audiences to weight short-term benefi tsmore heavily than potentially higher long-term costs. This particular bias is termed discounting the
future.^133
Physical Salience Effects: The Persuasive Impact of Standing Out
People, words, and objects that stand out physically are more salient and attention getting to the
audience than those that appear in the background. Simply inserting a pause between the initial
presentation of an online banner ad and the introduction of the product’s brand name makes the
product name stand out from the ad’s background, increasing its salience, thus increasing its pro-
cessing fl uency, which ultimately increases consumers’ preference for the product.^134
A person may be salient, and as a consequence more persuasive, if she is well lit and others aredimly lit, if she is moving and others are seated, if she is speaking and others are silent, if she is casu-
ally dressed and others are dressed in suits, and if she is seated in the middle of a group rather than
at the extremes.^135 Leaders, in particular, have greater infl uence on their followers when they are
physically close as opposed to distant from them.^136
A study of salience created by camera effects fi nds that the camera angle used to video con-fessions and courtroom testimony can have a persuasive impact on jurors’ decisions. When the
camera focused solely on the accused, mock jurors perceived the suspect to be more culpable and
recommended more severe sentences than when the camera focused equally on the prosecutor and
suspect.^137 A similar study varied the salience of a group’s leader by changing the camera angles
used in fi lming the group. Viewers were more likely to attribute the level of the group’s perfor-
mance to the leader when the camera angle made the leader stand out.^138
Other studies fi nd that group members who are physically salient are more likely to be chosenas group leaders. For example, group members who sit at the head of the table or who are able to
have face-to-face contact with other members of the group are more likely to be chosen as lead-
ers.^139 In a now classic experiment, managerial psychologist Harold Leavitt created different types