1. What is feature matching? If two options have shared negative features, how does feature matching affect their evaluation? What if they have shared positive features?

2. When people Ascreen@ options to narrow down their choices, and then choose from the options that Asurvive@ the screening, is the information used to screen the same as the information used to make the final decision?

3. How was the likelihood of feature cancellation manipulated in these studies?

4. What seems to be the best description of what happens to the matched features: Are they Adiscarded@ or Afiled away?@ How do the data support this? What evidence is used to support the idea that shared features are processed together? Why is it suggested that matched features might have an advantage in memory?

5. What evidence is there that people took the all-unique apartment more seriously in the feature cancellation condition? How is this also consistent with the idea the choice context is influenced by which features the first two options share?

6. What two additional independent variables were added in Study 2? Did the results of Study 2 replicate the results of Study 1?

7. Is feature matching a heuristic in the sense of requiring less cognitive effort? What other advantage might it serve in decision making and choice?

8. The study you read looked at options that had shared positive and unique negative features. What results would you expect with shared negative and unique positive features? Do you think substituting positive for negative would produce symmetrical results? Why or why not?

9. What are preference reversals? Why are they so interesting to decision researchers?

10. Are Hsee=s findings more consistent with a reason-based choice model or a value-based choice model? (If you need refresher on the difference, look back at the article you read last week by Shafir et al.) If people computed the values of the options and used these values to make choices, would we expect to see preference reversals? What poses a problem to computing the values of the options in Hsee=s studies?

11. In separate evaluation, do easy-to-evaluate attributes get more or less attention than they get in joint evaluation?

12. Are easy-to-evaluate attributes always categorical variables? How does Study 2 address this question? Although Study 2 uses two continuous variables, could you make the argument that people still might be treating one of them as a categorical variable?

13. Hsee manipulates how easy it is to evaluate an attribute in Studies 3 and 4. How does this strengthen support for his theory? Is it possible that evaluability is itself not really a continuous variable, and that attributes are only either Ameaningful@ or Anot meaningful@ (and used only when they are meaningful)?

14. Hsee hypothesizes that his findings could have an impact on personnel decisions. Imagine yourself interviewing for a job in the career you wish to have when you are finished with your education. Will your attributes be easy or hard to evaluate? What would be the best interview scenario for you, given your attributes and those of your rivals?