Less is often better. Chris Hsee demonstrated in his experiment that an overfilled ice cream serving with 7 oz of ice cream was valued more than an underfilled serving with 8 oz of ice cream. However, participants indicated greater willingness to pay for an underfilled ice cream than an overfilled one ($1.85 vs. $1.56). This is because, according to him, when participants determined the value of each option alone (i.e., separate evaluation), they focused on an easy-to-evaluate attribute (whether an ice cream is overfilled or underfilled) and failed to consider a hard-to-evaluate attribute (the amount of ice cream). However when indicating their willingness to pay together (i.e., joint evaluation), they considered the hard-to-evaluate attribute important. Note that a hard-to-evaluate attribute is an attribute that “people do not know whether a given value on that attribute is good or bad.”
I had a similar experience at the Nicolai Bergmann, a flower shop located in Seoul, Korea. A preserved, overfilled flower attracted my attention when I entered the store. However, I found another flower next to it and it was in a square box. Although the overfilled flower attracted me first, I chose the boxed one for several reasons. The primary reason was that when comparing these two flowers side-by-side, I considered their hard-to-evaluate attribute (the amount of flower) seriously. I expect many other visitors may reach the same conclusion.
This research demonstrates a less-is-better effect in three contexts: (1) a person giving a $45 scarf as a gift was perceived to be more generous than one giving a $55 coat; (2) an overfilled ice cream serving with 7 oz of ice cream was valued more than an underfilled serving with 8 oz of ice cream; (3) a dinnerware set with 24 intact pieces was judged more favourably than one with 31 intact pieces (including the same 24) plus a few broken ones. This less-is-better effect occurred only when the options were evaluated separately, and reversed itself when the options were juxtaposed. These results are explained in terms of the evaluability hypothesis, which states that separate evaluations of objects are often infuenced by attributes which are easy to evaluate rather than by those which are important.