Comparative knowledge and consumer choice

We examined whether manipulating consumers' subjective knowledge would alter their preferences. In two studies we manipulated participants' feeling of relative knowledge or ignorance by presenting a reference group which was more or less knowledgeable or by presenting a loosely related question that varied in difficulty. Participants' choices were affected by their perceived relative knowledge. We found that participants who felt relatively knowledgeable were less susceptible to judgmental biases and reported that they were more likely to join retirement saving plan they knew little about.