The Hedonics of Debt

Psychologists and economists often discuss the “pain” of paying for our purchases. Four experiments examine how people evaluate prospective debt payments, analyzing how different features of a loan (down payment, final payment, duration, monthly payments) affect willingness to accept the loan. Akin to previous findings on physical pain, participants exhibited duration neglect and overweighted final moments. However, participants also focused heavily on the monthly or average payment (unlike in retrospective studies of physical pain where only peak-end moments seem to count). In Experiment 2, participants’ willingness to accept the loan was not significantly diminished by making it more expensive through keeping the same monthly payment but extending the length of the loan by 40% (evincing duration neglect). Further, in Experiments 3 and 4, we show that participants increased their willingness to buy if loans were made longer and more expensive by adding smaller, less “painful” payments to the end.


Participation and withdrawal:
Your participation is completely voluntary. You may quit at any time without penalty. You can also skip any questions if you prefer not to answer.
Who to contact about your rights in this study: If you have any questions about your rights as a participant in this study or any concerns or complaints, please contact the University of Illinois Institutional Review Board at 217-333-2670 (collect calls will be accepted if you identify yourself as a research participant) or via email at irb@illinois.edu o The purpose and nature of this research have been sufficiently explained and I agree to participate in this study. I understand that I am free to withdraw at any time without incurring any penalty. (1)

Start of Block: Block 8
In this study, we're interested in your opinions on student loans and some of the financial decisions you may make. You'll be presented with a series of scenarios, and we would like you to indicate your preference.
For your reference, students begin to make payments towards their student loans 6 months after they graduate, and the average starting salary of an undergraduate is $60,000.

Start of Block: 10 year -college A vs B
We're interested in your opinions on student loans. Imagine that you are graduating from high school and considering different colleges to go to. You are planning to take out a student loan to be repaid over 5 years.
What is the maximum monthly student loan payment you would be willing to pay after you graduate from college?
200 250 300 350 400 450 500 550 600 650 700 Monthly loan payment () We're interested in your opinions on student loans. Imagine that you are graduating from high school and considering different colleges to go to. You are planning to take out a student loan to be repaid over 10 years.
What is the maximum monthly student loan payment you would be willing to pay after you graduate from college? 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 550 600 650 700 Monthly loan payment () We're interested in your opinions on student loans. Imagine that you are graduating from high school and considering different colleges to go to. You are planning to take out a student loan to be repaid over 15 years.
What is the maximum monthly student loan payment you would be willing to pay after you graduate from college? Now assume that you've have graduated college. You have taken a new job that pays $60,000 and offers a $12,000 signing bonus. You will begin to make payments on your student loans in 6 months.
For the next few questions, you'll be asked to indicate your preference between different loans your school is offering.
Please treat each question independently. We're interested in your opinions on student loans. Imagine that you are graduating from high school and considering different colleges to go to. You are planning to take out a student loan.
What is the maximum monthly student loan payment you would be willing to make after you graduate from college?
What did you consider when you reported a monthly loan payment?

End of Block: Block 13
Start of Block: Block 9 Please answer the following demographic questions. As with all answers in this study, your answers to these questions are completely anonymous and cannot be used to identify you.
In addition to the prevalence of debt and credit in the United States, other developing countries are becoming more reliant on debt and credit as well. This global problem is affecting millions around the world who are unable to repay their debts. Investigating people's attitudes and perceptions towards debt is one of the first steps to mitigating this problem.
Thank you for participating! Please do not discuss the details or hypotheses of this study with any other students as they may be potential participants, and knowing the purpose of the study beforehand could affect the results.
If you are feeling distressed as a result of this study and would like to talk to someone, please call 1-800-273-TALK to be connected to a mental health crisis line in your area.
Finally, if you would like any further information or if you have any further questions, please contact Dr. Dov Cohen at dovcohen247@gmail.com.
Who to contact about your rights in this study: If you have any questions about your rights as a participant in this study or any concerns or complaints, please contact the University of Illinois Institutional Review Board at 217-333-2670 (collect calls will be accepted if you identify yourself as a research participant) or via email at irb@illinois.edu o The purpose and nature of this research have been sufficiently explained and I agree to participate in this study. I understand that I am free to withdraw at any time without incurring any penalty. (1) Timing First Click (1) Last Click (2) Page Submit (3) Click Count (4)

Start of Block: Block 2
Imagine that you just graduated college a few years ago and have taken a job across the U.S. You make $50,000 per year and are interested in purchasing a new car.
You're at a dealership and are browsing their current inventory. Please click continue to view the cars that they have available.
Please note that these cars vary in manufacturer, model, and features. We are interested in your recall of the loan offers that were made to you during this study. As a reward for accuracy, if you get within 10 pct of the correct answer for all loan terms, we will triple the payment to you.
Please try to recall the terms of the FIRST loan offer that they gave you. Please try to remember it as accurately as possible, and only input a numeric answer. If the offer did not contain one of these features, please leave it blank or put 0. Please try to recall the terms of the LAST loan offer that they gave you. Please try to remember it as accurately as possible, and only input a numeric answer. If the offer did not contain one of these features, please leave it blank or put 0. The study in which you participated today is part of a project that aims to learn about people's preferences for payment scenarios. We predict that when individuals evaluate payment plans, they will be sensitive to the end of the sequence and ignore the duration of the payment plan. We also predict that they will be sensitive to the monthly payment.
Considering that the citizens in the United States rely heavily on credit and borrowing, investigating why individuals make the financial choices that they do is an important topic to research. To date, there has been little research on the psychology behind why people borrow or how people in the United States view borrowing. With over 1 million filings of bankruptcy per year and 1.5 billion credit cards in the United States, debt is prevalent and common for many citizens.
There is also an estimated $1 trillion in outstanding auto loan. More than 60% of auto loans are at least 60 months long, and often, choosing such a long car loan term is disadvantageous for the borrower. Typically, the longer the finance, the more interest you will have to pay on it, both in terms of the rate itself and the finance charges over time.
By conducting this research, we hope to learn which factors contribute to people's financial decisions.
Thank you for participating! Please do not discuss the details or hypotheses of this study with any other students as they may be potential participants, and knowing the purpose of the study beforehand could affect the results.
If you are feeling distressed as a result of this study and would like to talk to someone, please call 1-800-273-TALK to be connected to a mental health crisis line in your area. What you will do in this survey: You will be asked to complete a questionnaire. During this survey, you will complete tasks that may include: (1) reading and responding to scenarios and/or (2) answering questions about yourself, your opinions, and your beliefs.

Time required:
This study will take about 10 minutes to complete.

Risks & Benefits:
There are no risks (beyond what you would expect in daily life) associated with participating in this study. One benefit of this research is that you will learn more about how psychologists study attitudes. You will also receive $.50 for completing this study. private. We will not make any attempt to link your Prolific ID to any identifiable information that may exist on the Internet. However, the service hosting this survey may have access to your responses and IP number. We cannot guarantee that this service will keep your responses private. Results may be used in future classes and research. Cumulative results from this survey may be presented at conferences and/or published in books, journals, and/or in the popular media.

Participation and withdrawal:
Your participation is completely voluntary. You may quit at any time without penalty, besides the loss of the monetary compensation. You can also skip any questions if you prefer not to answer. Thank you for participating in our study! Today you will be reading over some scenarios and answering questions. Please take your time and read over everything carefully.

Start of Block: 20k condition 1 Instructions
For the next questions, imagine that you are currently making $60,000 per year. You currently have $10,000 in the bank and have been searching for a car to buy.
For the following questions, you will see a car, along with some of its specifications. You will have to review all of the information and indicate your preference.
For all these cars, the dealership is willing to give you a loan. The financing will be from, say, a national bank, a local bank, or the manufacturer.
Please treat each question independently. Your answer as to whether you would buy or not buy one car should not affect your answers for other cars.
Please note that these cars vary in manufacturer, model, mileage, age, and features.

Start of Block: Hyundai Sonata 22k-36 months base
Year :  For the next questions, imagine that you are currently making $60,000 per year. You currently have $10,000 in the bank and have been searching for a car to buy.
For the following questions, you will see a car, along with some of its specifications. You will have to review all of the information and indicate your preference.

Page Break
For all these cars, the dealership is willing to give you a loan package. This means the financing will come from a variety of sources (say, partly, from a national bank, partly from a local bank, or partly from the manufacturer).
Conveniently, these loans will all be bundled into 1 package, so that you can make a single payment towards your car. However, because some loans are longer and some are shorter, this means the monthly payment may change over the life of the loan.
Please treat each question independently. Your answer as to whether you would buy or not buy one car should not affect your answers for other cars.
Please note that these cars vary in manufacturer, model, mileage, age, and features.

End of Block: 20kcondition2
Start Each experiment involved some time in an uncomfortable state, such as sitting in a vibrating room, exposure to loud drilling or hissing noises, standing in an uncomfortable position, etc.
The participants were told at the beginning of each experience how long it would last. Although the experimental conditions did not change in the course of a session, the subjective experience of discomfort changed over time.
The participants in each experiment made a rating every 5 minutes of the discomfort they were feeling at that moment. The last rating was made just before the end of the experiment.
These rating are on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 = no discomfort at all and 10 = almost unbearable.

Start of Block: pain instructions 2
In each of the following questions, you will be given the average discomfort rating made in an experiment, and your task will be to provide an overall evaluation of the experience of a participant in that experiment.
In interpreting the discomfort ratings, you should keep in mind that the participants served in a series of such experiments, and were highly trained in the use of the discomfort scale.
In particular, they were instructed to use the scale consistently, so that a rating of 5, for example, indicates the same level of subjective discomfort at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of an experimental session.
You should also assume that the experiences have no after-effects of pain or discomfort -the participants return very quickly to a normal level of comfort.
For each set of these pain ratings, we would like you to provide a global evaluation of how bad the overall experience is using a scale from 0 to 100 (0 = not bad at all, 100 = extremely bad).

Start of Block: Demographics
Before you proceed to the next task, we'd like you to answer a few demographic questions. As with all answers in this study, your answers to these questions are completely anonymous and cannot be used to identify you. For the following questions, you will see a car, along with some of its specifications.
For all these cars, the dealership is willing to give you a loan package. This means the financing will come from a variety of sources (say, partly, from a national bank, partly from a local bank, or partly from the manufacturer). Conveniently, these loans will all be bundled into 1 package, so that you can make a single payment towards your car. However, because some loans are longer and some are shorter, this means the monthly payment may change over the life of the loan.

Please treat each question independently. Your answer as to whether you would buy or not buy one car should not affect your answers for other cars. Also, your responses about whether you would buy or not buy a car 15 years ago should not affect your answers to the cars you are considering now.
Please note that these cars vary in manufacturer, model, age, and features.

End of Block: Car 25k condition1Instructions
Start You have been searching for a new car. For the following questions, you will see a car, along with some of its specifications.

Page Break
For all these cars, the dealership is willing to give you a loan. The financing will be from, say, a national bank, a local bank, or the manufacturer. Because there is a single source of financing, the monthly payment will not decrease or increase over the life of the loan.

Please treat each question independently. Your answer as to whether you would buy or not buy one car should not affect your answers for other cars. Also, your responses about whether you would buy or not buy a car 15 years ago should not affect your answers to the cars you are considering now.
Please note that these cars vary in manufacturer, model, age, and features.

End of Block: 25kcondition2
Start  (7) People who know me say that I am very thrifty.
Strongly agree (7) The thought of spending a lot of money makes me anxious.
o 6 (6) o 7 Strongly agree (7) Spending money is easy for me. (7) Which of the following description fits you better?  (4) Following is a scenario describing the behavior of two shoppers. After reading about each shopper, pleaser answer the question that follows.
Mr. A is accompanying a good friend who is on a shopping spree at a local mall. When they enter a large department store, Mr. A sees that the store has a "one-day-only-sale" where everything is priced 10-60% off. He realizes he doesn't need anything, yet can't resist and ends up spending almost $100 on stuff. Mr. B is accompanying a good friend who is on a shopping spree at a local mall. When they enter a large department store, Mr. B sees that the store has a "one-day-only-sale" where everything is priced 10-60% off. He figures he can get great deals on many items that he needs, yet the thought of spending the money keeps him from buying the stuff.

Start of Block: Other Demographics
Please answer the following demographic questions. As with all answers in this study, your answers to these questions are completely anonymous and cannot be used to identify you.
Have you ever purchased a car? The study in which you participated today is part of a project that aims to learn about people's preferences for payment scenarios and how they relate to people's preferences about pain and unpleasantness.
Considering that the citizens in the United States rely heavily on credit and borrowing, investigating why individuals make the financial choices that they do is an important topic to research. To date, there has been little research on the psychology behind why people borrow or how people in the United States view borrowing. With over 1 million filings of bankruptcy per year and 1.5 billion credit cards in the United States, debt is prevalent and common for many citizens.
By conducting this research, we hope to learn which factors contribute to people's financial decisions.
Thank you for participating! Please do not discuss the details or hypotheses of this study with any other people as they may be potential participants, and knowing the purpose of the study beforehand could affect the results.
If you are feeling distressed as a result of this study and would like to talk to someone, please call 1-800-273-TALK to be connected to a mental health crisis line in your area.
Finally, if you would like any further information or if you have any further questions, please contact Dr. Dov Cohen at dovcohen247@gmail.com.
psychologists study attitudes. You will also receive $.30 for completing this study.
Privacy: None of your responses are connected to your name. We will keep your responses private. We will not make any attempt to link your Mturk ID to any identifiable information that may exist on the Internet. However, the service hosting this survey may have access to your responses and IP number. We cannot guarantee that this service will keep your responses private. Results may be used in future classes and research. Cumulative results from this survey may be presented at conferences and/or published in books, journals, and/or in the popular media.

Participation and withdrawal:
Your participation is completely voluntary. You may quit at any time without penalty, besides the loss of the monetary compensation. You can also skip any questions if you prefer not to answer. For the next questions, imagine that you are currently making $60,000 per year. You currently have $10,000 in the bank and have been searching for a car to buy.
For the following questions, you will see a car, along with some of its specifications. You will have to review all of the information and indicate your preference.

Display This Question:
If financial = 2 And time = 1 For the next questions, imagine that you are currently making $90,000 per year. You have been searching for a car to buy.
For the following questions, you will see a car, along with some of its specifications. You will have to review all of the information and indicate your preference.

Display This Question:
If financial = 1

And time = 2
For the next questions, imagine that it's 15 years from now and you are making $60,000 per year. You have $10,000 in the bank and have been searching for a car to buy.
For the following questions, you will see a car, along with some of its specifications. You will have to review all of the information and indicate your preference.

Display This Question:
If financial = 2 And time = 2 For the next questions, imagine that it's 15 years from now and you are making $90,000 per year. You have been searching for a car to buy.
For the following questions, you will see a car, along with some of its specifications. You will have to review all of the information and indicate your preference.

Timing
First Click (1) Last Click (2) Page Submit (3) Click Count (4) Page Break For all these cars, the dealership is willing to give you a loan package. This means the financing will come from a variety of sources (say, partly, from a national bank, partly from a local bank, or partly from the manufacturer). Conveniently, these loans will all be bundled into 1 package, so that you can make a single payment towards your car. However, because some loans are longer and some are shorter, this means the monthly payment may change over the life of the loan.
Please treat each question independently. Your answer as to whether you would buy or not buy one car should not affect your answers for other cars.
Please note that these cars vary in manufacturer, model, age, and features. Considering that the citizens in the United States rely heavily on credit and borrowing, investigating why individuals make the financial choices that they do is an important topic to research. To date, there has been little research on the psychology behind why people borrow or how people in the United States view borrowing. With over 1 million filings of bankruptcy per year and 1.5 billion credit cards in the United States, debt is prevalent and common for many citizens.
By conducting this research, we hope to learn which factors contribute to people's financial decisions.
Thank you for participating! Please do not discuss the details or hypotheses of this study with any other people as they may be potential participants, and knowing the purpose of the study beforehand could affect the results.
If you are feeling distressed as a result of this study and would like to talk to someone, please call 1-800-273-TALK to be connected to a mental health crisis line in your area.

Method
Overview. Experiment 3 extends the previous results by testing another counterintuitive prediction of the peak-end rule and relatedly, duration neglect. That is, because people weigh the ending so heavily, a pain sequence which is lengthened by adding a somewhat less painful experience at the end is preferred to a sequence without this additional pain. Even though it involves taking more "objective" pain, adding a somewhat less painful ending makes the sequence seem less averse (Kahneman et al., 1993;Redelmeier & Kahneman, 1996). In Experiment 3, we examine whether a parallel effect holds for payment sequences. The hypothesis is that participants' preference for a loan will actually increase, if less "painful," less expensive monthly payments are added on to the end of the payment plan. Though it is a more expensive loan, participants should prefer it because of its "less painful" ending. In addition, we measured participants' intuitions about the aversiveness of unpleasant sequences of physical pain (conceptually replicating Varey and Kahneman, 1992) and examined whether evaluations of pain sequences were correlated with evaluations of payment sequences.
We first describe the basic outline of the three preliminary studies (Experiments 3a-3c), giving a detailed description of Experiment 3a. We then present results for Experiments 3a-3c.
Variations included in Experiments 3b or 3c are discussed last.

Experiment 3a
Participants. Three hundred and seventy one participants at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign participated in this experiment for course credit. We ran the experiment over the course of one semester and analyzed the data in the summer. Given the sample size of previous studies and average effect sizes in social psychology, 389 participants would give a power between .5 to over .9, for studies with ds between .2 and .5.

Design and Materials.
Participants were told to imagine that they are 2 years out of college, making $60,000 per year, and have $10,000 in the bank. Participants then received a series of car descriptions that included a picture of the car, features of the car, and a payment plan for the car. In total, participants were asked about 18 car pictures and payment plans, 6 of which were between-subject questions and 12 of which were within-subject questions.
For the first set of between-subject car questions, participants were randomly assigned to a condition where they saw 6 "base" (ex. $520 for 48 months) or 6 "base + 12 month" payment plans ($520 for 48 months plus an additional payment of $150 for 12 months). The only difference between the conditions was the payment plan offered, where the "base + 12 months" plans included an additional 12 months of $150 monthly payments. All cars had an MSRP of approximately $25,000 and the 6 "base" payment plans ranged from 42 to 60 months ("Base + 12 months" plans thus took a total of 54 to 72 months). In subsequent studies, the MSRP for the less expensive cars was changed to $22,000.
After responding to the 6 car scenarios, participants were told to imagine that it was 10 years later and that they were making $90,000 per year. Participants were randomly presented with 12 car descriptions -all of the cars had an MSRP of approximately $32,000 and payment plans ranged from 48 to 60 months (i.e., 48 months, 52 months, 56 months, 60 months). In subsequent studies, the MSRP for the more expensive cars was changed to $25,000. There were three different payment scenario "options" for each of the different payment durations: "base" (ex. $535 for 60 months), "base + final payment" (ex. $535 for 60 months plus an additional $2400 in the 61 st month), or "base + 12 months" ($535 for 50 months plus an additional 12 months of $200). Each "base + final payment" scenario contained the same final payment, and the "base + 12 months" contained the same additional 12 monthly payments.
For "base + 12 months" surveys, the following sentence, for example, described the end of the loan: "For the 12 months after that, your payments will be reduced to $200 per month." For subsequent studies, we wanted to make sure effects were robust to various wordings. Thus, in each study, participants were randomly assigned to one of 3 versions of the sentence: "For the last 12 months, you will pay…", "For the last 12 months your payments are reduced to…," or "For the last 12 months your payments decrease to…" The effect of phrasing was not significant in any study (p3b = 0.32, p3c = 0.37, pExperiment 3 in the manuscript= 0.78, pExperiment 4 in the manuscript = 0.48) and so we don't discuss this further.
Participants were then told that the experimenters were interested in people's intuitions about uncomfortable experiences. The instructions were taken from Varey and Kahneman (1992), and participants were told that people were paid to participate in a series of uncomfortable experiences. Every 5 minutes, they made a rating (from 0 to 10) of the discomfort they were feeling at that moment. Participants were told that their task was to provide an overall evaluation of the discomfort for each pain sequence using a scale from 0 to 100 (0 = not bad at all, 100 = extremely bad) (see Varey & Kahneman, 1992 for complete instructions).
Surveys ended with participants filling out demographic questions and the individual difference variables described for each of the procedural variations below.

Results
Between-Subject Debt Scenarios. We tested whether participants preferred the "base + additional 12 months" compared to the "base" condition using an independent samples t-test. As may be seen in Table 1, participants generally preferred the more expensive "base + additional 12 months" payment plans over the "base" payment plans. Effect sizes (d) for the studies were: 0.12, 0.17, 0.0. Significance levels were p=0.24, 0.04, 0.90.

Within-Subject Debt Scenarios.
We created 2 variables for the within-subject debt scenarios questions. The first variable, "DifferencePlus12months" is the difference between the within-subject "base + 12 additional months" and the "base" cars (i.e., "base + 12 additional months" -"base" cars). The second variable, "DifferencePlusFinal" is the difference between the within-subject "base + final payment" and "base cars (e.g., "base + final payment" -"base" cars).
As noted later, within-subjects cars were randomly assigned to "base" or "base + 12 months" conditions in Experiment 3a, but assignment of cars to conditions was not counterbalanced. From Experiment 3b on, we did counterbalance. Because of the lack of counterbalancing, we think results of Experiment 3a for within-subjects items should be treated with caution. There were five between-subject pain questions, where participants were randomly assigned to see a "base" (ex. 2 5 4 4 7 9 6 6) or "base plus less painful end" (ex. 2 5 4 4 7 9 6 6 2) pain sequence. In Study 3a, the pain questions were independent of one another so participants saw "base" and "base plus less painful end" scenarios.

Between-Subject Pain Scenarios.
In subsequent studies, the design was changed so that participants saw five "base" or five "base plus less painful end" scenarios, making it a completely between-subject design. All analyses were conducted with independent sample t-tests. As seen in Table 3, participants tended to find the "base plus less painful end" sequences less odious than the "base" sequences. Effect sizes were: 0.10, 0.06, 0.07; ps were .22, .35, .07.

Within-Subject Pain Scenarios.
Similar to the within-subject debt scenarios, we created variables to determine the mean difference between the "base" and "base + less painful end," as well as the "base" vs. "base plus + more painful end." The first variable, "Pain Base Minus Low", computes the difference between the pain "base" scenarios and the "pain plus less painful end" scenarios. The second variable, "Pain Base Minus High" computes the difference between the pain "base" scenarios and the "pain + more painful end" scenarios. Following Varey and Kahneman (1992), we predicted that individuals would rate pain scenarios as more painful if they finished on a "more painful end." We also predicted that participants would rate the "base plus less painful end" as less painful compared to the "base" scenarios (even though the duration is increased). Given these hypotheses, "Pain Base Minus Low" should be positive and "Pain Base Minus High" should be negative.
As predicted, participants rated the "base + less painful end" as less painful compared to the "base" scenarios, even though the duration of the painful experience was 5 minutes longer.
As seen in Supplemental Table 4, effect sizes were 0.13, 0.07, and 0.13. P-levels were 0.02, 0.07, and 0.001. Also for the more obvious prediction, they found the "base + more painful end" to be worse than "base" sequences. Effect sizes were -0.41, -0.53, and -0.52, all p-levels =0.001.

Method
Participants. 634 participants were recruited on Amazon Mechanical Turk for a small fee. After excluding for duplicate IP addresses and IP addresses not from the United States, 607 participants remained. We tried to approximately double the sample size of Experiment 3a to increase our power and ability to detect a significant effect.
Design and Materials. The design of Experiment 3b was very similar to Experiment 3a, except for the following 1) an additional set of stimuli was included so that all cars for the within-subjects payment plan questions would be in the "base" condition half the time and the "base + 12 months" condition half the time. This was also done in subsequent studies.
(Previously, payment plan was randomly assigned to a given car before we began running the study); 2) the duration of the car payment scenarios was decreased --32 to 52 months for between-subject car payments and 36 to 52 months for within-subject car payments; 3) participants completed an intuition scale at the end of the study (Hamilton, Shih, & Mohammed, 2016). The scale is 5-items and responses are on a 1-7 scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). Example items include "When making decisions, I rely mainly on my gut feelings" and "I make decisions based on intuition." We conducted exploratory analyses to see if people who use an intuitive decision making style are more susceptible to choosing loan plans with "soft landings" even when it is not rational to do so. The design of the between-subject pain questions differed from Study 3a in that participants were assigned to one condition (i.e., "base" or "base + less painful end") rather than receiving a series of questions that were independent of one another. We also added more within-subject pain sequences, so that there were 18 questions total (6 bases).

Results for individual difference predictors
Intuition Scale. For between subject payment plan questions, we tested whether participants' willingness to buy the car was predicted by the intuition scale, "Base" vs "Base + 12 Months" condition, and the interaction of these two. The interaction was not significant (b = -5.19, t(602) = 0.52, p = 0.60). We also tested this for the within-subject cars. The correlation between DifferencePlus12Months and the intuition scale was also not significant (r = -0.01, p = .89).
Experience. For between subject payment plan questions, we also examined whether our effects were moderated by experience, such as previously purchasing a car or paying for a car with a payment plan. For between-subject payment plans, we tested whether participants' willingness to buy the car was predicted by previously purchasing a car (0 = No, 1 = Yes), "Base" vs "Base + 12 Months" condition, and the interaction of these two. The interaction was not significant (b = 40.06, t(602) = 1.43, p = 0.15). Similarly, the interaction between paying for a car with a payment plan (1 = Yes, 2 = No -Cash) and "Base" vs "Base + 12 Months" condition was not significant (b = 5.44, t(512) = 0.25, p = 0.80). Level of education also did not moderate effects; if anything, higher education made loans with the extra payments more attractive, but this was not significant (t=1.48, p=.14).

Method
Participants. 1193 participants were recruited on Amazon Mechanical Turk for a small fee. After excluding duplicate IP addresses and IP addresses not from the United States, 1132 participants remained. To determine sample size, we calculated an average weighted Cohen's d of the last two studies (d = -.15) and conducted a power analysis using d = .15, power = .8, and probability level = .05. The minimum subjects needed for 80% power is 1102 for a one-tailed hypothesis.
Design and Materials. As in Experiment 3b, we used the same pain sequences and included the intuition scale as a possible individual difference moderator.

Results for individual difference predictor
Intuition Scale. For the between-subjects payment plan questions, the interaction between the intuition scale and "Base" vs "Base + 12 Months" condition did not significantly predict participants' willingness to buy the car (b = -0.96, t(1106) = -0.13, p = 0.90). The interaction between DifferencePlus12Months and the intuition scale was also not significant (r = -0.004, p = .89).
However, the interaction between paying for a car with a payment plan (1 = Yes, 0 = No -Cash) and "Base" vs "Base + 12 Months" condition was significant (b = -46.30, t(945) = -2.83, p = 0.005). Specifically, participants who had paid for a car with cash preferred the "base +