A Brief History of Research on Phantom Alternatives: Evidence for Seven Empirical Generalizations About Phantoms

Abstract

Phantom alternatives (unavailable options) can appear in many common decision tasks and can influence a wide variety of everyday behaviors. Although the term phantom is of recent vintage, researchers have investigated psychological reactions to unavailable alternatives for almost 60 years. In this article, we review 13 domains of research on unavailable alternatives to identify seven empirical generalizations about phantoms, These generalizations call into questions some basic assumptions of formal choice theory and suggest new research directions for studying phantom options.