Consumers constantly sift through information-rich environments, filtering out noise and classifying information in order to make sense of the broader world. The present body of research has focused on one key yet understudied construct of information: claim objectivity. Claim objectivity draws a distinction between claim that are verifiable, objective factual statements and claims that are not verifiable, subjective opinions. Whether people believe claims to be objective or subjective lies at the cornerstone of interpersonal conflict and collaboration, has important implications for the spread of misinformation, and is a key feature of advertising, persuasion, and communication. However, when asked to classify claims based on their objectivity, consumers disagree with one another and struggle to accurately classify claims as facts or opinions. The present research finds that the perceived objectivity of a claim is malleable, subject to the manner in which information is presented. In Chapter I, consumers are found to classify repeatedly presented claims as more objective than novel claims, highlighting prior exposure as an antecedent to claim objectivity. Chapter II then considers the consequences of claim objectivity for consumer attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Across a variety of consumer contexts, we consistently find that claim objectivity affects how accurately consumers are able to identify the original source of a claim. We find that source memory is more accurate for opinions than for facts, deepening our understanding of associative memory processes and expanding the breadth of claim objectivity’s influence on consumers. We find evidence to support a potential process underpinning this main effect as well as subsequent consequences for consumer behavior – integrating new information in order to form inferences about and seek advice from relevant sources. Across the present body of research, I focus on the understudied yet exceedingly important construct of claim objectivity, considering both how the perceived objectivity of a claim is affected by the manner in which it is presented, and the effect that claim objectivity has on cognitive processes and associated downstream consequences.

People are continually faced with decisions that have uncertain outcomes. Often there are many different uncertainties within each of the options available. This research focuses on uncertainty that is continuous, such as the amount of time it will take for a person to commute home or their monthly grocery expenses. When making choices with uncertain outcomes people must (1) construct judgments about the nature of the uncertainty and then (2) form a preference about these uncertainties. Chapter 1 looks at the impacts of different elicitations metrics on uncertainty judgments. Specifically, how do different, but equivalent metrics, impact the amount and shape of the uncertainty estimated. This research relies on three empirical regularities from the cognitive psychology literature: uncertainty perceptions scale with magnitude, a tendency to neglect units, and a strong prior that uncertainty distributions are symmetric. Capitalizing on these empirical regularities, we find striking inconsistencies in judgments of uncertainty, both the amount and the symmetry, depending on the elicitation metric used. In Chapter 2, we find a robust preference for positively correlated uncertainty over negatively correlated uncertainty in the domain of gains. Based on the stimuli used, only someone with risk-seeking preferences would be expected to choose the option with positively correlated uncertainty. Two common decision heuristics, two different display formats, and three different outcomes all result in the same general preference for positively correlated uncertainty. A third display format, similar to a histogram, was the only manipulation that appeared to align single attribute risk preferences and multi-attribute choice. Both chapters offer new phenomena to be accounted for in future models of uncertainty.