People make inferences from policy decisions regarding default options: Replication and extension of McKenzie et al. (2006)

Default effect refers to the phenomenon that people tend to choose the default option in a choice-set. McKenzie et al. (2006) showed that one mechanism for the effect is that defaults are perceived as an implicit endorsement and a recommended option by the policy makers that set the defaults. In a pre-registered experiment with a Prolific online sample from the United States (N = 602), we conducted replications and extensions of Studies 1, 2, and 3 from McKenzie et al. (2006). We concluded a successful replication of all three studies, with support for their findings showing that: 1) people who are more willing to be organ donors are more likely to hold views that others should as well, and to think that enrollment should be the default, and that in turn: 2) people make inferences from policymaker’s set defaults (Study 2: organ donations; Study 3: retirement plans) regarding the policymakers’ own preferences regarding enrollment, and their views regarding whether others should enroll. In our extension we added a control condition with no defaults, finding that 1) people still make inferences about choice architects’ attitudes, even when defaults were not set, and 2) that setting defaults to not act (not enroll) is perceived as closer to no defaults than setting defaults to act (to enroll). Materials, data, and code are available on: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/E5K4J.