People pursue their happiness and want to maximize it. However, it is not easy to define happiness since it depends on situations. Hsee et al.(2003) illustrated overall happiness in the context of medium maximization.
Medium maximization is the pursuit of the medium in the choice context of effort → medium → outcome. In fact, the medium is the instrument in order to exchange for the ultimate outcome and has no value itself. Thus, people should ignore the presence of the medium. However, since they frequently pay a great attention to the effort →medium reward, they pursue gaining the medium. Even though people predict their overall happiness accurately but do not link it to the act due to the medium effect (Hsee and Hastie, 2006). Eventually, they failed to maximize their overall happiness since they make a choice based on the medium rather than the preference for the ultimate reward. Therefore, it is assumed that there might be the inconsistency between the choice and the outcome preference in the context of medium effect. I referred to this inconsistency as medium bias. In order to skip the medium, it should first be inferred that there is relationship of the effort and medium, and the medium and outcome, and attentions should be paid equally to both relationships.
Evoking emotions is effective to get attentions and mitigate medium bias. The stimuli to make emotional response are the pictures and concrete description. Therefore, it is assumed that medium bias would be mitigated when the rewards for the options are presented by pictures. Thus, I generated the hypothesis that presenting rewards in the form of the pictures in the medium condition would increase the consistency between people's inherent preference and rewards for the chosen option.
This research has the significant meaning that evoking emotional response correct medium bias and thus this is helpful for happiness maximization.