The Misfit Bias

• 成果类型: Article; Early Access
• 署名作者: Stroube, Bryan K.; Vakili, Keyvan; Bikard, Michael
• 署名单位: University of London; London Business School; INSEAD Business School
• 刊物名称: ORGANIZATION SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7039
• DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2023.17462
• 发表日期: 2025
• 关键词: innovation; Evaluations; recombination; BIAS; CATEGORIES; cultural products; creativity

摘要

Consumers and other audiences often penalize products that combine unrelated elements. In this paper, we document the consequences of that penalty for the evaluation of the elements being combined. Building on the idea that audiences cannot fully disentangle the quality of fit between elements from the quality of the elements individually, we argue that audiences are likely to direct their dislike of a misfit product to the individual elements being combined. Using an archival study of the music industry and an online experiment with photographic galleries, we find that evaluations of individual elements (songs, photographs) are influenced by product-level fit (albums, galleries). Elements of misfit products are evaluated less favorably than they would have been otherwise. Moreover, this bias is exacerbated when the evaluation of the whole product is emphasized. We discuss the implications of this misfit bias for the innovation, entrepreneurship, and categories literatures.