In ambiguous settings, people are tempted to make self-serving mistakes. Here, we assess whether people make more self-serving mistakes to minimize losses compared with maximize gains. Results reveal that participants are twice as likely to make self-serving mistakes to reduce losses compared to increase gains. We further trace participants' eye movements to gain insight into the process underlying self-serving mistakes in losses and gains. We find that tempting, self-serving information does not capture more attention in loss, compared to gain framing. Rather, in loss framing, people are more likely to report the tempting, self-serving information they observed. The results imply that rather than diverting attention away from tempting information, reducing people's motivation to make self-serving mistakes, and framing goals as gains rather than losses are promising ways to decrease the occurrence of self-serving mistakes. In turn, this fosters environments with more accuracy and fewer motivated mistakes.

Promotion deals and price reductions are common strategies retailers use to attract consumers. We investigate which of two common types of deals better captures consumers' attention. By tracing eye movements, we examine participants' attention allocation when deciding between “buy-one-get-one free” (BOGO) deals versus deals that offer an equivalent price reduction. Results show that people prefer BOGO deals, and they tend to choose them over price reductions even when the deals are equal in terms of net value. The preference is amplified when the discount is relatively high: In these cases, BOGO deals attract more attention than percentage deals. Overall, our findings can help retailers develop promotional strategies to capture potential consumers' attention in online commerce. At the same time, our results warn consumers to better evaluate their options and not be lured by the first BOGO deal that captures their attention, as it might not be the best deal available.