Factors influencing strategy choice in memory-based multi-attribute decisions

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Arndt Bröder
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2009 to 2012
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 120428944

Multi-attribute decisions have mainly been studied with a paradigm in which researchers provide participants with all necessary information. However, many decisions require retrieval of relevant cue information from long term memory. Only a handful of studies examined these memory-based decisions and the information integration strategies used. The results have been mixed: Whereas some found a preponderance of simple lexicographic heuristics that ignore certain information, others found mainly compensatory strategies which take all weighted cue information into account. Within studies, this can be manipulated by varying the representation format of information, but between studies, the reasons for this discrepancy remain elusive. Furthermore, exemplar-based reasoning has been found in a recent replication of a study that did not find exemplar-effects originally. However, all studies used different materials, paradigms, cue formats etc. The project aims to illuminate the role of several cognitive factors that may influence strategy selection. A preliminary framework was extracted from the results in the literature yielding testable hypotheses about potentially important variables that are subjected to ceteris paribus tests in 6 experiments.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants