Factors influencing strategy choice in memory-based multi-attribute decisions
Final Report Abstract
Several factors have been identified that influence which kind of decision strategies individuals use to solve memory-based decision tasks. We tried to systematize these results by providing a framework that makes testable predictions about the relationship between environmental factors and decision behavior. By assuming two capacity-limited bottlenecks, we aimed at scrutinizing the cognitive processes underlying decision behavior. Our results were quite clear-cut: Individuals switched to exemplar-based reasoning if cognitive capacity is exhausted during knowledge acquisition. Hence, instead of relying on a compromised rule, individuals gave up cue abstraction and rather used exemplar-based strategies (bottleneck 1). Which kind of rule-based strategy individuals used, if high quality rule knowledge is available, also depended on working memory capacity during deciding. Only if less valid information could be retrieved easily – for example, because it is particularly salient – was it integrated into the judgment. From this result one may derive the conclusion that if it is advantageous to use rule-based compensatory strategies in a certain environment, the decision task should be structured in such a way to reduce working memory load during knowledge acquisition as well as knowledge application, in order to make compensatory decision making feasible.
Publications
- Most people do not ignore salient invalid cues in memory-based decisions. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
Platzer, C., & Bröder, A.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-012-0248-4) - (2010). Cue integration vs. exemplar-based reasoning in multi-attribute decisions from memory: A matter of cue representation. Judgment and Decision Making, 5, 326-338
Bröder, A., Newell, B. R., & Platzer, C.
