Information search in everyday decisions: The generalizability of the attraction search effect

Journal Title: Judgment and Decision Making - Year 2019, Vol 14, Issue 4

Abstract

The recently proposed integrated coherence-based decisions and search model (iCodes) makes predictions for search behavior in multi-attribute decision tasks beyond those of classic decision-making heuristics. More precisely, it predicts the Attraction Search Effect that describes a tendency to search for information for the option that is already attractive given the available evidence. To date, the Attraction Search Effect has been successfully tested using a hypothetical stock-market game that was highly stylized and specifically designed to be highly diagnostic. In three experiments, we tested whether the Attraction Search Effect generalizes to different semantic contexts, different cue-value patterns, and a different presentation format than the classic matrix format. Across all experiments, we find evidence for information-search behavior that matches iCodes’s information-search prediction. Therefore, our results corroborate not only the generalizability of the Attraction Search Effect in various contexts but also the inherent process assumptions of iCodes.

Authors and Affiliations

Sophie E. Scharf, Monika Wiegelmann and Arndt Bröder

Keywords

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  • EP ID EP678432
  • DOI -
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How To Cite

Sophie E. Scharf, Monika Wiegelmann and Arndt Bröder (2019). Information search in everyday decisions: The generalizability of the attraction search effect. Judgment and Decision Making, 14(4), -. https://europub.co.uk/articles/-A-678432