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

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 searc...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Sophie E. Scharf, Monika Wiegelmann, Arndt Bröder
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Cambridge University Press 2019-07-01
Series:Judgment and Decision Making
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S193029750000615X/type/journal_article
Description
Summary: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.
ISSN:1930-2975