Take the best or look at the rest? Factors influencing "one-reason" decision making.

Abstract

Aspects of an experimental environment were manipulated in 3 experiments to examine the parameters under which the "take-the-best" (TTB) heuristic (e.g., G. Gigerenzer & D. G. Goldstein, 1996) operates. Results indicated TTB use to be more prevalent when the cost of information was high, when validities of the cues were known, and when a deterministic environment was used. However, large individual variability in strategy use was observed as well as a significant proportion of behavior inconsistent with TTB, expecially its stopping rule. The results demarcate some of the heuristic's boundary conditions and also question the validity of TTB as a psychologically plausible and pervasive model of behavior.

Cites (33)

1. Nonparametric Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences
   Guitton, Henri, Siegel, S. · 1958 · Revue économique
2. “Neural” computation of decisions in optimization problems
   Hopfield, J. J., Tank, D. W. · 1985 · Biological Cybernetics
3. Rational choice and the structure of the environment.
   Simon, H. A. · 1956 · Psychological Review
4. Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information
   David Marr · 1982 · Cumulative Index of Computer Aided Architectural Design
5. Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart
   Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter Martin Todd · 1999
6. Reasoning the fast and frugal way: Models of bounded rationality.
   Gigerenzer, Gerd, Goldstein, Daniel G. · 1996 · Psychological Review
7. Elimination by aspects: A theory of choice
   Tversky, Amos · 1972 · Psychological Review
8. The Adaptive Character of Thought
   Massaro, Dominic W., Friedman, Daniel, Anderson, John R. · 1991 · The American Journal of Psychology
9. Task complexity and contingent processing in decision making: An information search and protocol analysis
   Payne, John W. · 1976 · Organizational Behavior and Human Performance
10. Adaptive strategy selection in decision making.
    Payne, John W., Bettman, James R., Johnson, Eric J. · 1988 · Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition

Show all 33 references

Cited by (13)

1. Heuristic decision making
   Gigerenzer, Gerd, Gaissmaier, Wolfgang · 2011 · Annual Review of Psychology
2. Homo Heuristicus: Why Biased Minds Make Better Inferences
   Gigerenzer, Gerd, Brighton, Henry · 2009 · Topics in Cognitive Science
3. Fast and Frugal Heuristics: The Tools of Bounded Rationality
   Gigerenzer, Gerd · 2004 · Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making
4. Strategies for revising judgment: How (and how well) people use others’ opinions.
   Soll, Jack B., Larrick, Richard P. · 2009 · Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
5. Meta-Reasoning: Monitoring and Control of Thinking and Reasoning
   Ackerman, Rakefet, Thompson, Valerie A. · 2017 · Trends in Cognitive Sciences

See all 286