10 - A process tracing study of bad decisions: using eye tracking in food decision-making

Abstract

In the previous chapter on the process tracing study of decision strategies and bad decisions, we experimentally examined bad decisions by asking participants to use a specific strategy. The results showed that using compensatory decision strategies, such as additive decision strategies, not only fails to produce the best decisions but can also result in the worst decisions. The results also suggest that the use of noncompensatory decision strategies such as disjunctive is likely to result in the worst decisions. Conversely, it was suggested that noncompensatory decision-making such as lexicographic screening is likely to avoid the worst decision-making. However, the extent to which bad decisions occur in normal decision-making tasks is not well understood. In this chapter, we take up food decision-making, which is also important in risk communication, and examine how much bad decision-making occurs in a process tracking technique using eye-tracking equipment. Finally, we also report the results of an additional questionnaire survey on the food decision-making problem. Our findings suggest that in multiattribute decision-making for foods, despite the presence of fatal risks, people tended to ignore the attribute information and make decisions based on the characteristics of other secondary attributes of interest. This finding was also suggested by the eye-tracking data. Such results occur even in a very small number of decision-making tasks (two choices), suggesting that bad decision-making can occur even in everyday life itself. This suggests that decisions based on the disjunctive strategy are likely to occur in food decisions as well, when interpreted from the perspective of the decision strategy.