Choices and judgments of incompletely described decision alternatives under time pressure

Abstract

The effects of time pressure were investigated on choices and judgments of pairs of partially described alternatives. Subjects judged which of two students would be more qualified to follow a university program for school psychologists. Subjects indicated the preferred candidate and the rated attractiveness difference between candidates in each pair, based on information about high school grades in Swedish, Psychology and Natural Sciences. Each candidate in a pair was described by grades in only two of these attributes — one common for the two candidates and one unique. The exposure time for each pair was systematically varied so that time pressure was imposed in some conditions. Contrary to expectations, it was found that common attribute information was used less under time pressure. No support was found for the expected increased importance of negative information under time pressure. Instead, time pressure resulted in a shift toward greater preference for the candidate with the maximum grade. This result is opposite to the ‘harassed decision maker effect’ (Wright 1974). A process model capturing the most frequent decision rules and the effects of time pressure is presented.