Forecasting one's own preference

Abstract

This paper compares two methods of making preference judgments based on multi-attribute inputs: (i) an intuitive global evaluation of each input in its totality, (ii) a separate evaluation of each input attribute weighted intuitively to form a linear composite. When judges in psychological, medical and business settings have been asked to make predictive judgments on the basis of multi-attribute input, method (ii) has proved to be superior — with unerring consistency. People are quite poor at making intuitive global judgments based on psychologically incomparable attributes and much poorer than they believe themselves to be. Nevertheless, for various illusiory reasons (e.g., biased feedback, overestimation of the predictability inherent in the situation), people prefer method (i). A preference judgment can be conceptualized as a predictive judgment of one's future ‘state of mind.’ Thus, the research findings strongly suggest that when making preference judgments method (ii) is superior, but will remain less popular than method (i).