Framing effects on adolescent task representations, analytic and heuristic processing, and decision making: Implications for the normative/descriptive gap

Abstract

Adolescent decision making derives from the functioning of two independent information-processing systems. Analytic processing — the focus of most previous decision making and cognitive developmental research — often produces responses consistent with those that have traditionally been deemed correct. Heuristic processing, by contrast, often produces judgments and decisions at odds with existing norms. In part because heuristic processing is the system's “default,” a large normative/descriptive gap exists. In the present research, early adolescents, middle adolescents, and young adults solved probability, contrary-to-fact, and sunk cost decision-making problems. The normative/descriptive gap decreased with age, but fallacious responses, assumed to reflect heuristic processing, were predominant across ages. “Framing” instructions to view the problems logically increased analytic processing and decreased, but by no means eliminated, the normative/descriptive gap. It is argued that by early adolescence, various heuristic processes and biases are firmly entrenched response tendencies that may represent overgeneralizations of strategies that are often adaptive. Prior to implementing decision-making interventions, the challenge of delineating conditions under which heuristic processing is adaptive and maladaptive must be met.