Individual differences in use of the recognition heuristic are stable across time, choice objects, domains, and presentation formats.

Abstract

The recognition heuristic (RH) is a simple decision strategy that performs surprisingly well in many domains. According to the RH, people decide on the basis of recognition alone and ignore further knowledge when faced with a recognized and an unrecognized choice object. Previous research has revealed noteworthy individual differences in RH use, suggesting that people have preferences for using versus avoiding this strategy that might be causally linked to cognitive or personality traits. However, trying to explain differences in RH use in terms of traits presupposes temporal and cross-situational stability in use of the RH, an important prerequisite that has not been scrutinized so far. In a series of four experiments, we therefore assessed the stability in RH use across (1) time, (2) choice objects, (3) domains, and (4) presentation formats of the choice objects. In Experiment 1, participants worked on the same inference task and choice objects twice, separated by a delay of either one day or one week. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 using two different object sets from the same domain, whereas Experiment 3 assessed the stability of RH use across two different domains. Finally, in Experiment 4 we investigated stability across verbal and pictorial presentation formats of the choice objects. For all measures of RH use proposed so far, we found strong evidence for both temporal and cross-situational stability in use of the RH. Thus, RH use at least partly reflects a person-specific style of decision making whose determinants await further research.