Salience effects in memory-based decisions: an improved replication

Abstract

ABSTRACT An experimental report by Platzer and Bröder ([2012]. Most people do not ignore salient invalid cues in memory-based decisions. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19(4), 654–661) claimed that in memory-based decisions, salient attributes are often not ignored even if they are less valid than other cues. When the rank order of cue validities was congruent with their salience hierarchy, people predominantly used a noncompensatory take-the-best strategy (TTB) based on the most valid cue whereas they used more compensatory strategies when hierarchies were incongruent (i.e. the least valid cue was most salient). Given the recent replication crisis in psychology and methodological shortcomings of the original study, a better-controlled replication with new stimuli and a larger sample was conducted. A pilot study established a visual salience hierarchy of the cues used. The main experiment clearly replicated the salience effect at the strategy selection level and the longer response times for compensatory strategies compared to TTB. A response time interaction of strategy and condition did not replicate.