The effects of expertise on financial problem solving: Evidence for goal-directed, problem-solving scripts

Abstract The information-selection and problem-solving strategies of experts and novices presented with a complex, real-world retirement planning task were studied. Two extreme groups of financial planning expertise were created from a sample of 21 on the basis of their (1) occupational reputations, and (2) performance on a comprehensive financial knowledge questionnaire. Subjects were required to decide, in a two-phase experimental task, whether or not a hypothetical young couple should invest in an Individual Retirement Account. In the first phase, subjects listed the specific information they would need to make an informed decision. In the second phase, they were provided with the specific, detailed data they had requested and were asked to “think-aloud” as they worked toward a problem solution. A process-tracing technique was used to analyze the think-aloud protocols with the data revealing basic differences in a variety of problem-solving processes as a function of expertise. Experts solved the problem in less time using fewer overall steps to complete the task, appearing much more goal-directed than novices who engaged in complicated information search strategies which lacked both coherence and efficiency. Moreover, at the outset of the task, experts requested higher-level task information than novices, demonstrating a superior initial representation of the problem. The results are interpreted as support for a script-based model of expert performance.

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