The adaptive decision maker: The adaptive decision maker: A look backward and a look forward

Introduction This book reports on an ongoing program of research concerned with adaptive decision behavior. Although we believe that much has been learned about how decision makers adapt to task and context demands, we also believe that there is much more yet to be learned. Therefore, this concluding chapter has two purposes: First, we offer a summary of the major concepts and findings of our program of research to date; second, we sketch ideas for several major directions in which we think the effort and accuracy framework presented in this book might be extended. What have we learned? The framework and research presented in the previous chapters yield several generalizations about the adaptive decision maker. First, people clearly use a variety of strategies to solve decision problems, contingent upon task and context factors. Often those strategies are heuristic processes that ignore potentially relevant problem information. Thus, while people frequently make reasonable judgments and choices, the use of heuristic decision strategies sometimes can lead to decision errors. Second, given that decision makers have limited information-processing capabilities, strategy selection can be seen as the result of a compromise between the desire to make the most accurate decision and the desire to minimize cognitive effort. Further, because the accuracy and effort of different heuristics will vary across task environments, a decision maker concerned with both accuracy and effort will have to use strategies in a contingent fashion in order to be adaptive.