Choosing versus Rejecting: The Impact of Goal-Task Compatibility on Decision Confidence

This research posits that goal orientation influences the impact of the type of decision task (selection vs. rejection) on decision confidence. The data reported in a series of three experiments show that promotion-focused individuals tend to be more confident in their decisions in the context of a selection rather than a rejection task, whereas for prevention-focused individuals this effect is reversed. This research suggests that goal-task compatibility underlies the observed effects and shows that the impact of goal orientation can transfer the value of the process onto the judgment of the outcomes, as suggested by prior research, and have a significant impact on individuals’ decision confidence. The empirical data support these propositions across different decision contexts, offering new insights into the role of goal-task compatibility in individual decision processes. Individuals frequently are confronted with two types of decisions: decisions in which they must select an alternative from a given set, and decisions in which they must give up one or more of the available alternatives. To illustrate, an individual might consider buying an item (selection decision) and later consider returning the item (rejection decision). Although choosing one of two options is normatively equivalent to rejecting the other option, it has been shown that there are systematic differences in how individuals decide to select and to give up choice alternatives. Prior research has shown that evaluations of a given object are asymmetric depending on whether the object is being acquired or forfeited, such that individuals are generally willing to pay less for a given product than they are willing to accept for giving up the same product (Kahneman, Knetsch, & Thaler, 1991; Tversky & Kahneman, 1991). It has further been demonstrated that more extreme options (e.g., options having more positive and more negative dimensions) have a higher probability of being chosen as well as rejected relative to less extreme options (Dunning & Parpal, 1989; Shafir, 1993, see also Dhar & Wertenbroch, 2000). Prior research has also examined the impact of the nature of the decision task on indi