Time pressure and the application of decision rules: choices and judgments among multiattribute alternatives.

The effects of time pressure on decisions and judgments were studied and related to the use of different decision rules in a multiattribute decision task. The decision alternatives were students described by their high school grades in Swedish, Psychology and Natural Science. The subjects were asked to choose the student they thought would be most able to follow a university program and graduate as a school psychologist. On the basis of earlier findings using the same kind of decision task (Svenson et al., 1990) it was hypothesised that subjects under time pressure would prefer candidates having the maximum grade across all attributes to a greater extent than subjects under no time pressure. Furthermore, it was hypothesised that subjects under time pressure would also focus more on the most important attribute and choose the alternatives being best on that attribute. The results supported these hypotheses.

[1]  J. G. Miller,et al.  Information input overload and psychopathology. , 1960, The American journal of psychiatry.

[2]  Peter Wright.  The harassed decision maker: Time pressures, distractions, and the use of evidence. , 1974 .

[3]  Peter C. Fishburn,et al.  LEXICOGRAPHIC ORDERS, UTILITIES AND DECISION RULES: A SURVEY , 1974 .

[4]  Barton A. Weitz,et al.  Time horizon effects on product evaluation strategies. , 1977 .

[5]  O. Svenson.  Process descriptions of decision making. , 1979 .

[6]  H. Zur,et al.  The effect of time pressure on risky choice behavior , 1981 .

[7]  T. Wallsten,et al.  Processing probabilistic multidimensional information for decisions. , 1982 .

[8]  B. Dosher,et al.  Strategies for multiattribute binary choice. , 1983, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[9]  H. Rothstein.  The effects of time pressure on judgment in multiple cue probability learning , 1986 .

[10]  Ola Svenson,et al.  Change of preferences under time pressure: choices and judgements , 1987 .

[11]  Eric J. Johnson,et al.  Adaptive Strategy Selection in Decision Making. , 1988 .

[12]  Ola Svenson,et al.  Choices and judgments of incompletely described decision alternatives under time pressure , 1990 .

[13]  O. Svenson.  Differentiation and consolidation theory of human decision making: A frame of reference for the study of pre- and post-decision processes , 1992 .

[14]  Ola Svenson,et al.  Time pressure and stress in human judgment and decision making , 1993 .