Information Presentation and Judgment Strategy from a Cognitive Fit Perspective

Information system developers want to know how their information presentation choices will affect user judgment. Prior research suggests that performance on elementary information processing tasks is enhanced when there is a cognitive fit between the way data are presented and the way they are used. This theory has been applied only to elementary information processing tasks or judgment strategy has not been manipulated. The aim of this research is to see if cognitive fit theory can be applied to overall judgment strategies. Judgment strategy is the combination of elementary information processing tasks that a decision maker employs to arrive at an overall judgment. Two types of judgment strategies are investigated: (1) a holistic strategy that tends to use spatial information processing tasks and (2) an analytic strategy that tends to emphasize symbolic tasks. If cognitive fit research applies to overall judgment strategy, then graphs should support holistic judgment strategies better and tables should support analytic strategies better. We obtained results that are consistent with this premise from graduate business students evaluating performance for hypothetical manufacturing plant managers.