Broadening the Definition of Decision Making: The Role of Prechoice Screening of Options

Decision theory and research have focused almost exclusively on choice—the selection of the best option from a choice set containing two or more options. Largely overlooked is the question of how those particular options got there in the first place—why them and not others? This article describes a theory, called image theory, about how prechoice screening of options governs the contents of the set from which a choice is made and summarizes empirical tests of the theory. The research results suggest that screening plays a far more important role in decision making than is generally appreciated and that our view of decision making must be broadened accordingly.

[1]  Lee Roy Beach,et al.  Imperfect Information in Pre-choice Screening of Options , 1994 .

[2]  Richard E. Potter,et al.  Decision Making When the Acceptable Options Become Unavailable , 1994 .

[3]  L. Beach,et al.  The effects of strong belief structures on information-processing evaluations and choice , 1993 .

[4]  H Raiffa,et al.  Decision Analysis: Introductory Lectures on Choices under Uncertainty. , 1969 .

[5]  John W. Payne,et al.  The adaptive decision maker: Name index , 1993 .

[6]  A. Tversky,et al.  Choice under Conflict: The Dynamics of Deferred Decision , 1992 .

[7]  Lee Roy Beach,et al.  The effects of screening and task partitioning upon evaluations of decision options , 1992 .

[8]  Jim Q. Smith,et al.  Image Theory: Decision Making in Personal and Organizational Contexts. , 1991 .

[9]  Lee Roy Beach,et al.  A toadstool among the mushrooms: Screening decisions and image theory's compatibility test , 1989 .

[10]  Terence R. Mitchell,et al.  Image theory: Descriptive sufficiency of a simple rule for the compatibility test , 1988 .

[11]  Lee Roy Beach,et al.  Image theory: Principles, goals, and plans in decision making , 1987 .

[12]  Richard W. Olshavsky,et al.  Task complexity and contingent processing in decision making: A replication and extension , 1979 .

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

[14]  L. Beach,et al.  A Contingency Model for the Selection of Decision Strategies , 1978 .

[15]  John W. Payne,et al.  Task complexity and contingent processing in decision making: An information search and protocol analysis☆ , 1976 .

[16]  A. Battersby.  Plans and the Structure of Behavior , 1968 .