The Path of Least Resistance Using Easy-to-Access Information

Recent work on judgment and decision making has focused on how people preferentially use cues, or pieces of relevant information, that are easy to access when making decisions. In this article, we discuss a framework for understanding the ways that cues become accessible. We begin by identifying two components of cues and show how these components can become accessible during different parts a decision process. We highlight evidence for the use of accessible information and discuss implications for future research on heuristics. KEYWORDS—judgment; decision making; fluency; cue weighting; effort reduction Making optimal decisions can be thought of as a complex process that requires many cognitive operations to be performed. With various demands on our time and attention, we often try to reduce the amount of effort that we expend on making judgments and decisions. These strategies for reducing effort are called heuristics (Shah & Oppenheimer, 2008; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Indeed, since Tversky and Kahneman (1974) first identified three canonical heuristics—availability, representativeness, and anchoring and adjustment—the field of judgment and decision making has seen a wealth of additional heuristics described. As with any task, there are many ways to cut corners and save effort. For example, one could consider a subset of available information, weight cues in a simple way, avoid trade-offs between different cues, and consider fewer alternatives. However, one of the most commonly studied heuristic strategies involves using information that is easy to access. In a recent review, more than half of all frequently cited heuristics were shown to reduce effort by using easy-to-access information (Shah & Oppenheimer, 2008). Many proposed heuristics focus on specific cues that decision makers weigh heavily in their judgments within particular domains. These cues are often made more accessible because the decision context primes them. For instance, consumers might rely on brand names when buying products (Maheswaran, Mackie, & Chaiken, 1992), while voters might attend to which organizations endorse a candidate (Forehand, Gastil, & Smith, 2004). Although the brand-name and endorsement heuristics differ on the surface, both heuristics use cues that are easy to access in their respective contexts. Given the prevalence of this type of heuristic, it is surprising how little attention has been given to the critical question of what makes some cues easier to access than other cues (but for a discussion of accessibility in memory, see Tulving & Pearlstone, 1966). In what follows, we will outline a framework for understanding the ways in which information becomes easily accessible. This framework draws on other syntheses of heuristics (Gigerenzer, Todd, & The ABC Group, 1999; Kahneman & Frederick, 2002; Payne, Bettman, & Johnson, 1993; Shah & Oppenheimer, 2008) but offers the first cohesive explanation of how a common heuristic mechanism might operate. For instance, previous frameworks have often discussed how accessibility itself might be used as a cue toward judgment (e.g., the recognition heuristic, Gigerenzer et al., 1999; the availability heuristic, Tversky & Kahneman, 1974), but they have neglected how accessibility could serve as a mechanism underlying a more general class of heuristics. To develop an understanding of this general mechanism, we highlight findings in various fields—from social persuasion to metacognition—that suggest different means by which information becomes accessible. We integrate these different literatures to discuss common themes, such as how familiarity, context, experience, and evaluability can make cues easy to access. A FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING CUE ACCESSIBILITY Cues for judgment and decision making can be thought of as having two separate components: a type and a value. Consider the case of buying a car. One of the first cues you might think to examine is the fuel efficiency of the car—the cue type. While considering this cue type, you must assess how many miles per Address correspondence to Anuj K. Shah, Princeton University Department of Psychology, Green Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544; e-mail: [email protected]. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 232 Volume 18—Number 4 Copyright r 2009 Association for Psychological Science gallon the car gets—the cue value. The way these components become accessible ultimately depends on when the cue is consulted. We assume that there are two points at which cues might become easier to access: during cue acquisition and during cue evaluation. Cue acquisition can occur in two related but distinct ways: cue perception and cue production. Cue perception refers to when decision makers assimilate information from task environments in which cue types and values are provided. In such environments, decision makers have only to perceive the information that has already been accumulated for them (e.g., in tables that compare and contrast different options). Cue production occurs when cues are not presented to decision makers. Instead, decision makers must retrieve previously seen cues from memory or assess new cues for the first time. Cue evaluation refers to when decision makers decide how to incorporate a particular piece of information into a judgment or decision. We will show that cue types and cue values can independently be made more accessible during each of these phases (see Fig. 1). In total, this framework highlights six ways for cues to become more accessible. In what follows, we will explain these principles further and highlight experimental support for their importance in judgment and decision making. CUE ACQUISITION Decision makers might be provided with cues or otherwise retrieve them from memory or assess them on-line. The distinction between these methods of cue acquisition may seem arbitrary, and indeed there is some overlap. Yet these methods can make cues accessible in different ways, and they are often employed to different degrees depending on factors such as task environment and a decision maker’s expertise (for a discussion of external and memory-based information search, see Mandel & Johnson, 2002). Cue Perception It may seem that explicitly providing decision makers with cue types and values makes all information equally accessible. However, decision environments can still make some cues more fluent, or easier to process, than others. Fluency often increases when information is presented in familiar ways. That is, cues can be processed less effortfully to the extent that they have been seen before or are similar to cues encountered previously. For example, recent work has shown how phonetic fluency, or the ease of pronouncing words, can influence which cue types are