The Effects of Outcome versus Process-Oriented Thinking

Imagine that you are looking for an apartment to rent and are deciding between two options that entail an attribute trade-off. One apartment is spacious but far from your workplace; the other is closer but much less spacious. Construal level theory (Liberman and Trope 1998) suggests that when deciding between these two alternatives, consumers who engage in process-oriented thinking will prefer the smaller and closer apartment because they tend to focus on the feasibility of the alternatives, while consumers who engage in outcome-oriented thinking will prefer the larger and less convenient apartment because they tend to focus on the desirability of the alternatives. However, although earlier research has tried to predict which alternatives will be chosen in a situation like this one, research has not addressed the subjective experience of the decision process for outcome-and process-oriented consumers. In this paper, we examine the impact of process and outcome-oriented thinking on perceived decision difficulty. Previous studies have recommended process-oriented thinking over outcome-oriented thinking because it tends to be more effective in helping consumers achieve their goals (Taylor et al. 1998), increasing the consistency of their preferences (Hamilton and Thompson 2007; Zhao, Hoeffler and Zauberman 2007), and making them more discerning in their use of ad information (Escalas and Luce 2003). Although these findings tend to favor process-oriented thinking, they are based on scenarios in which consumers are evaluating a single goal or product, rather than choosing among two or more alternatives. In this research, we investigate the effect of process and outcome-oriented thinking on decision-making difficulty. In a series of three studies, we present participants with trade-offs between two alternatives, involving desirability and feasibility attributes. Our central prediction is that when consumers are faced with these trade-offs, inducing process-oriented thinking will significantly increase decision difficulty relative to outcome-oriented thinking, affecting their likelihood to postpone choice and likelihood to select a compromise option at a later point.