THE INFLUENCE OF DECISION AIDS ON CHOICE STRATEGIES UNDER CONDITIONS OF HIGH COGNITIVE LOAD

The objective of this paper is to extend and complement the work reported in the behavioral decision theory literature on the role of effort and accuracy in choice tasks by examining the role of computer based decision aids in reducing cognitive effort under task conditions where the decision maker experiences heavy information load. The central proposition of this paper is that specific features can be incorporated within a set of decision aids that will alter the effort required to implement a particular choice strategy relative to other strategies, and that this will influence strategy selection. In a laboratory experiment, subjects were given different decision aids to reduce the cognitive effort associated with different preferential choice strategies. In particular, the decision aids provided varying levels of support for the processing associated with either elimination by aspects (EBA) or additive difference (AD) strategies. The study examined changes in operators which represent the subcomponents or building blocks of the strategies. A repeated measures design was utilized whereby a total of 32 subjects performed a 30 alternative apartment selection task over two trials. Analysis of the data was based on the coding of concurrent verbal protocols which described the subjects' problem solving strategies. The results show that decision aids which reduce the effort associated with the elimination by aspects strategy induce behaviors associated with elimination by aspects. More importantly, there was an interaction effect caused by the behavior of subjects provided with support for an additive difference but not for an elimination by aspects strategy. These subjects employed more operations which are unique to the AD strategy. These results are consistent with our earlier studies in indicating that decision makers adapt to the decision aids available to them in such a way as to maintain low overall levels of effort expenditure. They further indicate that decision aids can be designed to overcome task limitations that may constrain decision maker behavior.