ANTICIPATIONS OF EFFORT AND ACCURACY IN MULTIATTRIBUTE CHOICE

Research on multiattribute choice strategies suggests that decision makers adapt to variations in task features by switching decision strategies, One perspective is that strategy selection is determined by a trade-off between the goals of minimizing effort and maximizing accuracy, However, since strategy selection is based on anticipated effort and accuracy, empirical evidence is needed on the nature of these anticipations, An experiment examines how well decision makers anticipate the influence of two particular task features, information display organization and number of alternatives, on effort and accuracy. Subjects chose the best alternative from sets of loan applications described by six relevant attributes, Prior to each choice, they prospectively judged the effort required and the accuracy that would result, Results suggest that anticipated consequences deviate substantially from experienced consequences for both effort and accuracy. Neither task experience nor explicit feedback brought anticipations and experiences closer together, These findings underscore the importance of anticipation judgments in multiattribute choice. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.