Adult age differences in categorization and multiple-cue judgment.

Mata, Rui; Helversen, Bettina von; Karlsson, Linnéa; Cüpper, Lutz

doi:10.1037/a0026084

Cited by 45 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(75 reference statements)

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“…Accordingly, participants may be more motivated to use a rule-based strategy, which would reduce the influence of cognitive load on strategy selection. To investigate this question, we compared how people under high cognitive load (four letters) and people without cognitive load solved a linear judgment task (see Mata, von Helversen, Karlsson, & Cüpper, 2012).…”

Section: Study 2: Extension To a Linear Judgment Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deliberation’s Blindsight

2013

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Multitasking poses a major challenge in modern work environments by putting the worker under cognitive load. Performance decrements often occur when people are under high cognitive load because they switch to less demanding-and often less accurate-cognitive strategies. Although cognitive load disturbs performance over a wide range of tasks, it may also carry benefits. In the experiments reported here, we showed that judgment performance can increase under cognitive load. Participants solved a multiple-cue judgment task in which high performance could be achieved by using a similarity-based judgment strategy but not by using a more demanding rule-based judgment strategy. Accordingly, cognitive load induced a shift to a similarity-based judgment strategy, which consequently led to more accurate judgments. By contrast, shifting to a similarity-based strategy harmed judgments in a task best solved by using a rule-based strategy. These results show how important it is to consider the cognitive strategies people rely on to understand how people perform in demanding work environments.

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Section: Study 2: Extension To a Linear Judgment Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deliberation’s Blindsight

2013

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“…Older adults seem to perform worse in a number of decision tasks due to cognitive limitations (Bruine de Bruin, Parker, & Fischoff, 2010;Finucane & Gullion, 2010;Mata, von Helversen, Karlsson, & Cüpper, 2011;Mata, von Helversen & Rieskamp, 2010;Mata, Schooler, & Rieskamp, 2007). At the same time, aging is associated with affective and motivational changes found to affect decision making by influencing pre-decisional information search (Löckenhoff & Carstensen, 2007), post-choice memory (Mather, Knight, & McCaffrey, 2005), and choice satisfaction (Kim, Healey, Goldstein, Hasher, & Wiprzycka, 2008).…”

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“…Aging is associated with higher emotional competence (Blanchard-Fields, 2007;John & Gross, 2004;Phillips, Henry, Hosie, & Milne, 2008;Scheibe & Blanchard-Fields, 2009) and improved affective experience (Carstensen, 2006;Carstensen, et al, 2011;Charles, Reynolds, & Gatz, 2001;Röcke, Li, & Smith, 2009). Affect may influence peoples' decision making by affecting people's search tendencies: Increased positive affect has been connected to less information search in judgments (Fiedler, Renn & Kareev, 2009), consumer decisions (Beatty & Ferrell, 1998), multi-attribute decision tasks (Isen & Means, 1983), and sequential decision tasks (von Helversen, et al, 2011). Positive affect may reduce search by generally promoting superficial thinking (see Bless & Fiedler, 2006;Schwarz & Clore, 2006).…”

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Losing a dime with a satisfied mind: Positive affect predicts less search in sequential decision making.

Helversen

Mata

2012

Psychology and Aging

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We investigated the contribution of cognitive ability and affect to age differences in sequential decision making by asking younger and older adults to shop for items in a computerized sequential decision-making task. Older adults performed poorly compared to younger adults partly due to searching too few options. An analysis of the decision process with a formal model suggested that older adults set lower thresholds for accepting an option than younger participants. Further analyses suggested that positive affect, but not fluid abilities, was related to search in the sequential decision task. A second study that manipulated affect in younger adults supported the causal role of affect: Increased positive affect lowered the initial threshold for accepting an attractive option. In sum, our results suggest that positive affect is a key factor determining search in sequential decision making. Consequently, increased positive affect in older age may contribute to poorer sequential decisions by leading to insufficient search. Losing a dime with a satisfied mind:Positive affect predicts less search in sequential decision making We investigated the contribution of cognitive ability and affect to age differences in sequential decision making by asking younger and older adults to shop for items in a computerized sequential decision-making task. Older adults performed poorly compared to younger adults partly due to searching too few options. An analysis of the decision process with a formal model suggested that older adults set lower thresholds for accepting an option than younger participants. Further analyses suggested that positive affect, but not fluid abilities, was related to search in the sequential decision task. A second study that manipulated affect in younger adults supported the causal role of affect: Increased positive affect lowered the initial threshold for accepting an attractive option. In sum, our results suggest that positive affect is a key factor determining search in sequential decision making.Consequently, increased positive affect in older age may contribute to poorer sequential decisions by leading to insufficient search.

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“…For instance, people with better episodic memory rely more frequently on exemplar-based processes (Hoffmann et al, 2014). In contrast, older participants or participants with more knowledge about the task and how cues relate to the criterion tend to rely on attribute-based processes (Mata, von Helversen, Karlsson, & Cüpper, 2012;von Helversen et al, 2013). This suggests that when designing products for a specific target group it could be worthwhile to consider the cognitive strategies the group members are likely to use.…”

Section: Implications For Economic Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Different strategies for evaluating consumer products: Attribute- and exemplar-based approaches compared

Scheibehenne

Helversen

Rieskamp

2015

Journal of Economic Psychology

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JEL classification: D12 M31PsycINFO Classification: 2340 3900 3920 Keywords:Consumer behavior Mathematical modeling Judgment and decision making Bayesian statistics a b s t r a c t Consumers' purchase decisions depend on whether a product is perceived as a bargain or as overpriced. But how do consumers evaluate sales prices? The standard approach in economics, psychology, and marketing suggests that consumers' estimates are best described by a attribute-based or piecemeal strategy that integrates information about products in a linear additive fashion. Here, we outline and test an alternative theoretical approach from the categorization literature suggesting that consumers sometimes follow an exemplarbased strategy that relies on similarity to previously encountered products. We hypothesize that people switch between these two estimation strategies depending on the context they face. To test this hypothesis, we conducted an experiment in which 64 participants repeatedly estimated the market price of different consumer products (bottles of wine). In one condition, the product prices could be well approximated with an attribute-based strategy whereas in the other condition an exemplar-based strategy worked best. Results of a subsequent testing phase indicated that participants switched between strategies depending on the structure of the presented sets. These results show that people rely on different strategies to estimate market prices, which should influence people's consumption behavior. The results suggest that theories on categorization learning can provide a deeper insight into behavior in an economic context and allow predicting consumer behavior more accurately.

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Adult age differences in categorization and multiple-cue judgment.

Cited by 45 publications

References 42 publications

Deliberation’s Blindsight

Deliberation’s Blindsight

Losing a dime with a satisfied mind: Positive affect predicts less search in sequential decision making.

Different strategies for evaluating consumer products: Attribute- and exemplar-based approaches compared

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