Evidence for Multiple-Reason Decision Making Under Time Limits

It has been repeatedly shown that in decisions under time constraints, individuals predominantly use non-compensatory strategies rather than complex compensatory strategies. We argue that these findings might not be due to limitations of cognitive capacity but to limitations of information search induced by the commonly used experimental procedure mouselab (Payne et al., 1988). We tested this assumption in three experiments. In the first experiment, information was openly presented, whereas in the second experiment the standard mouselab was used under different time limits. The results indicate that individuals are able to compute weighted additive decision strategies extremely quickly if the information search is not restricted by the experimental procedure. In a third experiment, these results could be replicated using more complex decision tasks; the major alternative explanations that individuals use more complex heuristics or encode the constellation of cues only could be ruled out. In sum, the findings challenge the fundaments of bounded rationality and highlight the importance of automatic processes in decision making.