The Impact of Accuracy and Effort Feedback and Goals on Adaptive Decision Behavior

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of accuracy and effort feedback on decision processes. The effects of emphasizing either a goal of maximizing accuracy relative to effort or minimizing effort relative to accuracy are also considered. Feedback on the accuracy of decisions leads to more normative like processing information and improved performance only in the most difficult problems, i.e., decisions with low dispersion in attribute weights. Explicit effort feedback has almost no impact on processing or performance. The impact of the goal manipulation on decision processes was found to be consistent with the shift in strategies predicted by an effort/accuracy model of strategy selection. In particular, a goal of emphasizing accuracy led to more normative-like processing, while emphasis on effort led to less extensive, more selective, and more attribute-based processing and poorer performance. These results provide perhaps the clearest evidence to date of the effect of goals on processing differences. Complex interactive relationships between types of feedback and goal structures suggest the need for additional study.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 01, 1989
Accession Number
ADA205751

Entities

People

  • Elizabeth H. Creyer
  • James R. Bettman
  • John W. Payne

Organizations

  • Duke University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Analysis Of Variance
  • Behavioral Sciences
  • Cognition
  • Databases
  • Elimination
  • Information Processing
  • Information Science
  • Judgment
  • Learning
  • Motivation
  • Motor Skills
  • Multivariate Analysis
  • Probability
  • Psychology
  • Thinking
  • Universities

Fields of Study

  • Computer science
  • Psychology

Readers

  • Team-Based Human-Centered Cognitive Task Decision Making and Information Performance.