Making a choice when information is missing: The case of medical versus consumer choices

Abstract

This paper reports an experimental investigation of decision-making under uncertainty. Today, patients are encouraged to participate, or even decide for themselves what kind of care and treatment they should get; they are now in the position of a consumer that chooses what he believes is best. However, choosing a specific treatment rather than another has more important consequences in one's life than choosing a brand of yogurt rather than another. We wanted to see if people choose according to the available information, or not. Using a within-person design, we asked if there are any differences in the way people make medical choices, as compared to non-medical, neutral choices. Latency was also measured for the 21 choices each participant had to make. Additionally, we investigated moral purity, and gender – as between-person variables, to see if they play a role in decision-making under uncertainty. We analyzed the data with hierarchical linear modelling, where a series of choices (level 1) were nested within individuals (level 2). Results showed that people relied on the available information more often for medical choices than for non-medical, neutral choices. The less time spent, the higher the probability of relying on the available information. Also, while moral purity was not a significant predictor of decision-making, gender seems to be a moderator: men tend to rely more than women on the known information, in the case of medical choices, while in the case of non-medical choices, the differences between men and women are insignificant.