Information search in everyday decisions: The generalizability of the attraction search effect

Abstract

The recently proposed integrated coherence-based decisions and search model (iCodes) makes predictions for search behavior in multi-attribute decision tasks beyond those of classic decision-making heuristics. More precisely, it predicts the Attraction Search Effect that describes a tendency to search for information for the option that is already attractive given the available evidence. To date, the Attraction Search Effect has been successfully tested using a hypothetical stock-market game that was highly stylized and specifically designed to be highly diagnostic. In three experiments, we tested whether the Attraction Search Effect generalizes to different semantic contexts, different cue-value patterns, and a different presentation format than the classic matrix format. Across all experiments, we find evidence for information-search behavior that matches iCodes’s information-search prediction. Therefore, our results corroborate not only the generalizability of the Attraction Search Effect in various contexts but also the inherent process assumptions of iCodes.