Six of one, half dozen of the other: Suboptimal prioritizing for equal and unequal alternatives.
It is possible to accomplish multiple goals when available resources are abundant, but when the tasks are difficult and resources are limited, it is better to focus on one task and complete it successfully than to divide your efforts and fail on both. Previous research has shown that people rarely a...
| Publicado en: | Memory & Cognition Vol. 51; no. 2; pp. 486 - 504 |
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| Autores principales: | , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
Springer Nature
Feb2023
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=162057248&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 162057248 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 0090502X MEG jtl: Memory & Cognition issn: 0090502X maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Feb2023 vid: 51 iid: 2 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 162057248 10.3758/s13421-022-01356-5 ppf: 486 ppct: 18 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 2.5MB tig: atl: Six of one, half dozen of the other: Suboptimal prioritizing for equal and unequal alternatives. aug: au: James, Warren Hunt, Amelia R. Clarke, Alasdair D. F. affil: Centre for Health Data Science, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester, UK su: Judgment (Psychology) Task performance Cognition Psychology Decision making Attention Resource allocation Employees' workload Reward (Psychology) Goal (Psychology) National competency-based educational tests Time Psychology of movement Conceptual models Reaction time Prompts (Psychology) sug: subj: Judgment (Psychology) Task performance Cognition Psychology Decision making Attention Resource allocation Employees' workload Reward (Psychology) Goal (Psychology) National competency-based educational tests Time Psychology of movement Conceptual models Reaction time Prompts (Psychology) keyword: Judgment Reasoning Judgment Reasoning ab: It is possible to accomplish multiple goals when available resources are abundant, but when the tasks are difficult and resources are limited, it is better to focus on one task and complete it successfully than to divide your efforts and fail on both. Previous research has shown that people rarely apply this logic when faced with prioritizing dilemmas. The pairs of tasks in previous research had equal utility, which according to some models, can disrupt decision-making. We investigated whether the equivalence of two tasks contributes to suboptimal decisions about how to prioritize them. If so, removing or manipulating the arbitrary nature of the decision between options should facilitate optimal decisions about whether to focus effort on one goal or divide effort over two. Across all three experiments, however, participants did not appropriately adjust their decisions with task difficulty. The only condition in which participants adopted a strategy that approached optimal was when they had voluntarily placed more reward on one task over the other. For the task that was more rewarded, choices were modified more effectively with task difficulty. However, participants were more likely to choose to distribute rewards equally than unequally. The results demonstrate that situations involving choices between options with equal utility are not avoided and are even slightly preferred over unequal options, despite unequal options having larger potential gains and leading to more effective prioritizing strategies. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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