Retro-cueing in multi-attribute choices: The influence of memory availability on strategy selection and attribute weights

Abstract

Decision making in multi-attribute choices is adapted to the structure of the task. The availability of information in memory was recently proposed as driving this adaptation. We studied this hypothesis in the context of purchase decisions by using eye tracking and computational modelling in controlled lab experiments. We particularly manipulated memory availability through a retro-cue, thereby highlighting one attribute in a multi-attribute choice task in which participants decided among products (movies, books) based on the recommendations of six reviewers. In three experiments, we observed that the retro-cue has a two-fold effect on subsequent choices. First, cueing the position of one recommendation increased the probability of choosing the recommended product. Second, cueing any recommendation led to an increase of choices in accordance with a compensatory decision strategy. Gaze analyses show that search behavior is indeed changed following the retro-cue. We further propose a computational model for describing and generalizing the effect.

The visual environment and attention in decision making.

“…In studies on task instructions, participants receive instructions concerning a specific decision goal, and with that, what is it relevant to gaze at. For instance, the participants may be instructed on the validity of stimulus attributes (Krefeld-Schwalb & Rosner, 2019) or infer the level of validity themselves (Bialkova et al, 2014). In preferential viewing studies, the relevance should be equal to the subjective preferences.…”

“…Although these models all specify different information search processes, they make similar implicit assumptions about the nature of visual search and hence attention in decision making. The models assume that information search is determined by a search rule inherent to the decision process, for example, attend to alternatives one at a time until a satisfactory alternative is found (Stüttgen et al, 2012), or attend to information cues in order of their predefined validity until a cue is found that identifies the best alternative (Krefeld-Schwalb & Rosner, 2019). Overt attention is sometimes used to test such process assumptions (Glöckner & Herbold, 2011).…”