The Impact of accuracy and effort feedback and goals on adaptive decision behavior

This paper examines the impact of accuracy feedback, effort feedback, and emphasis on either a goal of maximizing accuracy relative to effort or minimizing effort relative to accuracy on decision processes. Feedback on the accuracy of decisions leads to more normative‐like processing of 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 of feedback and goals on adaptive decision behavior. Copyright © 1990 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Duke Scholars

Author James R. Bettman Fuqua School of Business

Author John W. Payne Fuqua School of Business