We often (have to) make choices between risky options without knowing the possible outcomes upfront. Sometimes, however, we can obtain a preview through active information search (e.g., sampling reviews on Tripadvisor to choose one of two hotels). But what if other people simultaneously pursue the same goal, forcing us to make decisions from experience under competitive pressure (“only one room left at this price”)? In this paper, I studied to what extent competition reduces pre-decisional search (and potentially choice performance) in different choice environments. A set of simulation analyses and empirical studies indicated that reduced search due to competitive pressure was particularly detrimental for choice performance in “wicked” environments, which contain rare events and thus require ample exploration to identify advantageous options. Interestingly, however, from a cost-benefit perspective and taking into account search costs, frugal search may not only be efficient in “kind” but also in “wicked” environments. For the full results, please have a look here:
Frey, R. (2020). Decisions from experience: Competitive search and choice in kind and wicked environments. Judgment and Decision Making, 15, 282-303. Online | PDF
On a side note, in this project I was up for some exploration myself: In the spirit of trying out new avenues for promoting transparent and reproducible research, I was committed to publish this paper as a registered report (RR). The idea of this relatively new publication format is to run the paper’s theoretical rationale through the full peer-review process at a scientific journal, with the goal of obtaining “in-principle acceptance” before the empirical studies are conducted. It was a very interesting but sometimes also difficult process, as it may be particularly hard to convince reviewers of the soundness and importance of the research questions a-priori, without being able to present fancy results yet. So I am glad that this paper found a nice home at JDM, and I hope that more psychological journals will adopt the format of RRs soon!
For more on my research on decisions from experience, please also see the research section.
First appeared on https://renatofrey.net/blog
