What happens to information, situational cues, and individual strategies in decision-making? The contribution of latent decisional profiles in realistic decisions

Abstract

The role of information-processing strategies in defining individual attitudes toward decision-making has been little investigated and, in general, has almost always been explored via self-reported measures. This study investigates how different strategies for information processing are used to make decisions, via a new task based on realistic decision-making scenarios and observation of actual decisional behavior. Three levels of information processing are considered: (i) low-level information related to decision details; (ii) mid-level information concerning the task and the goals to be accomplished; (iii) high-level information including situational aspects and features of the context. General decision-making style questionnaire was also administered. Hierarchical cluster analysis parsed out three emerging profiles characterized by attention to low-level, mid-level, and high-level pieces of information, which was linked to detail-focused, task-oriented, and situation-aware approaches to gather and process information in supporting decision. Such emerging profiles also proved to differ in terms of primary general decision-making styles, a finding that depose in favor of the robustness of the latent classification. These findings allowed us to delineate a model in which different information-processing strategies provide the basis for identifying different profiles of decision-makers.