Individual decision making : pain, rules, and effort

Individuals are involved in daily decision making situations under varying levels of certainty and ease of gathering information, characterized by many factors such as the need to make payments, or the desire to fulfill goals. Essay 1 proposes that when individuals are faced with environments that offer an abundance of alternative choices and information (increased decision flexibility) consumers will have a harder time deciding and are more likely not to make purchases or to procrastinate. Environments such as the Internet are proposed to increase decision conflict and anticipated regret, as they increase the ease of generating counterfactuals. Limiting flexibility, by using exploding discounts, for example, reduces decision difficulty, and increases purchase likelihood. Essay 2 demonstrates that some of the documented discrepancies between expressed preferences and predicted happiness may be explained by individuals' use of rules when making decisions. Rules are used whenever they are evoked, and exclude a deep factual analysis of the situation. For example, money is proposed to invoke a set of rules that are subsequently used. Specifically, driven by anticipation, consumers' preference for a delayed concert is contradicted by their greater willingness to pay for an immediate one. The overarching nature of rules causes individuals to follow them even when it is not in their best interests. Essay 3 demonstrates that partitioning a task by providing progress information may influence motivation, effort, enjoyment, and performance in two opposing ways: when uncertainty about progress is high, partitioning increases motivation and liking of a task, but when progress uncertainty is low, partitioning decreases motivation, liking, and subsequent choice of the task.