Effects of ego-depletion on choice behaviour in a multi-attribute decision task |
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Authors: | Sebastian Dummel Jan Rummel |
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Affiliation: | Department of Psychology, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany |
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Abstract: | When a choice has to be made between two options and decision-relevant information about the options is completely available, the Take-The-Best (TTB) heuristic only considers the most important information that discriminates between the options and bases its choice on it. Choices in line with TTB thus allow a decision maker to save time and effort, and they may become more likely therefore under conditions of limited self-control strength (ego-depletion). Ego-depletion was manipulated prior to making a series of choices in a multi-attribute decision task. Choices could have been in line with either TTB or more effortful compensatory decision strategies. As predicted, compared with non-depleted participants, ego-depleted participants were more likely to make TTB-consistent choices. |
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Keywords: | Decision making heuristics self-control strength ego depletion |
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