A Constructive Process View of Decision Making: Multiple Strategies in Judgment and Choice

A viewpoint that has recently emerged in decision research is that preferences for objects of any complexity are often constructed, not merely revealed, in generating a response to a judgment or choice task. This paper reviews a program of research that traces the constructiveness preferences to the use of multiple strategies in decision making, contingent on task demands. It is argued that individuals often build strategies opportunistically, changing their processing on the spot depending upon the information they encounter during the course of solving the decision problem.