Speaker: Dr. Janina Hoffman, University of Bath

Title: Cognitive limitations in Decision Making

Host: Michaela Gummerum

Abstract: Social, cognitive, and decision scientists often invoke cognitive limitations to explain deviations from rationality in decision. While many studies have found that cognitive limitations harm decision performance, the same limitations seem to benefit decision performance in other situations. Indeed, less effortful processes can sometimes achieve a surprisingly high level of accuracy. These findings indicate that the type of constraint may interact with characteristics of the decision task and the choice process. Finally, although distinct research areas within decision science from hypothesis testing to category learning to risky choice have debated the impact of cognitive limitations on search, weighting, and choice processes, the evidence is scattered across the literature. In this talk, I will first showcase previous research illustrating the opposing impact of cognitive load on decision processes. Following a qualitative literature review, I will then report a meta-analysis synthesizing evidence on how cognitive load impacts decision-making. Initial results suggest that cognitive load was associated with lower decision accuracy to a small to moderate degree and type of decision task moderated the effect. I will discuss implications for future work on cognitive limitations and modelling of choice processes.