How much information to sample before making a decision? It's a matter of psychological distance

Vered Halamish; Nira Liberman

doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2017.03.004

How much information to sample before making a decision? It's a matter of psychological distance

Vered Halamish, Nira Liberman

Tel Aviv University

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

When facing a decision, people look for relevant information to guide their choice. But how much information do they seek to obtain? Based on Construal Level Theory, we predicted that psychological distance from a decision would make participants seek more information prior to making a decision. Five experiments supported this prediction. When facing a decision between two decks of cards or two urns with marbles, participants preferred to sample more units of information for the purpose of making this decision in the distant future or for a friend (vs. in the near future or for themselves). These results suggest that expanding the scope of sampled experience is yet another way by which psychological distance affects decision making.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	111-116
Number of pages	6
Journal	Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Volume	71
Early online date	25 Mar 2017
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.03.004
State	Published - 1 Jul 2017

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier Inc.

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the Israel Science Foundation to Nira Liberman (grant No. 92/12) and by the I-CORE Program of the Planning and Budgeting Committee and the Israel Science Foundation (grant No. 51/11). We thank Ido Erev for helpful discussions, and Einat Brainin, Esti Lam, Riki Ranya, Inbal Madmon, Hila Reem, Inbal Feldman, and Noa Bregman for their help with data collection.

Funders	Funder number
Israel Science Foundation	92/12
Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education of Israel	51/11

Keywords

Construal Level Theory
Decision making
Learning from experience
Psychological distance
Sampling

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10.1016/j.jesp.2017.03.004

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How much information to sample before making a decision? It's a matter of psychological distance

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

Keywords

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