Decision-making competence in everyday life: The roles of general cognitive styles, decision-making styles and personality
Introduction
Why do people differ in their ability to make competent decisions in everyday life? Some choose unsuitable jobs and careers, inappropriate partners, bad friends, and poor investments, while others choose more wisely and are more likely to achieve their life goals. Understanding the individual difference variables which lead some people to consistently achieve better decision outcomes than others is self-evidently important. Addressing this issue, Bruine de Bruin, Parker, and Fischhoff (2007) examined the extent to which three types of individual difference variables (demographic characteristics, cognitive ability, and decision-making styles) predicted self-reported decision-making outcomes (e.g. getting a parking ticket). The authors also investigated the relationship between these everyday outcomes and the ability to make rational judgments (e.g. to resist the influence of framing) and decisions (e.g. to avoid the influence of sunk costs) using specific normative tasks developed to study decision biases. The results of this study showed that collectively decision-making styles (e.g. the tendency to make choices spontaneously or to avoid making decisions) explained more variance in everyday decision-making outcomes than either cognitive ability, or performance in the normative decision-making tasks.
The purpose of this article is to extend in two ways Bruine de Bruin et al.’s (2007) finding that decision-making styles (e.g. decision-avoidance) predict competent decision-making in everyday life. First, we examine whether general cognitive style variables (e.g. creating, planning) predict variance in competence over and above style variables more specifically aligned with decision-making (e.g. spontaneity, decision-avoidance). Second, we examine whether the Big Five personality characteristics, a class of individual difference variables which did not feature in Bruine de Bruin et al.’s study, explain incremental variance in decision-making competence over and above these two types of style.
Section snippets
Cognitive styles and decision-making styles
Cognitive styles have been defined as stable attitudes, preferences, and habitual strategies which determine an individual’s modes of perceiving, remembering, thinking and problem-solving (Messick & Fritzky, 1963). Stanovich and West (1998) suggest that such styles may take different forms. At a specific level they may refer to whether or not people utilise certain rules when solving problems, such as “think of alternative explanations”, or “think of a reason against your proposition”. At a
Decision-making competence
Decision-making competence is measured in a variety of ways. Sometimes the intention is to examine the quality of domain-specific decisions such as predicting the results of soccer matches (Cattell, Eber, & Tatsuoka, 1970) or making appropriate medical choices regarding the treatment of a medical condition (Hagger, Wood, Stiff, & Chatzisarantis, 2010). A second group of competence measures are concerned with the ability to perform normatively on particular aspects of the decision-making
Personality and decision-making competence
There is considerable evidence that personality is associated with human performance. For example, meta-analytic studies indicate that the Big Five traits, and particularly conscientiousness and emotional stability, are associated with performance at many different types of work (Barrick et al., 2002, Dudley et al., 2006, Salgado, 1997). Personality also appears to influence various aspects of decision-making. There is evidence that impulsiveness and anxiety predict message effectiveness in a
Participants
Participants were recruited from the general public via a marketing agency specialising in data collection through online surveys. The choice of the sample was considered appropriate as the research objective was to study decision-making competence in everyday life. Three hundred and fifty-five individuals took part, aged from 18 to 80 years (median = 49), 60.5% were females. Most participants were part of the working population (71.0%, with 9.1% unemployed and 19.9% retired) and were White
Results
Descriptive statistics are presented in Table 1. The satisficing and decision difficulty scales of Turner et al.’s (2012) maximization measure were found to have unsatisfactory reliability (see Table 1). These were excluded from subsequent analyses. Correlations between all measures further analysed are shown in Table 2.
To examine whether cognitive styles (Cognitive Style Indicator; Rational Experience Inventory), explained variation in decision-making competence over and above decision-making
Discussion
Collectively the decision-making styles predicted decision-making competence quite well, explaining 18% of the variance in the DOI scores. Supporting Hypothesis 1, The general cognitive style variables of planning, creating, and knowing (Cools & Van den Broeck, 2007), and need for cognition and faith in intuition from the Rational Experiential Inventory (Pacini & Epstein, 1999), provided no statistically significant incremental validity over decision-making styles in the prediction of
References (40)
- et al.
Correlations of extraversion, impulsivity and sociability with sensation seeking and MBTI-introversion
Personality and Individual Differences
(1987) - et al.
Individual differences in need for cognition and decision-making competence among leaders
Personality and Individual Differences
(2011) - et al.
Personality traits associated with decision-making deficits
Personality and Individual Differences
(2007) - et al.
The latent structure of decision styles
Personality and Individual Differences
(2013) - et al.
Individual differences in decision-making
Personality and Individual Differences
(2005) - et al.
Impulsivity is associated with behavioral decision-making deficits
Psychiatry Research
(2008) - et al.
The International Personality Item Pool and the future of public-domain personality measures
Journal of Research in Personality
(2006) - et al.
Goldberg’s ‘IPIP’ Big-Five factor markers: Internal consistency and concurrent validation in Scotland
Personality and Individual Differences
(2005) Individual differences in fast-and-frugal decision making: Neuroticism and the recognition heuristic
Journal of Research in Personality
(2008)- et al.
Can response order bias evaluations?
Evaluation and Program Planning
(1990)
The role of personality in positively and negatively framed risky health decisions
Personality and Individual Differences
Dispositional anxiety and risk-avoidant decision-making
Personality and Individual Differences
Impulsivity in decision-making: An event-related potential investigation
Personality and Individual Differences
Role of Cognitive Styles in Business and Management: Reviewing 40 years of research
International Journal of Management Reviews
Personality and job performance: Test of the mediating effects of motivation among sales representatives
Journal of Applied Psychology
Individual differences and reasoning: A study on personality traits
British Journal of Psychology
Individual differences in adult decision-making competence
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Handbook for the sixteen personality factor questionnaire (16PF)
Development and validation of the Cognitive Style Indicator
Journal of Psychology
Individual decision-making and creativity
Cited by (86)
Influence of Individual Personality Traits of the Reader on Visual Assessment of Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction: Another Reason to Abandon Visual Assessment
2023, Journal of the American Society of EchocardiographyCEO overconfidence: A dual-detriment to investment-price sensitivity via market negligence and reduced informed trading
2023, Journal of Contemporary Accounting and EconomicsExploring the role of conscientiousness on visualization-supported decision-making
2023, Computers and Graphics (Pergamon)Intellectualism and analytical thinking: Are they related?
2022, Personality and Individual DifferencesThe status quo bias and its individual differences from a price management perspective
2022, Journal of Retailing and Consumer ServicesCitation Excerpt :As such, we adopt a micro-foundational perspective on the price management practice in this paper. The decision-maker comprises many different facets, each of which has an impact on the choices that are made and how they are made (Dewberry et al., 2013). Individual differences influence individuals' array of outcomes.
A lifetime of challenges: Real-life decision outcomes in early- and late-onset suicide attempters
2021, Journal of Affective Disorders Reports