INTUITION IN DECISION MAKING - POTENTIAL AND SHORTCOMINGS

Tuesday, October 26, 2010: 1:50 PM
Grand Ballroom East (Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel)
Tilmann Betsch, PhD, University of Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany
I claim that intuition is capable of quickly processing multiple pieces of information without noticeable cognitive effort. I advocate a component view stating that intuitive processes in judgment and decision making are responsible for information integration and preference formation. Analytic thinking mainly guides search, generation and change of information. I present empirical evidence corroborating my notion of intuition. Specifically, I show that integration of information and formation of preferences functions without cognitive control and is unconstrained by the amount of encoded information and cognitive capacity. I close with discussing conditions under which intuition will increase or decrease decision accuracy.