Simple Rules for Ordering Cues in One-Reason Decision Making
Anja Dieckmann, Peter M. Todd · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2012
Much of the success of simple lexicographic heuristics such as take-the-best comes from using an appropriate cue order, such as validity order. Validity ordering requires considerable computation, potentially undermining the simplicity of the decision mechanism. But ordering rules proposed for sequential search through data records, such as tallying, swapping, and move-to-front rules, can construct appropriate decision cue orders as well, shown here in simulations. In an experiment to test these rules, participants made cue-based inferences without any previous knowledge about the performance of these cues, looking up cues in any order before making each decision and then receiving outcome feedback. A combination of a tally rule with a swapping mechanism best predicted participants’ cue order learning. In this learning-while-doing setting, these rules produce adaptive cue orders that differ from validity but still perform well when used with lexicographic decision heuristics.