Behavioral Indicator And Cross-domain Stability Of Maximization Tendency In Decision Making

During decision making process, people differ in the way of searching information.Maximizers typically exhaust all options before they optimize to find the best amongthem, while satisficers typically have a decision threshold, and decide when an optionexceeds that threshold. Maximization Scales have hence been developed to classifydecision makers in terms of their desire to maximize. But we found these scales differedin terms of the components of maximization tendency, and their sensitivity andspecificity not satisfactory. Behavioral experiments have been used to verify the scales,but few have put forward direct behavioral indicator to depict the two types.We used the amount of information a decision maker explored as the behavioralindicator of maximization, applied this indicator to successfully separate maximizersfrom satisficers in two experiments, and further discussed their differences in decisionprocess, result and satisfactory. In online purchase experiment, with the informationcaptured by the eye tracker, we found that maximizers spent more time, checked morepages, needed to surf more options before making a decision, and they preferredinformation that could be optimized. In contrast, satisficers relied on more subjectiveinformation, and were generally more satisfied with their choices than maximizers. Inanother sequential decision making experiment (the classical secretary problem), wefound the performances of maximizers were distributed bimodality, with either verygood outcome or very bad ones. In contrast, satisficers’ performances were ratheruniformly distributed. The difference in their performance was mainly due to highstandards held by maximizers, which could result in poor performance if they hadmissed the chance to choose a good enough candidate.We further explored maximization tendency under different kinds of decisionscenarios. We found people had individual difference in maximization tendency but itcould also be influenced by scenarios. In familiar tasks, when decision objectives weresingular, people generally tended to maximize. In familiar tasks when multiplerequirements were needed, people generally tended to display more satisficing tendency.However, in unfamiliar tasks, different decision styles emerged as people applied theirusual habits. But the individual differences to maximize were relatively reliable across different decision scenarios if they triggered similar demands, for example, people whomaximized to pursue high standards would probably exhibit the same tendency inanother task that had a different high standard.