Information distortion in the evaluation of a single option [An article from: Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes]

This digital document is a journal article from Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Extending previous work on biased predecisional processing, we investigate the distortion of information during the evaluation of a single option. A coherence-based account of the evaluation task suggests that individuals will form an initial assessment of favorability toward the option and then bias their evaluation of subsequent information to cohere with their initial disposition. Three experiments tested this hypothesis. Initial disposition was manipulated (Studies 1 and 3) or measured (Study 2), and attribute ratings were collected as indicators of information distortion. Results from all three experiments indicate that attribute evaluations were biased to favor initial dispositions. These findings provide evidence that information distortion is one cause of primacy effects in judgment and decision-making settings involving a single option.