Elastic Justification: How Tempting but Task-Irrelevant Factors Influence Decisions

Abstract

This research is concerned with task-oriented decision situations where the decision maker faces two options, one superior on a factor directly related to the given task (called the A factor) and the other superior on a factor not central to the accomplishment of the task but tempting to the decision maker (called the B factor). According to the elastic justification notion, the decision maker may find it unjustifiable to choose the B-superior option over the A-superior option if there is no uncertainty in the A values of the two options, but will construct a justification and become more likely to choose the B-superior option if there is uncertainty. In support of this proposition, two experiments employing a simulated decision situation found that subjects were indeed more likely to choose the B-superior option when there was uncertainty in the A factor than when there was not, no matter whether the uncertainty resided in one of the options (Experiment 1) or in both options (Experiment 2).