Investigating Cognitive Foundations of Inertia in Decision-Making : Discussion Paper HeiKaMaxY 2018

Understanding the cognitive foundations of decision inertia plays a relevant role in modelling choice behaviour and designing decision support systems. The aim of this study was to investigate mixed findings regarding the influence of framing on the tendency to rely on previous decisions (decision inertia). Furthermore, we hypothesized that inter-individual differences in cognitive reflection, and in abilities of correctly processing Bayesian Information could be further relevant drivers of the inertia phenomenon. A dual-choice belief-updating task was conducted in the laboratory to investigate our hypotheses. Our results showed a significant association of faith in intuition, but no influence of framing or skills in Bayesian Updating. This indicates that existing explanations of decision inertia are not as robust as assumed.