Dynamic reasoning and time pressure: Transition from analytical operations to experiential responses

Based upon the Decision Field Theory (Busemeyer and Townsend 1993), we tested a model of dynamic reasoning to predict the effect of time pressure on analytical and experiential processing during decision-making. Forty-six participants were required to make investment decisions under four levels of time pressure. In each decision, participants were presented with experiential cues which were either congruent or incongruent with the analytical information. The congruent/incongruent conditions allowed us to examine how many decisions were based upon the experiential versus the analytical information, and to see if this was affected by the varying degrees of time pressure. As expected, the overall accuracy was reduced with greater time pressure and accuracy was higher when the experiential and analytical cues were congruent than when they were incongruent. Of great interest was the data showing that under high time pressure participants used more experiential cues than at other time pressures. We suggest that the dynamic reasoning paradigm has some future potential for predicting the effects of experiential biases in general, and specifically under time pressure.