Learning to Hesitate.

Descamps, A., Massoni, S. & Page, L. Learning to Hesitate. Exp Econ (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-021-09718-7

Commentary

This study investigates how people make choices when they are unsure of the value of their options.

In an experiment, we observed how people made decisions under two conditions: one in which they were asked to make a choice now, and the other in which they were asked to make a decision after obtaining a lot of information and taking time to decide.

The experiment showed that participants deviated from optimal information acquisition in a systematic way.

The experiment showed that participants deviated from the optimal acquisition of information in a systematic way, but only when there was too much or not enough information to acquire. We show that this decision pattern can be explained as a natural outgrowth of Fechner's cognitive error, and that over time, participants tend to learn to approximate the optimal strategy when information is relatively expensive. This story can be illustrated with an example of how a decision is made when buying a house versus a decision such as struggling with cheap stationery. People tend to make a quick decision without much bothering about the decision to buy a house, but they tend to bother about small purchases.

I'm sure you can think of some examples.