Individual Differences in Faith in Intuition Are Associated With Pre-Decisional Information Distortion

Individual Differences in Faith in Intuition Are Associated With Pre-Decisional Information Distortion

Abstract: Individuals differ in the extent to which they have faith in their intuition during decision-making (Epstein et al., 1996). Some people tend to put more trust in their intuitive ability than others. As such, they typically process information in a more experiential, automatic form (Pacini & Epstein, 1999). Past research on contextual factors that encourage reliance on intuition in decision-making has argued that relying on one’s initial gut feeling (vs. deliberation) can increase decision and prediction quality, satisfaction, and confidence (Darke et al., 2006; Greifeneder et al., 2011; Mikels et al., 2011; Pham et al., 2012). Yet, much less is known about the role of chronic individual differences in faith in intuition in the decision-making and preference-formation process. We show that individuals who have more dispositional faith in their intuition are more likely to distort incoming, diagnostically neutral information in favor of an emerging preference (Russo et al., 1996)—potentially leading to suboptimal decision-making (Russo et al., 2006).

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