To investigate the effects of if-then planning on decision making, we an-alyzed responses to the ultimatum offers. We observed that participants in the reflective condition were more likely to accept unfair offers than those in the intuitive condition. Interestingly, this effect was further qualified by an interaction effect of condition and SVO, indicating that the effect of adopting an intuitive versus a reflective mode of processing was larger for higher (i.e., more prosocial) SVO scores. Specifically, prosocial individuals accepted more unfair offers in a reflective than an intuitive mode of processing, whereas self-ish individuals accepted rather high shares of unfair offers irrespective of how they processed information.
Conclusion
Research Paper III once more demonstrates that people can strategically regulate how they process information. Participants in the present study planned to adopt a certain mode of processing, and the response time anal-ysis indicates that successfully acted on these plans. This is an intriguing generalization of the first two research papers, as people directly planned to engage in a processing mode (rather than regulating information process-ing by plannprocess-ing a specific response), and the focus was on intuitive versus reflective rather than efficient information processing.
Importantly, the third research paper sheds light on the consequences of self-regulated information processing. It demonstrates that strategically engaging in intuitive versus reflective information processing has important consequences for decisions, in the present case affecting the decision to accept or reject unfair ultimatum offers. Moreover, it reveals social value orientation as a moderator of these effects: for prosocials, but not for selfish people, the decision to accept or reject unfair offers hinged on whether they planned to engage in an intuitive or a reflective mode of processing.
General Discussion
The three research papers reported in the present thesis demonstrate that people can strategically self-regulate how they process information using if-then plans, and it presents an example for how doing so affects preference-based decision making. In what follows, I will discuss implications of these findings for research on if-then planning as well as for research on information processing and decision making, and I will sketch potential routes of future research.
14 Synopsis
Implications
The present research has several implications, many of them already detailed in the research papers. In this section I will start by highlighting the implica-tions for research on the self-regulation strategy of if-then planning and then proceed to implications for research on information processing and decision making.
Implication for research on if-then planning
The findings reported in the current thesis corroborate and advance prior research on if-then planning first by demonstrating and scrutinizing the ef-fects of making if-then plans on information processing. Research Papers I and II provide initial evidence showing that people can strategically regulate various aspects of how efficiently they process information with if-then plans, explaining the various beneficial effects of if-then planning on goal attainment (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006) even when these goals involve the regulation of automatic cognitive processes. Beyond this observation, the second research paper also reveals that task complexity might determine which aspect of en-hanced information processing is a key determinant of if-then planning effects (e.g., perceptual processing and/or attentional selectivity). Taken together, the current thesis provides novel and intriguing insights into the processes underlying if-then planning.
As second implication pertains to recent efforts to integrate the concept of if-then planning into an interdisciplinary framework (e.g., physiological approaches; Wieber et al., 2015). As an illustration, consider the second research paper. It rests on a sequential sampling approach to information processing, which is an extensively used approach in many fields of experi-mental psychology, such as cognitive psychology and neuroscience (e.g., Gold
& Shadlen, 2007; Heekeren, Marrett, & Ungerleider, 2008; Ratcliff, Gomez, &
McKoon, 2004; P. L. Smith & Ratcliff, 2004; Voss, Nagler, & Lerche, 2013).
The study relates the effects of making if-then plans to more efficient pro-cessing, as indicated by an increased drift rate. As a consequence, if-then planning effects can be described in terms of sequential sampling models, and thus be grasped by audiences that are familiar with the concepts under-lying these models. This facilitates the development of an interdisciplinary perspective on if-then planning as a self-regulation strategy.
Finally, past research on if-then planning has limited itself to studying situations in which a specific instrumental goal-directed response could be anticipated and then be specified in the then-part of a respective if-then plan (such as those used in the first two research papers). Research Paper III
ex-General Discussion 15 pands this research, demonstrating that if-then planning can as well be used to link situations to intuitive versus reflective modes of information process-ing in general. Similar to responses commonly used in if-then plans, the planned mode of processing was initiated only when the specified situation was encountered, indicating a high degree of specificity. Thus, if-then plan-ning can be used to encourage intuitive versus reflective modes of processing in an opportune situation, thereby liberating individuals from the necessity of selecting specific instrumental responses in advance.
Implications for research on information processing and decision making.
Besides its implications for research on if-then planning, the research reported in the present thesis also yields novel and intriguing insights for research on information processing and decision making. First, it demonstrates that peo-ple can exert strategic control over how they efficiently process information.
To illustrate the impact of this finding, it is important to notice that the efficiency of information processing is commonly considered to reach beyond peoples’ control (e.g., Heitz, 2014; Luce, 1986). Accordingly, the drift rate pa-rameter in sequential sampling models—representing processing efficiency—
has so far usually been treated as an exogenous variable which primarily captures task difficulty (e.g., Ratcliff, 2002; Ratcliff et al., 2004) or stable individual differences (e.g., working memory and intelligence; Schmiedek, Oberauer, Wilhelm, S¨uss, & Wittmann, 2007; van Ravenzwaaij, Brown, &
Wagenmakers, 2011). Our research suggests that this assumption needs to be revised. Analogously, research on dual-process models has not yet con-sidered the possibility that people may strategically switch between intuitive and reflective modes of processing when making decisions, and has rather focused on momentary fluctuations regarding which mode prevails (e.g., De Neys, 2014; Hofmann, Friese, & Strack, 2009). Consequently, the present thesis paves the way for understanding human information processing as a matter of strategic control.
Second, the present research introduces if-then planning as a general tool to study information processing and decision making. The effects of if-then planning on information processing were observed irrespective of whether we induced the plans via the task design (Research Paper I), instructed partici-pants to make plans for specific situations (Research Paper II), or augmented the plans with a mental contrasting strategy (Research Paper III). Moreover, the planned response could be either a specific behavior (e.g., pressing a but-ton) or a general mode of processing (e.g., relying on gut feelings); while the situation could be an external stimulus (e.g., the number 2) or a subjective
16 Synopsis state of affairs (e.g., acting hastily). As I have argued with my colleagues elsewhere (Martiny-Huenger, Bieleke, & Gollwitzer, in preparation), if-then planning exploits basic mechanisms of human action control and can thus flexibly be used as a self-regulation strategy. The consistent pattern of results across the studies presented in this theses further attests to the robustness and generalizability of if-then planning effects on information processing and decision making.