Strategy compatibility, scale compatibility, and the prominence effect.

Abstract

Ss expressed preferences between pairs of decision alternatives characterized by 2 attributes, for example, price and quality. They were more likely to prefer the alternative that was superior with respect to the most important attribute when making choices and strength-of-preference judgments than when making matching and monetary-equivalent value judgments. Rating scale judgments fell between these two extremes. These findings extend the previously established choice versus matching prominence effect (Tversky, Sattath, & Slovic, 1988) to a more general qualitative versus quantitative task prominence effect. The data support the strategy-compatibility interpretation of the prominence effect. They also show that in riskless decision making, the generalized prominence effect is much stronger than simple scale-compatibility effects