Time Pressure Decreases Caution But Does Not Alter Subjective Valuation In Multi-Attribute Preferential Choice

Preferential choices for complex options -- such as multi-attribute consumer goods -- are increasingly understood as a cognitive process of sequentially sampling decision-relevant information to a threshold.This explanation has repeatedly been tested against preferential choice data, and also against choice and latency data in free-response conditions.However, it has rarely been assessed in the presence of time pressure; a status quo manipulation in perceptual decisions, where such sequential sampling models originated.Here, we used two standard manipulations of time pressure across two preferential choice contexts to investigate whether time-pressure induced changes in decision time affect subjective valuations of the features of preferential options.Across four experiments, we found that the time taken to make multi-attribute preferential choices varied as a function of time pressure, consistent with decades of research about the speed-accuracy tradeoff in perceptual decisions, yet had little impact on choices outcomes, which is inconsistent with the perceptual decision literature.Cognitive modelling analyses attributed these behavioural changes to differential information accumulation: conditions imposing faster decisions led to less cautious information processing; subjective valuations of preferential options were stable across time pressure contexts. Our findings reinforce the reach of the speed-accuracy tradeoff by generalising some, but not all, of the standard behavioural and theoretical results from lower-level perceptual decisions to higher-level multi-attribute preferential choices.Specifically, while people adaptively modulated their decision speed in response to task demands, they were unable or unwilling to use additional decision time to enhance the accuracy of their preferential choices.