The Cognitive Mechanisms of Value-Based Choice

Abstract

Nudging people towards healthier dietary choices is an important policy tool for treating and preventing obesity. However, most studies of nudging interventions fail to identify how cognitive processes change in response to alterations in choice architecture. Over four experiments, the analysis of choices, response times, eye movements, and Drift Diffusion Modeling revealed that a) health priming alters food attribute weighting, b) word options require more decision processing time than image options, and c) word-induced increases in response time are associated with greater stimulus encoding and accuracy demands. Additional experiments with independent samples largely reproduce the results of these investigations, providing high confidence in the replicated findings and achieving a gold standard in growing scientific replication norms.