ABSTRACT

F eeling and thinking are two modes of information processing that inuence our decision making every day. Sometimes choosing one particular alter-native feels better than choosing something else, and sometimes an elaborated analysis reveals the advantages of one alternative over the other. Although each individual can engage in either strategy of making a decision-deciding based on feelings or on thoughts-there is evidence that not everybody is equally fond of both strategies. Instead, people have preferences regarding decision-making strategies: whereas some people generally prefer to make their decisions intuitively in an affect-based manner, others prefer deliberate, thoughtful decision making (C. Betsch, 2004). These chronic preferences inuence information processing during and after the decision-making process. In the next paragraph, I clarify what intuition and deliberation actually mean in this context. Thereafter, I outline the method for measuring individual differences in the preference for intuition and deliberation. In the main part of the chapter, I provide a broad overview of recent ndings on how the individual preference for intuition and deliberation impacts information processing, decisions, and postdecisional affect. In the nal section,

I summarize what such an individual differences approach can teach researchers about intuition.