ABSTRACT

This chapter is concerned with a very different way, requiring much less engineering, of lying bare the anatomy of the search process, and in fact, giving search a leading role in behavioral experiments and theories of choice. It addresses two of the explanations for the description–experience gap in the context of two different roles that information search takes in decision from experience: search as a driver of experience and search as a signal of preference. The chapter focuses on the sampling paradigm of decisions from experience, as it has been the focus of most experimental work on the description–experience gap and its cognitive underpinnings. Barely any aspect of modern life—from technology, science, commerce, and literature to news media and the World Wide Web—is conceivable without symbolic descriptions. Indeed, in everyday life, people are rarely able to consult explicit descriptions of probabilities and outcomes.