Domain-specific preferences for intuition and deliberation in decision making

There is evidence for reliable individual differences in the tendency to use an intuitive (i.e., spontaneous, affect-based) and a deliberative (i.e., effortful, planned, and analytic) decision mode. Even though other individual characteristics in decision making (e.g., risk attitude) seem to be domain-specific, it is commonly assumed that a person's decision style is relatively stable across decision domains. Using a domain-specific extension of the Unified Scale to Assess Individual Differences in Intuition and Deliberation (USID), we found that preference for intuition and preference for deliberation showed considerable variability across domains (e.g., choosing a dress vs. choosing a doctor). In addition, domain-specific preferences for intuition were consistently correlated with self-rated expertise in making decisions in the respective domain. Our results indicate that a person's domain-general decision style does not necessarily generalize across decision domains, and that the domain-specificity of preferences for intuition seems to be driven partly by differences in expertise.