Information accessibility as a moderator of judgments: The role of content versus retrieval ease

We hypothesize that the accessibility of task-relevant knowledge determines whether judgments reflect the substance of the information that is brought to mind or the ease of generating and retrieving such information. Our findings indicate that when relevant knowledge is highly accessible or not at all accessible, judg-ments are based on the content of the information considered. Between these extremes in knowledge accessibility, judgments are based on the perceived ease with which information can be retrieved. This perceived ease is a function of both the number of reasons requested and the wording of the retrieval request. Agrowing number of investigations document the find-ing that the ease with which information comes to mind may serve as the basis for judgment (see Menon and Raghubir 2003; Schwarz 1998; Wänke, Bohner, and Jur-kowitsch 1997). Typical of these studies is the demonstration that research participants perceive a person or issue to have more of a characteristic the fewer the number of reasons or instances they are asked to think of in support of this in