Do individuals adopt non-compensatory decision marking heuristics?.: Preliminary evidence from health-care

Utility theory assumes that when presented with alternative scenarios, individuals adopt a compensatory decision-making process. That is, they consider the levels of all the attributes, and, based on these levels, choose the scenario that yields the highest utility. However, very little work has examined this assumption. The psychology literature indicates that respondents often employ simplifying rules of thumb in decision-making, employing .fast and frugal heuristics.. This paper describes an attempt to explore this hypothesis, making use of readily available data. Particular attention is given to the .Take-The-Best. (TTB) heuristic, a boundedly rational decision rule in direct conflict with the economic axiom of continuity (compensatory decision making