How Indecisive Individuals Make Decisions: Indecisiveness, Decision Representations, and Decision Perspectives

It has been proposed that indecisive individuals take more considerations into account during decision making than more decisive individuals, that is, that indecisive individuals have larger ?decision representations.? In the present study, we tested this proposal. A total of 107 undergraduate participants were administered Frost and Show's Indecisiveness Scale prior to coming to the lab. In the lab, half of participants were instructed to take the perspective of giving advice to a friend about five hypothetical decision scenarios, while the other half were instructed to imagine that they themselves were in each scenario. Participants listed all considerations one should take into account in making each decision. ? ?Contrary to predictions, indecisiveness was not associated with generating a larger number of decision considerations for oneself or for a friend. We did find that indecisiveness was associated with taking longer to generate considerations for a friend than for oneself. However, we found no evidence that the size of the decision representation is related to indecisiveness-related choice difficulty.