Research in social interaction areas shows that decision makers’ decision time information affects other people’s evaluation of their decision. In the current research, six experiments demonstrate that decision makers’ confidence in the correctness of their decisions is affected by their perception of their own decision time (PDT) and that the effect is moderated by the type of processing mode that they rely on and the kind of decision conflict involved. When decision makers rely on a non-deliberative-processing mode, long PDT information improves decision confidence when the decision is easy or when it is difficult due to approach-approach conflict. When a decision is easy, short PDT also leads to greater decision confidence. The last four studies show that when decision makers...[ Read more ]

Research in social interaction areas shows that decision makers’ decision time information affects other people’s evaluation of their decision. In the current research, six experiments demonstrate that decision makers’ confidence in the correctness of their decisions is affected by their perception of their own decision time (PDT) and that the effect is moderated by the type of processing mode that they rely on and the kind of decision conflict involved. When decision makers rely on a non-deliberative-processing mode, long PDT information improves decision confidence when the decision is easy or when it is difficult due to approach-approach conflict. When a decision is easy, short PDT also leads to greater decision confidence. The last four studies show that when decision makers rely on a deliberative-processing mode, long PDT leads to lower decision confidence when the decision is easy, but it leads to greater decision confidence when the decision is difficult due to approach-approach conflict. We also show that the negative LongPDT effect in easy decisions is mediated by the decision maker’s subjective belief about the time actually required to make the decision.