Methodology for investigating moderating relationships in cognitive biases within workplace decision-making

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Economics
• Organizational Psychology
• Decision Science

Background:

• Foundational decision-making theories emphasize cognitive biases.
• Limited understanding exists on how situational stressors affect these biases in organizations.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate how time pressure and task complexity moderate overconfidence, herding, and decision avoidance biases.
• Examine effects on critical stages of workplace decision-making.

Main Methods:

• Utilized data from 357 employees in Singapore.
• Employed multiple linear regression with HC3 robust standard errors to test interactions.

Main Results:

• Time pressure amplifies heuristic processing, strengthening overconfidence and herding during information evaluation.
• Task complexity increases cognitive load, exacerbating decision avoidance.

Conclusions:

• Cognitive biases are not uniform under workplace stress.
• Advances behavioral economics theory with an empirical framework for non-uniform decision-making under stress.