CONSIDERING THE BEST CHOICE - EFFECTS OF THE SALIENCE AND ACCESSIBILITY OF ALTERNATIVES ON ATTITUDE-DECISION CONSISTENCY

The authors examined how the presence or absence of specified alternat ives influences which alternatives are considered and what choice is m ade. The accessibility of alternatives as a moderator of the correspon dence between attitudes and decisions also was investigated. In Study I,the accessibility of alternatives was an important determinant of ch oice when decision options were unspecified. The results of Studies 2 and 3 suggest that the potential for attitude-decision correspondence is high when (a) the decision context makes the alternatives salient o r (b) alternatives are easily accessed from memory.