Retrospective Self-Insight on the Factors Considered in Product Evaluations

The accuracy of young women’s retrospective reports about their use of mental cutoffs and about the number of factors used in evaluating birth control devices was tested. During these evaluations, the women’s mental time horizons were manipulated. The results suggest that many subjects had good insight about their cutoffs and about the complexity of their evaluation policy, and that cutoffs were more popular when subjects made hasty judgments and imagined that a final decision was imminent.