20 Understanding Rational Decision Making
under consideration are 2015 13” Apple MacBook Air , 1.6GHz , 4GB SDRAM , 256GB Flash
Storage , Very Good , and $1,200. Sometimes the slots in an expert’s schema may already be fi lled
with default values (e.g., an expert’s default value for the retail price of the recommended
laptop in Figure 1.1 might be more than $1,000 ). But when experts start to instantiate their sche-
mata, they usually replace those default values with the actual values of the alternatives under
consideration.^105
The audience’s long-term memory is largely composed of schemata,^106 and much ofwhat we call expertise is schema driven. Expertise has been shown to be schema driven
in accounting,^107 financial analysis,^108 physics,^109 algebra ,^110 and medicine.^111 Expertise in
making parole decisions has been shown to be schema driven.^112 Wall Street analysts’ ability
to value firms and their acquisitions has been shown to depend on the analysts’ schemata.^113
In addition, the ability of business leaders and military officers to effectively lead their
subordinates has been shown to depend on their possessing complex and highly organized
schemata.^114 Similarly, the ability of cyber security analysts to effectively respond to cyber
attacks has been shown to depend on the analysts possessing robust incident handling and
cyber attack schemata.^115
The knowledge experienced consumers have about evaluating brands in a product class mayalso be thought of as schemata.^116 A consumer’s schemata for particular brands “largely determine
how the consumer reacts to advertising.”^117 Expert supervisors evaluate employee performance
using highly differentiated performance schemata that include performance criteria relevant to
specifi c jobs.^118 Because more experienced supervisors use more differentiated performance sche-
mata, they are able to provide more accurate ratings of their employees than their less-experienced
colleagues.^119
Many cognitive scientists agree that schemata are critical to decision making and high-levelthought. As the authors of a study of 713 product decisions conclude, “Decisions refl ect the
schemata employed in the decision-making process.”^120 Others argue that “a rich collection of
schemata constitutes an essential engine for high-level thinking in a domain.”^121 John R. Ander-
son, a leader in the fi eld of cognitive science, identifi es both reasoning and decision making as
“schema-based inference processes” that can approach the level of normative decision-making
principles if people “lock into the right schema.”^122 Moreover, he has since confi rmed this
view.^123
Perhaps in part because of the similarities between internal schemata and decision matrices,consumers spontaneously create alternative-by-attribute decision matrices when deciding among
different products and sources of credit.^124 Figure 1.1 shows the decision matrix one consumer cre-
ated while comparing fi ve different brands (labeled A through E) of do-it-yourself storage buildings
along six different decision criteria (Warranty, Size, Materials, Assembly, Ease, and Price).^125 Not
only did the consumer rearrange randomly presented information, she also made calculations to
fi ll empty schema slots, re-scaled slot values that were hard to compare, and ranked each of the six
attributes or decision criteria.
Decision Schemata as Guides to the Decision-Making Process
Schemata not only store important information in an organized way, they also guide the pro-
cess of decision making. Ultimately, schemata guide behavior.^126 Social psychologists Susan Fiske
and Shelley Taylor explain just how fundamental schemata are: “Once cued, schemas affect how
quickly we perceive, what we notice, how we interpret what we notice, and what we perceive
as similar and different.”^127 Schemata direct attention during information search, specify which