Effect of Task Uncertainty on Preference to Trust an Intuitive Decision Maker

Intuition is increasingly considered as an effective decision maker’s strategyin modern business environment. But do people actually trust intuitive decision makersin low and high-uncertainty situations? Two studies were conducted to investigate if uncertainty related to task characteristics affects the preference to trust intuitive versus reflective decision makers. In addition, Study 2 examined if disaggregation of intuition into distinct types, holistic and affective, can affect this preference to trust. Both studies provided consistent support that in low-uncertainty situations, people tend to trust reflective decision makers more than intuitive thinkers. As for high-uncertainty situations, Study 1 showed that there is no clear tendency to trust a specific type of a decision maker, while Study 2 indicated that holistic intuitive decision makers are more preferred than reflective thinkers. Furthermore, affective intuitive decision makerswere the least trusted in both low and high-uncertainty situations. Therefore, our study underlined the role of situational factor, task uncertainty, on the preference to trust and provided justification for multidimensionality of intuition construct.