Taking advice, using information and knowing what you are doing.

Subjective descriptions of judgment policies have been found to be imperfect. This could be because subjective weights are obtained on just a single occasion after all judgments have been completed. It could also be because people have tended to state their perception of an ideal way of responding rather than their perception of how they actually responded. Finally, it could be because they experience difficulty in relating variation in stimulus dimensions to variation in quite different response dimensions. In our task, people made sales forecasts on the basis of four pieces of information. They also stated the weight they placed on each one and the weight they should have placed on it. The means of weights stated on each trial were more appropriate than those stated at the end of all trials. Stated actual weights were very similar to stated ideal weights. Weights were more appropriate when forecasts and cues varied along the same dimension than when they did not. Thus, our results are consistent with the view that all three factors affect people's ability to provide subjective descriptions of their judgment policies.