Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

How do people make transformative decisions (the outcomes of which are hard to imagine, and which might changeone’s self in lasting ways)? We investigate social psychological factors that contribute to making transformative decisionsin contrast to ordinary decisions (with easily imaginable outcomes). We show that transformative decisions are uniquelypredicted by a desire for self-improvement and forming new social bonds. However, contrary to our expectations, epistemiccuriosity did not play a role in making transformative decisions. In contrast, ordinary decisions are uniquely predicted bythe preferences of the community, and younger age. We identify important differences that point to separate cognitivemechanisms used to evaluate transformative decisions.