Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

When individuals are pressed to make decisions quickly, their accuracy tends to decline, which is termed as speed-accuracy trade-off. But does this phenomenon extend to perceptual rating? In other words, do rapid judgments result in more extreme outcomes? To address this question, the study analyzed a global dataset covering 11,481 adult participants' ratings of 120 targets across 45 countries. The hypothesis posited that the rating became more extreme if it took less time. The study firstly identified response time as a significant predictor in extremity of social judgments through a machine learning algorithm, XGBoost, with cultural variables emerging as the second most important predictor. Given the importance of response time, the study employed hierarchical general linear models to investigate whether faster decision-making correlates with more extreme ratings and how this effect varies across diverse cultural contexts. The findings revealed a significant global level effect, also showing considerable variance across eleven regions. This observed phenomenon is termed as the “speed-extremity trade-off,” and is strongest in the Middle East and weakest in East Southeast Asia and Scandinavia.