Satisficing

The notion of satisficing is consistent with cognitive theory articulated by Roger Tourangeau, Lance Rips, and Kenneth Rasinski that survey respondents must execute four stages of cognitive processing to answer survey questions optimally. Respondents must (1) interpret the intended meaning of the question, (2) retrieve relevant information from memory, (3) integrate the information into a summary judgment, and (4) map the judgment onto the response options offered. When respondents diligently perform each of these four steps, they are said to be optimizing. However, instead of seeking to optimize, respondents may choose to perform one or more of the steps in a cursory fashion, or they may skip one or more steps altogether. Borrowing Herbert Simon's terminology, Jon Krosnick has referred to this behavior as satisficing ...