Decision-Making Style (Head Vs. Heart)

What it measures

A multiple-item Likert-type scale designed to measure the relative roles played by affect and cognition in a particular decision a person has made.

Response format

7-point scale

Scale items

• My thoughts / my feelings
• My willpower / my desire
• My prudent self / my impulsive self
• The rational side of me / the emotional side of me
• My head / my heart.
• The nature of the decision can be specified in the blank. The phrase used by Shiv and Fedorikhin (1999) was "about which snack to choose."

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

Factor analytic procedures were used to support the scale's structural validity.

Citation

Novak, Thomas P. and Donna L. Hoffman (2009), “The Fit of Thinking Style and Situation: New Measures of Situation-Specific Experiential and Rational Cognition,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (1), 56-72.

Keywords