Information integration in multiple-cue judgments.

When people attempt to integrate multiple cues into a single judgment, does the cognitive load produced by the integration process lead to simplification of the cue-judgment relationships?Three experiments tested the hypothesis that the strain of integrating information is reduced by treating non-linear cues as though they were linearly related to the object being judged.The experiments differed with respect to task content, number of cues and f~nctional relations between cues and judgments.The results did not support the hypothesis.Scale values derived from single stimulus scales did not differ from those obtained with information integration procedures; there were no significant deviations from bilinearity when the_ cue values were c_'?_mpared across the t'.".'o scale types; .. This• finding was interpreted as support for the assumption in information integration theory that cue values are translated into judgment relevant subjective values before the integration process.