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Most psychological studies on the balance between stability and flexibility in decision making restrict their experiments to simplistic scenarios. These restrictions likely affect the decision process, and it is unclear which findings can be transferred to more naturalistic decision contexts. Therefore, the present study used a scenario that is inspired by the problem structure found in a particular domain: Adapt/Exchange decisions in modular chemical plants. In this setting, we investigated two findings from the decision making literature: whether participants refrain from a thorough comparison of options and whether they perseverate on previous choices. Forty-eight participants made Adapt/Exchange decisions and subsequently implemented them in specific parameter settings. Between four blocks of trials with sequential trial orders, we varied sequence direction (i.e., whether the costs of Adapt gradually increased or decreased) and sequence type (i.e., whether gradual changes were only present in the option ratio or also in absolute costs). We analyzed the percentage of Exchange choices, option switches, decision times, and parameter settings. The results suggest that instead of comparing options, participants used a satisficing strategy, checking whether Adapt was good enough and only considering Exchange if it was not. The direction of sequence effects was opposite to the predicted choice perseveration: In sequences initially favoring Adapt, participants started exploring the Exchange option early on, while in sequences initially demanding Exchange, they preferred Adapt as soon as it became possible. The results raise questions about the application of psychological theories to complex decisions between qualitatively different options.

Goldwater and Gentner (2015) showed that the sensitivity for causal structures can be promoted with an intervention combining explication of causal models and guided structural alignment of situations from disparate fields with the same underlying causal model. We extended this intervention with inference questions and combined it with a subsequent complex problem-solving (CPS) task, in order to investigate whether enhanced sensitivity for causal structures results in better performance in CPS. This study (N = 108) compares the CPS performance indicators knowledge acquisition and knowledge application among three experimental groups (intervention, intervention extended with inference questions, control group) and reveals the following results: 1) The effectiveness of the intervention in increasing the sensitivity for causal structures was replicated. 2) Sensitivity for causal structures and CPS performance indicators were significantly positively correlated. 3) There is no direct effect of the intervention on CPS performance, but an indirect-only effect via enhanced sensitivity.