Abstract
This research investigated contextual effects on consumer cue-utilization policies in making judgments under uncertainty. Two studies suggested that the utilization of base and case information varied as a function of the numerical values of the cues and covaried with the changes in the perceived relevance of each cue. The second study showed that individual subjects employed different cue-utilization policies in problems that were formally identical but differed in surface detail. A third study experimentally manipulated two factors that influence perceived relevance and explored their effects on cue utilization. All three studies revealed evidence inconsistent with previous research on underutilization of base-rate information.