People often assume that the decisions people make under constraints like time reveal their true nature: whether they are good or bad, moral or immoral, altruistic or selfish. My research instead suggests that what time constraints do is force people to make faster but less informed decisions. People then cope with this by prioritizing what information to look for first, which often reflect the contexts they find themselves in. So, rather than reveal people’s dispositions, the kinds of decisions people make under constraints reveal instead the structural incentives in their social environment.

• Teoh, Y. Y., & Hutcherson, C. A. (2022). The Games We Play: Prosocial Choices Under Time Pressure Reflect Context-Sensitive Information Priorities. Psychological Science, 33(9), 1541–1556.

• Teoh, Y. Y., Yao, Z., Cunningham, W. A., & Hutcherson, C. A. (2020). Attentional priorities drive effects of time pressure on altruistic choice. Nature communications, 11(1), 1-13.

Similarly, time constraints change the way people search for information when making choices between a sure option and a risky option. My research shows that people under time constraints become more susceptible to the way sure-options are framed (e.g. whether you keep $15 out of $60, or you lose $45 out of $60). People’s attention is more often drawn towards sure-options framed as gains (i.e. keeping) whereas they tend to be drawn towards risky options when the sure alternative is framed as a loss (i.e. losing), leading them to be more risk-averse in the former and risk-seeking in the latter.

• Roberts, I. D., Teoh, Y. Y., & Hutcherson, C. A. (2022). Time to Pay Attention? Information Search Explains Amplified Framing Effects Under Time Pressure. Psychological Science, 33(1), 90-104.