Born to optimize? Investigating the impact of personality on decision making under uncertainty: An experimental study on the newsvendor game

Individuals frequently make suboptimal judgments in inventory and supply chain decisions. In the newsvendor problem, they often exhibit a “pull-to-center” bias, placing orders below the optimal level yet above the average demand for high-margin items, and vice versa for low-margin items. This paper examines whether impulsivity-related personality traits help explain this pull-to-center effect and whether the bias can be reduced. Across two studies, less impulsive individuals, those with higher premeditation scores, tend to order closer to the optimal quantity. Study 1 shows that this advantage is more pronounced under indirect decision support but diminishes when participants receive direct decision support. Study 2 replicates the association between higher premeditation and lower order bias in a classical setting with normal demand and no decision support, confirming that the effect generalizes beyond the conditions of Study 1. An episodic future thinking (EFT) intervention in Study 2 attenuates the premeditation advantage, closing the gap under the low-margin condition while only partially narrowing it under the high-margin condition. The two studies show that premeditation shapes decision making under uncertainty, and that this effect can be attenuated by adjusting the form of decision support or by a brief cognitive intervention. These findings can inform how training and AI-assisted decision support are designed for decisions under uncertainty.