Christin Schulze, Ada Aka, Daniel M. Bartels, Stefan F. Bucher, Jake R. Embrey, Todd M. Gureckis, Gerald Häubl, Mark K. Ho, Ian Krajbich, Alexander K. Moore, Gabriele Oettingen, Joan D.K. Ongchoco, Ryan Oprea, Nicholas Reinholtz, Ben R. Newell, A timeline of cognitive costs in decision-making, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 29, Issue 9, 2025, Pages 827-839, 10.1016/j.tics.2025.04.004.
Recent research from economics, psychology, cognitive science, computer science, and marketing is increasingly interested in the idea that people face cognitive costs when making decisions. Reviewing and synthesizing this research, we develop a framework of cognitive costs that organizes concepts along a temporal dimension and maps out when costs occur in the decision-making process and how they impact decisions. Our unifying framework broadens the scope of research on cognitive costs to a wider timeline of cognitive processing. We identify implications and recommendations emerging from our framework for intervening on behavior to tackle some of the most pressing issues of our day, from improving health and saving decisions to mitigating the consequences of climate change.