Decision-making models in the behavioral, cognitive, and neural sciences typically consist of forced-choice paradigms with two alternatives. While theoretically it is feasible to translate any decision situation to a sequence of binary choices, real-life decision-making is typically more complex and nonlinear, involving choices among multiple items, graded judgments, and deferments of decision-making. Here, we discuss how the complexity of real-life decision-making can be addressed using conventional decision-making models by focusing on the interactive dynamics between criteria settings and the collection of evidence. Decision-makers can engage in multi-stage, parallel decision-making by exploiting the space for deliberation, with non-binary readings of evidence available at any point in time. The interactive dynamics principally adhere to the speed-accuracy tradeoff, such that increasing the space for deliberation enables extended data collection. The setting of space for deliberation reflects a form of meta-decision-making that can, and should be, studied empirically as a value-based exercise that weighs the prior propensities, the economics of information seeking, and the potential outcomes. Importantly, the control of the space for deliberation raises a question of agency. Decision-makers may actively and explicitly set their own decision parameters, but these parameters may also be set by environmental pressures. Thus, decision-makers may be influenced—or nudged in a particular direction—by how decision problems are framed, with a sense of urgency or a binary definition of choice options. We argue that a proper understanding of these mechanisms has important practical implications toward the optimal usage of space for deliberation.

行为、认知和神经科学中的决策模型通常由具有两种选择的强制选择范式组成。虽然理论上将任何决策情况转化为一系列二元选择是可行的，但现实生活中的决策通常更加复杂和非线性，涉及多个项目之间的选择、分级判断和决策延迟。在这里，我们通过关注标准设置和证据收集之间的互动动态，讨论如何使用传统的决策模型来解决现实生活中决策的复杂性。决策者可以通过利用审议空间进行多阶段、并行的决策，在任何时间点都可以获得非二进制的证据读数。交互动力学主要遵循速度-准确性权衡，因此增加审议空间可以扩展数据收集。审议空间的设置反映了一种元决策形式，可以而且应该作为基于价值的练习进行实证研究，权衡先前的倾向、信息搜索的经济学和潜在结果。重要的是，对审议空间的控制引发了代理问题。决策者可以主动明确地设置自己的决策参数，但这些参数也可能受到环境压力的影响。因此，决策者可能会受到决策问题的构建方式、紧迫感或选择选项的二元定义的影响或向特定方向推动。