### abstract ###
we propose that people weight fluent  or easy to process  information more heavily than disfluent information when making judgments
cue fluency was manipulated independent of objective cue validity in three studies  the findings from which support our hypothesis
in experiment  NUMBER   participants weighted a consumer review more heavily when it was written in a clear font than in a less clear font
in experiment  NUMBER   participants placed more weight on information when it was in focus than when it was blurry
in experiment  NUMBER   participants placed more weight on financial information from brokerage firms with easy to pronounce names than those with hard to pronounce names
these studies demonstrate that fluency affects cue weighting independent of objective cue validity
### introduction ###
when making judgments and decisions  people have numerous pieces of information i e   cues available to aid in the decision process
when deciding whether a patient has diabetes  a doctor might examine the patient's symptoms  family health history  or lab results
a stockbroker might consider companies' profit margins  quarterly projections  and recent activity
a judge or jurist might consider testimony from several witnesses and various other pieces of evidence
with so much information available  how do we decide which cues to weight most heavily
conventional models suggest that decision-makers should weight information based on objective cue validity
according to normative principles such as the weighted additive CITATION   additive difference CITATION   and weighted averaging models CITATION   people should consider all of the available cues that might inform a particular judgment
they should then differentially weight each cue based upon how successfully the cue predicts the outcome
however  this approach cannot perfectly explain how naive decision-makers  who are unaware of cue validities  might make judgments or decisions
nor can it explain how people's judgments often result from overweighting less valid information CITATION
given that learning cue validities can be time consuming and inaccurate CITATION   we propose that people might use a cue's fluency  or the ease with which it is processed  as an additional basis for weighting cues
a fluency-based account of cue weighting does not require decision-makers to know objective cue validities
instead  this explanation highlights a rather simple tendency  placing more weight on information that feels easy to process
