A General-Purpose IT Intervention to Improve Human Decision Making, Strengthen Passwords, and Reduce Receptivity to Misinformation
研究发现，系统响应延迟在特定时机（任务相关信息呈现后、决策前）可作为“心理减速带”，促使人们从直觉转向反思，提升决策准确性；但无内容延迟会因走神而降低表现。对设计高安全或复杂任务系统有指导意义。
Latency—the delay between a user’s action and a system’s response—is often viewed as a problem to be eliminated. Yet our research shows that latency is not always harmful and can even improve decision making under the right conditions. Across two sets of studies, we find that latency enhances decision accuracy when it occurs after task-relevant information has been presented but before a decision is made. In these cases, the pause functions as a “mental speed bump,” prompting users to shift from quick, intuitive judgments to slower, more reflective thinking. However, when latency occurs without relevant content, performance declines, likely because of mind wandering and disengagement. For practitioners, this means that latency can be deliberately integrated into system design to encourage deeper cognitive processing in high-stakes or complex tasks, such as financial decisions, medical diagnostics, or security-critical actions. For policymakers, the findings suggest a shift in focus: rather than universally minimizing latency, standards and best practices could account for situations in which strategic delays benefit user outcomes. By reframing latency as a design variable rather than a nuisance, organizations can leverage it to support more accurate, thoughtful decision making, improving performance in contexts in which getting the right answer matters most.