The highly contingent nature of decision behavior both poses problems (costs) and creates opportunities (benefits) for decision researchers. That decision processes (DPs) are not invariant across task environments complicates the search for a small set of underlying principles. Questions about the conditions under which different types of information and different DPs are likely to be used can yield such generalizations as (1) the effects of task complexity on decision-strategy use,(2) the importance of gain vs loss in both risky and riskless preference, and (3) the prevalence of the anchoring and adjustment process in judgment. The constructive and contingent nature of DPs has implications for integrating decision research with other areas of psychology and applications such as the practice of decision analysis, the design of information environments, and the measurement of values.(PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)