To organise or not to organise? Understanding search strategy preferences using Lego building blocks

Humans routinely organise or reconfigure the environment as part of their everyday activities, such as placing a set of keys in a designated location to reduce the need to remember its location. This type of spatial organisation is widely thought to reduce both the physical and cognitive demands of a task to allow individuals to perform tasks more easily. Although spatial organisation can be a useful strategy when searching for items in the environment, individuals do not always choose to utilise these organisational strategies when carrying out everyday tasks. Across three experiments, we examined individuals’ preference for spatial organisation in the context of a real-world search task, and the degree to which individuals engaged in time- and effort-based cost–benefit analysis to inform whether to choose between an organisation-based or non-organisation-based search strategy. We found that individuals’ strategy preferences could be explained by the perceived task time associated with each strategy, but not perceived task effort. However, even statistically controlling for relative perceived task time or reported effort, participants showed a strong systematic preference against organisation prior to engaging in the task, and, post-task, a strong preference towards organisation. Implications for understanding individuals’ use of spatial organisation are discussed.