Abstract
This paper outlines the research imperative for a contemporary understanding of cognitive and emotional elements of information search and evaluation under conditions of digitally supported consumer decision-making (exogenous cognition – Smith et al., 2021) and without computational support (endogenous cognition). It also considers pathways to delegating information search or the final decision to AI (surrogate cognition). After outlining the basic conceptual structure it briefly describes two key stages of the research; a national representative survey of the UK population (n=500) and a neuroscience supported experimental stage (n=90). It offers some initial findings from the survey as well as a description of expected insights from the experimental stage.