Facing a large set of alternatives has previously been reported to lead to choice overload, including choice deferral. Recent studies, however, imply that choice deferral is more tightly associated with the difficulty in evaluating alternatives than with set size: when alternatives are difficult to evaluate, people often defer a choice. This implication is examined in the present study, using alternatives with probabilistic payoffs in 2 paradigms: the description paradigm—with full probability and payoff information provided at 1 time—and the sampling paradigm—with search revealing 1 payoff at a time and repeated search required to derive probabilities and payoffs. The results show that in both paradigms, choice deferral is less frequent when set size is large. Also, the difficulty in evaluating alternatives influences choice deferral in the description paradigm but not in the sampling paradigm: when a payoff from an alternative can take many possible values, a choice is more likely deferred in the description paradigm. In the sampling paradigm, in contrast, information search is often insufficient for people to recognize the difficulty in evaluating alternatives. These results point to a description-experience gap in choice deferral
