When people respond to questionnaires, they may construct preferences using various sources of information available, even questions within the questionnaire. An experimental approach with a representative sample of the Swiss population was applied to investigate how stable attitudes towards biotechnology are and which criteria people use spontaneously to evaluate and categorise biotechnology applications providing as little information as possible. A free card-sorting task using risk as a criterion versus not imposing a criterion was applied. Data were analysed using multidimensional scaling (MDS) and were represented in a cognitive map. Results of our experimental manipulation suggest that people’s preferences for biotechnology applications are relatively stable. Different sorting instructions did not result in different cognitive maps. Results suggest, therefore, that participants’ evaluations are not strongly influenced by criteria used in a questionnaire. The descriptions of the applications seem to be more crucial.