Behavioural social choice: a status report.

Area of Science:

• Decision Sciences
• Social Choice Theory
• Behavioral Economics

Background:

• Behavioral social choice parallels developments in behavioral decision theory, economics, finance, and game theory.
• Behavioral paradigms contrast rational actor models with empirical decision-making behavior.
• Standard assumptions in social choice theory are often violated by real-world data.

Purpose of the Study:

• To highlight how minor violations of standard assumptions drastically alter social choice theory predictions.
• To emphasize the empirical nature of preference distributions in electorates, often overlooked by social choice theory.
• To inform individual decision-making research about implicit social choice rules in data aggregation.

Main Methods:

• Comparative analysis of theoretical predictions versus empirical behavior.
• Examination of the impact of assumption violations on social choice models.
• Review of aggregation methods in laboratory experiments.

Main Results:

• Theoretical predictions in social choice theory are highly sensitive to violations of standard assumptions.
• Empirical data frequently contradict critical assumptions of traditional social choice models.
• Aggregation of individual choices in experiments implicitly uses social choice rules.

Conclusions:

• Preference distributions are an empirical question, necessitating a shift from purely theoretical approaches.
• Researchers aggregating behavioral data must be aware of potential aggregation paradoxes.
• Aggregation paradoxes may undermine conclusions in significant behavioral decision research.