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Associations and the accumulation of preference
1Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. sudeepb@andrew.cmu.edu
Psychological Review
|April 24, 2013
Summary
This study introduces a new theory of preferential choice, explaining how attribute accessibility influences decisions. It models how choice set changes bias preferences, offering a unified view of context effects and reference-dependent behavior.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Decision Science
- Computational Neuroscience
Background:
- Understanding preferential choice is crucial in decision science.
- Existing models struggle to unify various choice-set-dependent behaviors.
- Reference-dependent anomalies often require complex explanations like loss aversion.
Purpose of the Study:
- To present a unified theory of multi-alternative, multi-attribute preferential choice.
- To explain how attribute accessibility influences preference formation.
- To model choice-set-dependent behaviors and reference-dependent anomalies.
Main Methods:
- Developed a preference accumulation decision process.
- Embedded the process within a feed-forward neural network.
- Formalized the impact of attribute-alternative associations on accessibility.
Main Results:
- The model explains context effects, alignability effects, and less is more effects.
- It generates gain-loss asymmetry without explicit loss aversion.
- The theory provides a unitary explanation for diverse choice behaviors.
Conclusions:
- Attribute accessibility is a key mechanism driving preferential choice.
- The proposed model offers a parsimonious explanation for complex decision phenomena.
- This framework advances understanding of reference-dependent choice and cognitive biases.
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