Assessing "economic value": symbolic-number mappings predict risky and riskless valuations

Diminishing marginal utility (DMU) is a basic tenet of economic and psychological models of judgment and choice, but its determinants are little understood. In the research reported here, we tested whether insensitivities in valuations of dollar amounts (e.g., $40, $100) may be due to inexact mappings of symbolic numbers (i.e., "40," "100") onto mental magnitudes. In three studies, we demonstrated that inexact mappings appear to guide valuation and mediate numeracy's relations with riskless valuations (Studies 1 and 1a) and risky choices (Study 2). The results highlight the fundamental notion that individuals' valuations of $100 depend critically on how individuals perceive and map the symbolic quantity "100." This notion has implications for conceptualizations of value, risk aversion, intertemporal choice, and dual-process theories of decision making. Normative implications are also briefly discussed.