Choosing versus rejecting: Why some options are both better and worse than others

Abstract

A previously unobserved pattern of choice behavior is predicted and corroborated. In line with the principle of compatibility, according to which the weighting of inputs is enhanced by their compatibility with output, the positive and negative dimensions of options (their pros and cons) are expected to loom larger when one is choosing and when one is rejecting, respectively. Subjects are presented with pairs of options, one of which-the enriched option-has more positive as well as more negative dimensions than does the other, impoverished, option. Because positive dimensions are weighted more heavily in choosing than in rejecting, and negative dimensions are weighted more heavily in rejecting than in choosing, the enriched option tends to be chosen and rejected relatively more often than the impoverished option. These findings are extended to nonbinary decision problems, and their implications for the rational theory of choice and for everyday decisions are discussed.Decision theory is concerned with the behavior of people who are faced with the problem of choosing among options. Choices are commonly assumed to reflect underlying preferences, which are expected to satisfy a number of basic conditions. Most importantly, the classical theory of preference assumes that each individual has a well-defined preference order (or a utility function) over any set of options. Each option has some personal value, or utility, for the decision maker, a well-established position in his/her preference ordering: If the person prefers option X over option Y, he/she should not also prefer option Y over option X (von Neumann & Morgenstern, 1947). In addition, if an individual has clear and stable preferences, these should be invariant across normatively equivalent methods of assessing preference and across logically equivalent ways of describing the options.Recent studies of decision making indicate that the foregoing assumptions do not always hold, because people tend not to have well-defined values and preferences. Making decisions is often hard, because we do not know how to trade off one attribute (e.g., salary) against another (e.g., leisure), how to predict the pleasure or pain of future consequences, or, for that matter, what exactly matters to us most (Goldstein, 1990;Kahneman & Snell, 1990;March, 1978;Slovic, Fischhoff, & Lichtenstein, 1982). Hence, we often arrive at a decision problem not with well-established and clearly ranked preferences, but rather with the need to determine our preferences as a result of having to decide. Preferences, it turns out, are

Subjective patterns of randomness and choice: Some consequences of collective responses.

“…A certain subset of locations seems to be favored and to attract people independently of the two (opposing) instructions. This finding is reminiscent (despite differences in the interpretation) of Shafir's (1993) finding that "some options are both better and worse than others. "…”

Known Unknowns in Judgment and Choice

“…Past research shows that consumers tend to better encode information that is consistent with processing goals at the time of exposure (Bettman 1979;Keller 1987), which could bias consumers to remember more positive or negative information based on these goals. For example, when a consumers is choosing a product they may focus disproportionally on positive features whereas when a consumer is rejecting a product they may focus on negative features (Shafir 1993;Shafir, Simonson, and Tversky 1993;Shen and Wyer 2008). Consumers in good vs. bad moods may recall more positive vs. negative product features (Matt, Vázquez, and Campbell 1992) or consumers with a promotion vs. prevention regulatory focus may encode more positive vs. negative features, respectively (Higgins 1998;Lockwood, Jordan, and Kunda 2002;Wang and Lee 2006;Werth and Foerster 2007).…”

Organizational and Situational Influences on Adjudicative Decisions

“…When an individual has a preliminary intent, or desired end-state, for a judgment, he or she is likely to bias information processing in favor of that intent (Russo, Medvec, & Meloy, 1996;Shafir, 1993;Shafir & Adjudicative Decision-Making 6 Tversky, 1992). The decision-maker is likely to frame the problem (the case) in terms of organizational norms (Tversky & Kahneman, 1988).…”