4 research outputs found
Accumulation is late and brief in preferential choice
Preferential choices are often explained using models within the evidence accumulation framework: value drives the drift rate at which evidence is accumulated until a threshold is reached and an option is chosen. Although rarely stated explicitly, almost all such models assume that decision makers have knowledge at the onset of the choice of all available attributes and options. In reality however, choice information is viewed piece-by-piece, and is often not completely acquired until late in the choice, if at all. Across four eye-tracking experiments, we show that whether the information was acquired early or late is irrelevant in predicting choice: all that matters is whether or not it was acquired at all. Models with potential alternative assumptions were posited and tested, such as 1) accumulation of instantaneously available information or 2) running estimates as information is acquired. These provided poor fits to the data. We are forced to conclude that participants either are clairvoyant, accumulating using information before they have looked at it, or delay accumulating evidence until very late in the choice, so late that the majority of choice time is not time in which evidence is accumulated. Thus, although the evidence accumulation framework may still be useful in measurement models, it cannot account for the details of the processes involved in decision making
Accumulation is late and brief in preferential choice
Preferential choices are often explained using models within the evidence accumulation framework: value drives the drift rate at which evidence is accumulated until a threshold is reached and an option is chosen. Although rarely stated explicitly, almost all such models assume that decision makers have knowledge at the onset of the choice of all available attributes and options. In reality however, choice information is viewed piece-by-piece, and is often not completely acquired until late in the choice, if at all. Across four eye-tracking experiments, we show that whether the information was acquired early or late is irrelevant in predicting choice: all that matters is whether or not it was acquired at all. Models with potential alternative assumptions were posited and tested, such as 1) accumulation of instantaneously available information or 2) running estimates as information is acquired. These provided poor fits to the data. We are forced to conclude that participants either are clairvoyant, accumulating using information before they have looked at it, or delay accumulating evidence until very late in the choice, so late that the majority of choice time is not time in which evidence is accumulated. Thus, although the evidence accumulation framework may still be useful in measurement models, it cannot account for the details of the processes involved in decision making
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Essays on Fairness, Cooperation, and Coordination
The primary aim of this dissertation is to identify channels through which economic
agents use social preferences such as proclivities towards fairness and inequality to
make choices in one-shot and repeated game environments. I am particularly interested
in economic situations of strategic interaction that support multiple equilibria.
When faced with such situations, economic agents often coordinate on a set of salient
outcomes that are smaller than the set of all possible equilibrium outcomes. There is a
lack of broad consensus on what makes certain payoff outcomes salient in the minds of
agents, while others are ignored. The human decision making involved in this equilibrium
selection process interests me, because a better understanding of this mechanism
can help us make sharper predictions about the plausible outcomes we should expect
to see. I believe models that incorporate social preferences, learning, and bounded
rationality are likely to make better predictions in these scenarios than models that
assume economic agents are infinitely rational.
To examine the questions of how economic agents go about the equilibrium selection
process, I use a combination of theory, computation, and laboratory experiments.
Each of these three approaches has unique benefits, and complements each other. 1)
Economic theory allows us to focus on a specific problem and prove general theorems
that hold in all situations that the assumptions allow. Specifically, I am interested in
theoretical models that allow for a combination of personal and social preferences for
economic agents that weight notions of efficiency, selfishness, and fairness in personal
and joint payoff outcomes when undertaking the equilibrium selection process. 2)
Computation allows us to run simulations of models that may not have closed-form
solutions, or ones that are difficult to grasp analytically. 3) Experiments allow us to
test whether outcomes that agents arrive at after undergoing the equilibrium selection
process are context dependent, and change based on the nature of the information
available to them. They help examine human behavior in a controlled environment,
allowing us to focus on the specific aspect of the decision making process in which
we are interested. The combination of theory, computation, and experiments helps
us look into the black box of the decision making of economic agents undertaking the
equilibrium selection process