Parducci, Allen

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Allen Parducci

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Utility versus pleasure: the grand paradox
Allen Parducci*
University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA
*Correspondence: aparducc@ucla.edu
Consider the following experimental dem-
onstration: when undergraduate volunteers 
judged the pleasantness of winning small 
amounts of money (from 1 to 30 cents 
per trial), their successive ratings reflected 
the position of each winning in the fre-
quency distribution of their other winnings 
(Parducci, 1968).
Table 1 shows how the different distribu-
tions were skewed. Ratings of individual pay-
offs are not shown, for the present interest 
centers on the overall mean rating for each of 
the distributions. The overall mean rating on 
a 7-point scale was more than one category 
higher for the negatively skewed distribution 
(in which the higher winnings were more 
frequent), although the mean winning was 
14 cents for each distribution). More gener-
ally, negatively skewed distributions always 
yield higher overall mean judgments. This 
is entailed by my range–frequency theory of 
judgment and supported by experiments on 
various kinds of hedonic and psychophysical 
judgments (Parducci, 1995).
Range–FRequency TheoRy
The basic notion of the theory is that each 
dimensional judgment represents the place 
of what is being judged in a context of simi-
lar events that affect the judgment. This is 
represented as a compromise or weighted 
average:
J wR w Fic ic ic= + −( )1  
(1)
where J
ic
 represents the internal judgment 
(e.g., experienced pleasantness) of Stimulus 
i in Context c, R
ic
 is the proportion of the 
contextual range below i, F
ic
 is the cumula-
tive proportion of contextual representa-
tions below i in the same context, and w is 
the weighting constant, assumed here to be 
0.5, with J, R, F, and w all on 0-to-1 scales. 
From this, it follows algebraically that the 
mean of the judgments of all contextual val-
ues (winnings in this case) is proportional to 
the skewing of the contextual distribution.
When applied to this experimental dem-
onstration, the mean of all judgments (rat-
ings transformed linearly to a 0-to-1 scale) 
is predicted to be 0.58 for the negatively 
skewed distribution, 0.42 for the positively 
skewed distribution (both within 0.005 
of the empirically obtained overall mean 
judgments). This effect of the skewing of 
the contextual distribution has been dem-
onstrated for other hedonic dimensions, 
e.g., pleasantness of lemonades of varying 
sweetness, melodies of varying loudness, 
photographs of an actress simulating vary-
ing degrees of friendliness, and also for a 
variety of non-hedonic dimensions, e.g., 
size of squares, heaviness of lifted weights, 
largeness of abstract numerals. Applications 
to social planning and comparisons of life 
styles (e.g., Parducci, 1995, Chapters 12 
and 13) are more speculative because of 
the difficulty of controlling the contexts 
experimentally.
PleasuRe veRsus uTiliTy1
Returning to the judged pleasantness of 
winning different amounts of money, we 
should note that the total amount won 
was the same for both conditions of the 
demonstration experiment. Insofar as util-
ity is linear to monetary values within this 
limited range of winnings, there seems 
little to choose between the two distribu-
tions. But consider the predicted effect of 
increasing the total winnings in the 1–21 
condition by substituting 30 cents for one 
of the 21-cent trials: this extension of the 
upper endpoint of the context eliminates 
the skewing and thus reduces the mean 
judgment to 0.5 (i.e., to neutral, neither 
pleasant nor unpleasant). In this case, an 
increase in utility would have produced a 
decrease in pleasantness.
The simplest assumption would be 
that the effects of contextual skewing for 
hedonic judgments are absent for utility 
estimates. However, the lottery method for 
estimating utilities showed the usual skew-
ing effects (Zaidel, 1971), and manipulation 
of contextual ranges can reverse the choices 
(Mellers and Cooke, 1994). In the absence of 
extensive research on the effects of contex-
tual skewing upon choices, it seems intui-
tively likely that the effect would be much 
smaller for utilities.
Within any particular context, the 
order of pleasantness judgments must be 
the same as the order of utilities. It is when 
the context changes that these alternative 
measures yield profound differences. For 
example, in my computerized “Happiness 
Game” (Parducci, 1995, Chapter 8), players 
choose, on each trial, between different con-
texts (each context being the distribution of 
daily earnings of an imagined door-to-door 
salesman). The points earned by the player 
are proportional to the salesman’s pleasures, 
as measured by range–frequency predic-
tions from contextual skewing. Each context 
represents the salesman’s distribution of 
earnings in a different neighborhood, with 
the game rigged so that the distributions 
are skewed more positively for the more 
profitable neighborhoods. The longer this 
game is played, the more likely players are 
to choose the more positively skewed con-
texts – so that the points they win actually 
decrease with increased experience at play-
ing the game.
This kind of misapprehension seems 
characteristic of the profoundly sad para-
dox that maximizing utilities can some-
times minimize pleasures. We choose the 
job that pays more even when its likely 
hedonic context will be more positively 
skewed and thus yield less pleasure. A con-
temporary example is provided by the new 
PhDs, trained for research careers in aca-
demia, who flood onto Wall Street seeking 
jobs as investment bankers. If successful in 
this search, the hedonic contexts in which 
they experience pleasures and disappoint-
ments with their earnings may in many 
cases be positively skewed. The painful 
disappointments when they are earning 
less than their more successful colleagues 
will hardly be balanced by their occasion-
ally triumphant investments.
1Although pleasure and utility are often confused, 
Kahneman and Varey (1991) present a cogent discus-
sion of the conceptual differences.
www.frontiersin.org November 2011 | Volume 2 | Article 296 | 1
OpiniOn Article
published: 15 November 2011
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00296
Roemer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 
127–163.
Mellers, B. A., and Cooke, A. D. J. (1994). Tradeoffs depend 
on attribute range. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. 
Perform. 20, 1055–1067.
Parducci, A. (1968). The relativism of absolute judgment. 
Sci. Am. 219, 84–90.
Parducci, A. (1995). Happiness, Pleasure, and Judgment: 
The Contextual Theory and its Applications. Mahwah, 
NJ: Erlbaum.
Zaidel, D. (1971). A Judgmental Approach to Decision 
Analysis. Dissertation abstracts international, 31, 10B 
(Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms No. 71-09,264).
Received: 09 August 2011; accepted: 11 October 2011; pub-
lished online: 15 November 2011.
Citation: Parducci A (2011) Utility versus pleasure: the 
grand paradox. Front. Psychology 2:296. doi: 10.3389/
fpsyg.2011.00296
This article was submitted to Frontiers in Cognition, a 
specialty of Frontiers in Psychology.
Copyright © 2011 Parducci. This is an open-access article sub-
ject to a non-exclusive license between the authors and Frontiers 
Media SA, which permits use, distribution and reproduction 
in other forums, provided the original authors and source are 
credited and other Frontiers conditions are complied with.
When distinguishing pleasure from util-
ity, a deeper but less resolvable difference lies 
in what is experienced. No experienced sense 
of preference is crucial to the assessment of 
utility: the choice itself indicates the prefer-
ence and hence the relative utility. However, 
it is difficult to assess the usual assumption 
that ratings of pleasantness indicate how 
much pleasure is actually experienced.
ReFeRences
Kahneman, D., and Varey, C. (1991). “Notes on 
the psychology of  utility,” in Interpersonal 
Comparisons of Well-Being, eds J. Elster and J. E. 
Real life is too complex to pin down 
contexts like this. However, we should at 
least consider the discouraging paradox 
that what we prefer may often afford less 
pleasure. One hears people complain that 
they are earning more but enjoying it less. 
By definition, we choose the alternative with 
higher utility. We may even tell ourselves 
that the consequences of our choice will 
average out to be more pleasant. But the 
contextual effects of skewing, unless they 
operate in the same way for utility as for 
pleasure, may often insure a preponderance 
of unpleasantness.
Table 1 | Frequency distribution of winnings.
Skewing  frequencies
Positive       2 2 2 1  1   1    1    1    1
Negative 1    1    1    1   1  1 2 2 2      
Winnings  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
Parducci Utility versus pleasure
Frontiers in Psychology | Cognition  November 2011 | Volume 2 | Article 296 | 2


Utility Versus Pleasure: The Grand Paradox

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Utility Versus Pleasure: The Grand Paradox

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