Better is worse, worse is better: Reexamination of violations of dominance in intertemporal choice
Journal Title: Judgment and Decision Making - Year 2017, Vol 12, Issue 3
Abstract
Recently, Scholten and Read (2014) found new violations of dominance in intertemporal choice. Although adding a small receipt before a delayed payment or adding a small delayed receipt after an immediate receipt makes the prospect objectively better, it decreases the preference for that prospect (better is worse). Conversely, although adding a small payment before a delayed receipt or adding a small delayed payment after an immediate payment makes the prospect objectively worse, it increases the preference for that prospect (worse is better). Scholten and Read explained these violations in terms of a preference for improvement. However, to produce violations such as these, we find that the temporal sequences need not be constructed as Scholten and Read suggested. In this study, adding a small receipt before a dated receipt (thus constructed as improving) or adding a receipt after a dated payment (thus constructed as improving) decreases preferences for those prospects. Conversely, adding a small payment after a dated receipt (thus constructed as deteriorating) or adding a small payment before a delayed payment (thus constructed as deteriorating) increases preferences for those prospects.
Authors and Affiliations
Cheng-Ming Jiang, Hong-Mei Sun, Long-Fei Zhu, Lei Zhao, Hong-Zhi Liu and Hong-Yue Sun
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP678292
- DOI -
- Views 160
- Downloads 0
Reversing the causal arrow: Incidence and properties of negative backward magical contagion in Americans
Backward magical contagion describes instances in which individuals (sources) express discomfort or pleasure when something connected to them (medium; e.g., hair, a diary) falls into the possession of a negatively- or po...
Do we de-bias ourselves?: The impact of repeated presentation on the bat-and-ball problem
The notorious bat-and-ball problem has long been used to demonstrate that people are easily biased by their intuitions. In this paper we test the robustness of biased responding by examining how it is affected by repeate...
Survey of time preference, delay discounting models
The paper surveys over twenty models of delay discounting (also known as temporal discounting, time preference, time discounting), that psychologists and economists have put forward to explain the way people actually tra...
Conflict of interest and the intrusion of bias
This paper explores the psychology of conflict of interest by investigating how conflicting interests affect both public statements and private judgments. The results suggest that judgments are easily influenced by affil...
Introduction to the special issue: Coherence and correspondence in judgment and decision making
In 2007, Kenneth Hammond published Beyond Rationality: The search for wisdom in a troubled time. In this book and in prior works, Hammond (1990; 1996) promotes the recognition and equal acceptance of two different classe...