093053 (E12) An experimental test of a general class of utility models: Evidence for context dependency : Chechile R.A., Cooke A.D.J., Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Volume 14, Number 1, 1997, pp. 75–93
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 1997
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 93 KB
- Volume
- 20
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0167-6687
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✦ Synopsis
Three reasons for why people may evaluate utility in a rank-dependent fashion have been suggested: (a) rank-dependent weighting is a function of perceptual biases and thus not prescriptively defensible; (b) weights are (re)distributed by motivational processes that reflect stable personality characteristics of the decision maker;and (c) weights are (re)distributed as a function of the situation, allowing rank-dependent evaluation to be a rational response to an environment with asymmetric loss functions. By modifying a study by Wakker, Erev, and Weber (1994) we show that all three processes-that is, perceptual biases, individual predispositions in weighting, as well as rational adaptation to an asymmetric loss function-can be involved in rank-dependent weighting.