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Better than expected: the influence of option expectations during decision-making
Our choices often arise from a consideration of options presented in a sequence (e.g. the products in a supermarket row). However, whether the precise sequential order of option presentation affects decision-making remains poorly understood. A recent model of choice proposes that, in a set of option...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6304046/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30963894 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.2472 |
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author | Rigoli, Francesco Dolan, Raymond |
author_facet | Rigoli, Francesco Dolan, Raymond |
author_sort | Rigoli, Francesco |
collection | PubMed |
description | Our choices often arise from a consideration of options presented in a sequence (e.g. the products in a supermarket row). However, whether the precise sequential order of option presentation affects decision-making remains poorly understood. A recent model of choice proposes that, in a set of options presented sequentially, those that are better than expected will be perceived as more valuable, even when options are objectively equivalent within the set. Inspired by this proposal, we devised a novel decision-making task where we manipulated the order of option presentation together with expectations about option value. Even when we compared trials that were exactly equivalent except for option order, we observed a striking preference for options that were better than expected. Our findings show that expectations about options affect which option will be favoured within a sequence, an influence which is manifested as a preference for better-than-expected options. The findings have potential practical implications, as for example they may help policymakers in devising nudge strategies that rely on ad hoc option orders. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6304046 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-63040462019-01-02 Better than expected: the influence of option expectations during decision-making Rigoli, Francesco Dolan, Raymond Proc Biol Sci Neuroscience and Cognition Our choices often arise from a consideration of options presented in a sequence (e.g. the products in a supermarket row). However, whether the precise sequential order of option presentation affects decision-making remains poorly understood. A recent model of choice proposes that, in a set of options presented sequentially, those that are better than expected will be perceived as more valuable, even when options are objectively equivalent within the set. Inspired by this proposal, we devised a novel decision-making task where we manipulated the order of option presentation together with expectations about option value. Even when we compared trials that were exactly equivalent except for option order, we observed a striking preference for options that were better than expected. Our findings show that expectations about options affect which option will be favoured within a sequence, an influence which is manifested as a preference for better-than-expected options. The findings have potential practical implications, as for example they may help policymakers in devising nudge strategies that rely on ad hoc option orders. The Royal Society 2018-12-19 2018-12-12 /pmc/articles/PMC6304046/ /pubmed/30963894 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.2472 Text en © 2018 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Neuroscience and Cognition Rigoli, Francesco Dolan, Raymond Better than expected: the influence of option expectations during decision-making |
title | Better than expected: the influence of option expectations during decision-making |
title_full | Better than expected: the influence of option expectations during decision-making |
title_fullStr | Better than expected: the influence of option expectations during decision-making |
title_full_unstemmed | Better than expected: the influence of option expectations during decision-making |
title_short | Better than expected: the influence of option expectations during decision-making |
title_sort | better than expected: the influence of option expectations during decision-making |
topic | Neuroscience and Cognition |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6304046/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30963894 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.2472 |
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