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Balance between breadth and depth in human many-alternative decisions

Many everyday life decisions require allocating finite resources, such as attention or time, to examine multiple available options, like choosing a food supplier online. In cases like these, resources can be spread across many options (breadth) or focused on a few of them (depth). Whilst theoretical...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Vidal, Alice, Soto-Faraco, Salvador, Moreno-Bote, Rubén
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9578699/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36107472
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.76985
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author Vidal, Alice
Soto-Faraco, Salvador
Moreno-Bote, Rubén
author_facet Vidal, Alice
Soto-Faraco, Salvador
Moreno-Bote, Rubén
author_sort Vidal, Alice
collection PubMed
description Many everyday life decisions require allocating finite resources, such as attention or time, to examine multiple available options, like choosing a food supplier online. In cases like these, resources can be spread across many options (breadth) or focused on a few of them (depth). Whilst theoretical work has described how finite resources should be allocated to maximize utility in these problems, evidence about how humans balance breadth and depth is currently lacking. We introduce a novel experimental paradigm where humans make a many-alternative decision under finite resources. In an imaginary scenario, participants allocate a finite budget to sample amongst multiple apricot suppliers in order to estimate the quality of their fruits, and ultimately choose the best one. We found that at low budget capacity participants sample as many suppliers as possible, and thus prefer breadth, whereas at high capacities participants sample just a few chosen alternatives in depth, and intentionally ignore the rest. The number of alternatives sampled increases with capacity following a power law with an exponent close to 3/4. In richer environments, where good outcomes are more likely, humans further favour depth. Participants deviate from optimality and tend to allocate capacity amongst the selected alternatives more homogeneously than it would be optimal, but the impact on the outcome is small. Overall, our results undercover a rich phenomenology of close-to-optimal behaviour and biases in complex choices.
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spelling pubmed-95786992022-10-19 Balance between breadth and depth in human many-alternative decisions Vidal, Alice Soto-Faraco, Salvador Moreno-Bote, Rubén eLife Neuroscience Many everyday life decisions require allocating finite resources, such as attention or time, to examine multiple available options, like choosing a food supplier online. In cases like these, resources can be spread across many options (breadth) or focused on a few of them (depth). Whilst theoretical work has described how finite resources should be allocated to maximize utility in these problems, evidence about how humans balance breadth and depth is currently lacking. We introduce a novel experimental paradigm where humans make a many-alternative decision under finite resources. In an imaginary scenario, participants allocate a finite budget to sample amongst multiple apricot suppliers in order to estimate the quality of their fruits, and ultimately choose the best one. We found that at low budget capacity participants sample as many suppliers as possible, and thus prefer breadth, whereas at high capacities participants sample just a few chosen alternatives in depth, and intentionally ignore the rest. The number of alternatives sampled increases with capacity following a power law with an exponent close to 3/4. In richer environments, where good outcomes are more likely, humans further favour depth. Participants deviate from optimality and tend to allocate capacity amongst the selected alternatives more homogeneously than it would be optimal, but the impact on the outcome is small. Overall, our results undercover a rich phenomenology of close-to-optimal behaviour and biases in complex choices. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2022-09-15 /pmc/articles/PMC9578699/ /pubmed/36107472 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.76985 Text en © 2022, Vidal et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Vidal, Alice
Soto-Faraco, Salvador
Moreno-Bote, Rubén
Balance between breadth and depth in human many-alternative decisions
title Balance between breadth and depth in human many-alternative decisions
title_full Balance between breadth and depth in human many-alternative decisions
title_fullStr Balance between breadth and depth in human many-alternative decisions
title_full_unstemmed Balance between breadth and depth in human many-alternative decisions
title_short Balance between breadth and depth in human many-alternative decisions
title_sort balance between breadth and depth in human many-alternative decisions
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9578699/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36107472
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.76985
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