Are You an Exception to Your Favorite Decision Theory? Behavioral Decision Research Is a Linda Problem!
Are You an Exception to Your Favorite Decision Theory? Behavioral Decision Research Is a Linda Problem!
复制标题
DOI：
10.1037/dec0000161
复制
发表时间：
2022-01-13
影响因子：
1.5
通讯作者：
Wang，Cihang
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Regenwetter，Michel;Robinson，Maria M.;Wang，Cihang
程式化的特征，如损失厌恶，风险厌恶的收益，风险寻求损失，小概率的权重，以及减少敏感性渗透到大众科学和学术论文关于“人”如何做决定。这篇文章强调，行为决策研究实际上是一个大规模的琳达问题：一个给定的个体满足许多这样的程式化特征的可能性可能微乎其微。我们集中在一个案例研究，即普遍的过度简化周围的阿莫斯特沃斯基和丹尼尔卡尼曼的前景理论和累积前景理论（CPT）。完全集中在原始论文中的证据，我们表明，每个人都可能是广告中的（累积）前景理论的例外。类似的问题困扰着许多其他行为研究范式。我们呼吁学者们放弃对选择行为过于简化的描述。以程式化的方式告诉从业者和外行“人们”是如何思考的，这会大规模地促进合取谬误。决策学者在提出新的理论时，不应将个体差异概念化为中心倾向的图解决策理论的附加物，而应将异质性视为一个主要的理论基础。
Stylized characteristics, such as loss aversion, risk aversion for gains, risk seeking for losses, overweighting of small probabilities, and diminishing sensitivity permeate both popular science and scholarly treatises about how ‘people’make decisions. This note highlights that behavioral decision research is, in effect, a large-scale Linda problem: The likelihood that a given individual satisfies the conjunction of many such stylized characteristics may be vanishingly small. We concentrate on a case study, namely the pervasive oversimplifications surrounding Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s Prospect Theory and Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT). Focussing entirely on evidence from within the original papers, we show that each and every person may be an exception to (Cumulative) Prospect Theory as advertised. Similar problems afflict many other behavioral research paradigms. We call on scholars to relinquish overly simplified characterizations of choice behavior. Telling practitioners and laypersons in stylized fashion how ‘people’think promotes conjunction fallacies on a huge scale. Rather than conceptualize individual differences as a mere add-on to a schematic decision theory of central tendencies, decision scholars should recognize heterogeneity as a major theoretical primitive when proposing new theories.