Choice Behavior in Everyday Life: Rules, Outcomes, and Modifications

摘要本研究旨在支持关于日常生活中选择行为的几个命题。(1)关于选择的规则存在个体差异，这些差异与不同的生活结果有关。(2)与更好的结果相关的规则是微观经济学理论的标准成本-收益规则的平实、直观的版本。(3)这些成本效益规则的层级版本可能是高度抽象的，因为它们适用于非常广泛的内容领域。(4)成本效益规则的抽象的、与领域无关的性质的一个含义是，它们可以非常有效地教授，只需少量的指导，既可以作为抽象的规则系统，也可以作为特定领域的规则系统，这些规则系统将自发地推广到其他领域。(5)因此，应该能够以有效的方式教授成本效益规则，并改善人们的生活成果。这项研究计划还将开始探索性工作，试图找出哪些问题解决策略和行为可能在成本效益规则的知识和更好的选择结果之间起到中介作用。这项工作对描述性和规范性理论以及实际意义都有影响。描述性理论的主要含义是，高度抽象的规则，在首席研究者和他的同事们所展示的调解推理的水平上，也调节着选择行为。规范性的贡献将是为目前纯粹基于数学的断言增加经验数据，即成本效益规则的使用改善了结果。主要的实际意义是，事实证明，通过相对较少的教学--比微观经济学课程的特点少得多--最终可能改善个人和职业生活的结果。

ABSTRACT This research is intended to show support for several propositions about choice behavior in everyday life. (1) There are individual differnces in rules concerning choice, and these differences are associated with different life outcomes. (2) The rules that are associated with preferable outcomes are lay, intuitive versions of the normative cost-benefit rules of microeconomic theory. (3) These lay versions of cost-benefit rules can be highly abstract, in that they apply across an extremely broad range of content domains. (4) An implication of the abstract, domain independent nature of cost-benefit rules is that they can be taught quite effectively, with small amounts of instruction, both as abstract rule systems and as rule systems in a particular domain that will spontaneously generalize to other domains. (5) Therefore it should be possible to teach cost- benefit rules in an efficient fashion and improve people's life outcomes. This research program will also begin exploratory work attempting to find out what problem-solving strategies and behaviors might mediate between knowledge of cost-benefit rules and superior choice outcomes. This work has implications for descriptive and normative theory as well as practical implications. The major implication for descriptive theory would be that highly abstract rules, at a level shown by the Principal Investigator and his colleagues to mediate inference, also mediate choice behavior. The normative contribution would be to add empirical data to the currently purely mathematically-based assertion that cost-benefit rule use improves outcomes. The major practical implication would be that it may turn out to be possible to improve both personal and professional life outcomes with relatively small amounts of instruction -- substantially less than characterizes a course in microeconomics.