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

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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.