Comparing value coding models of context-dependence in social choice

Abstract

Decision-makers consistently exhibit violations of rational choice theory when they choose among several alternatives in a set (e.g., failing to buy the best product in a set when it is presented alongside high-quality alternatives). Many of society's most significant social decisions similarly involve the joint evaluation of multiple candidates. Are social decisions subject to the same violations, and if so, what account best characterizes the nature of the violations? Across five studies, we tested whether decision-makers exhibit context-dependent preferences in hiring scenarios and past U.S. congressional race outcomes and compared different models of value coding as sources of the hypothesized context-dependence. Studies 1a, 1b, and 1d revealed that a divisive normalization value coding scheme best characterized participants' choices across a series of hiring decisions, and that participants exhibited contextdependent preferences. However, the distractor had the opposite effect of that predicted by divisive normalization once we accounted for the random effect of participant: as the value of the distractor increased, participants were more likely to hire the highest-valued candidate. In Study 2, we used a combination of archival electoral data and survey data to examine whether normalization models could explain the outcomes of congressional elections. Electoral outcomes were predicted by political candidates' inferred competence, but this time in line with the divisive normalization account. Our findings offer mixed support for a formal, neurobiologically-derived account of when and how specific alternatives exert their effects on social evaluation and choice and highlight conditions under which high-value distractors increase versus decrease relative choice accuracy.

Value-based attention but not divisive normalization influences decisions with multiple alternatives

“…Divisive normalization has been proposed as a canonical neural computation that is remarkably ubiquitous in the brain 2 , and there is substantial evidence that neural representations of subject value also exhibit this 3 , 34 or related forms 35 – 37 of adaptation to the range of offered values. However, the evidence for a behavioral impact of divisive normalization or value-range adaptation appears to be mixed, with some studies reporting positive evidence 4 , 38 but other studies reporting null findings 12 , 34 , 36 , 39 or even contradictory effects 40 . Importantly, the above-mentioned studies are not direct replications of the seminal study by Louie and colleagues 4 .…”

The elusiveness of context effects in decision making

“…It was found that the better the worst option in a choice set is, the less likely people are to choose the option with the highest value among the remaining options [49]. However, a failed replication of the original study [50] and reversals of this effect in a similar setting [51] cast doubt on whether choices that are based on integrated value representations reliably lead to context effects (but see [52,53] for an on-going debate). Attempts with other ELUSIVENESS OF CONTEXT EFFECTS 9 naturalistic stimuli (e.g., movies) also failed to find robust context effects [29,54].…”

Crime, Choice, and Context

“…The assumptions of rationality also dictate that preferences between different choice alternatives should be unaffected by availability or quality of other options, an assumption known as intransitivity of preferences (Chang, Gershman, and Cikara 2019). That is, if Option A is preferred over Option B, and Option B is preferred over Option C, then Option A should also always be preferred over Option C. Again, research shows this is not always the case.…”