Melioration as Rational Choice: Sequential Decision Making in Uncertain Environments.
Melioration--defined as choosing a lesser, local gain over a greater longer term gain--is a behavioral tendency that people and pigeons share. As such, the empirical occurrence of meliorating behavior has frequently been interpreted as evidence that the mechanisms of human choice violate the norms o...
| Publicado en: | Psychological Review Vol. 120; no. 1; pp. 139 - 155 |
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| Autores principales: | , , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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American Psychological Association
Jan2013
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=85164368&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 85164368 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 0033295X PYV jtl: Psychological Review issn: 0033295X maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jan2013 vid: 120 iid: 1 pid: 34 pub: American Psychological Association artinfo: ui: 85164368 10.1037/a0030850 ppf: 139 ppct: 16 formats: tig: atl: Melioration as Rational Choice: Sequential Decision Making in Uncertain Environments. aug: au: Sims, Chris R. Jacobs, Robert A. Neth, Hansjörg Gray, Wayne D. affil: University of Rochester Max Planck Institute for Human Development Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute su: Human behavior Choice (Psychology) Decision making Economics Reason Psychology of learning sug: subj: Human behavior Choice (Psychology) Decision making Economics Reason Psychology of learning keyword: Bayesian modeling melioration rational analysis sequential decision making Bayesian modeling melioration rational analysis sequential decision making ab: Melioration--defined as choosing a lesser, local gain over a greater longer term gain--is a behavioral tendency that people and pigeons share. As such, the empirical occurrence of meliorating behavior has frequently been interpreted as evidence that the mechanisms of human choice violate the norms of economic rationality. In some environments, the relationship between actions and outcomes is known. In this case, the rationality of choice behavior can be evaluated in terms of how successfully it maximizes utility given knowledge of the environmental contingencies. In most complex environments, however, the relationship between actions and future outcomes is uncertain and must be learned from experience. When the difficulty of this learning challenge is taken into account, it is not evident that melioration represents suboptimal choice behavior. In the present article, we examine human performance in a sequential decision-making experiment that is known to induce meliorating behavior. In keeping with previous results using this paradigm, we find that the majority of participants in the experiment fail to adopt the optimal decision strategy and instead demonstrate a significant bias toward melioration. To explore the origins of this behavior, we develop a rational analysis (Anderson, 1990) of the learning problem facing individuals in uncertain decision environments. Our analysis demonstrates that an unbiased learner would adopt melioration as the optimal response strategy for maximizing long-term gain. We suggest that many documented cases of melioration can be reinterpreted not as irrational choice but rather as globally optimal choice under uncertainty. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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