Book chapter
Algebra and Process in the Modeling of Risky Choice
Decision making from a cognitive perspective, pp.177-220
Psychology of Learning and Motivation, v. 32, Academic Press
1995
DOI: 10.1016/S0079-7421(08)60310-2
Abstract
This chapter discusses approaches to modeling risky choice. Some models focus on the algebraic pattern of people's risk preferences, others on the content of their choice processes. Although one might suppose that these two kinds of accounts are alternate ways of describing the same thing-indeed, that one kind of model might eventually be reducible to the other;-the approaches have tended to be disjoint. Mathematical forms that have lent themselves to describing the algebraic pattern of sets of choices have not been particularly useful for describing the process of choosing. The processes people appear to use for comparing alternatives lack the continuity and homogeneity required by algebraic accounts. The chapter connects algebraic and process accounts of risky choice. It discusses that qualitative comparison operations applied at the level of the single trial produce aggregate data-pooled across replications, choice pairs, and subjects as well-that have the quantitative structures that associates with algebraic models. It also examines a variety of tasks that have been used to study risky choice in the laboratory and identify several important process models. There is also some discussion about how the process models relate to one another and how they look from an algebraic perspective. In the course of the latter exposition, the chapter explains how the insights of process studies have been integrated into a new algebraic frame called security-potential/aspiration (SP/A) theory.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Algebra and Process in the Modeling of Risky Choice
- Creators
- Lola L. Lopes - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- Decision making from a cognitive perspective, pp.177-220
- Series
- Psychology of Learning and Motivation; v. 32
- DOI
- 10.1016/S0079-7421(08)60310-2
- eISSN
- 1557-802X
- ISSN
- 0079-7421
- Publisher
- Academic Press; San Diego, CA
- Number of pages
- 44
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 1995
- Academic Unit
- Management and Entrepreneurship ; Psychological and Brain Sciences
- Record Identifier
- 9984963117402771
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