Attention and attribute overlap in preferential choice

ABSTRACT

Attributes that are common, or overlapping, across alternatives in two-alternative forced preferential choice tasks are often non-diagnostic. In many settings, attending to and evaluating these attributes does not help the decision maker determine which of the available alternatives is the most desirable. For this reason, many existing behavioural theories propose that decision makers ignore common attributes while deliberating. Across six experiments, we find that decision makers do direct their attention selectively and ignore attributes that are not present in or associated with either of the available alternatives. However, they are as likely to attend to common attributes as they are to attend to attributes that are unique to a single alternative. These results suggest the need for novel theories of attention in preferential choice.

KEYWORDS:

• Judgment and decision making
• Multi-attribute choice
• Attention
• Process tracing

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Russell Golman for valuable insights.

ORCID

Sudeep Bhatia http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6068-684X

Notes

¹The increasingness of [1 − (m_x·m_y)/n²]ⁿ can easily be established by taking the first derivative (with positive n). The limit can be obtained by examining the limit of ln{[1 − (m_x · m_y)/n²]ⁿ } and applying L'Hôpital's Rule.

Additional information

Funding

Thanks to the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/K002201/1] for funding.