Work

Reported violations of rationality may be aggregation artifacts

Year: 2016

Type: letter

Abstract: In PNAS, Tsetsos et al. (1) report intransitive preferences consistent with selective integration (SI) theory. The Condorcet paradox warns that aggregating transitive (rational) preferences readily creates intransitive (irrational) collective preferences (2). Therefore, any study reporting intransitive behavior must guard against aggregation artifacts (3). In experiments 1–3, Tsetsos et al. (1) reported significant evidence against a null and in favor of F W : P A B > 1 / 2 and P B C > 1 / 2 and P C A > 1 / 2 (Fig. 1), in data aggregated across participants to infer intransitive “frequent-winner” (FW) effects for “cyclic trials.” In experiment 4, they supported SI theory indirectly through significant violations of weak stochastic transitivity (WST) … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: stoberc{at}missouri.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1606997113

Authors: Clintin P. Davis-Stober, Sanghyuk Park, Nicholas Brown, Michel Regenwetter

Institutions: University of Missouri, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Language: English

Topic: Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics

Subfield: General Decision Sciences

Field: Decision Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: bronze

Funders: National Science Foundation, University of Missouri, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Awards: Collaborative Research: Invariants of Decision Making, Collaborative Research: Invariants of Decision Making