Better is worse, worse is better: Reexamination of violations of dominance in intertemporal choice

Recently, Scholten and Read (2014) found new violations of dominance in intertemporal choice. Although adding a small receipt before a delayed payment or adding a small delayed receipt after an immediate receipt makes the prospect objectively better, it decreases the preference for that prospect (be...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Judgment and Decision Making 2017-05, Vol.12 (3), p.253-259
Main Authors: Jiang, Cheng-Ming, Sun, Hong-Mei, Zhu, Long-Fei, Zhao, Lei, Liu, Hong-Zhi, Sun, Hong-Yue
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
a preference for improvement
dominance
intertemporal choice
Payments
Preferences
salience
sequences
Studies
Violations
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Recently, Scholten and Read (2014) found new violations of dominance in intertemporal choice. Although adding a small receipt before a delayed payment or adding a small delayed receipt after an immediate receipt makes the prospect objectively better, it decreases the preference for that prospect (better is worse). Conversely, although adding a small payment before a delayed receipt or adding a small delayed payment after an immediate payment makes the prospect objectively worse, it increases the preference for that prospect (worse is better). Scholten and Read explained these violations in terms of a preference for improvement. However, to produce violations such as these, we find that the temporal sequences need not be constructed as Scholten and Read suggested. In this study, adding a small receipt before a dated receipt (thus constructed as improving) or adding a receipt after a dated payment (thus constructed as improving) decreases preferences for those prospects. Conversely, adding a small payment after a dated receipt (thus constructed as deteriorating) or adding a small payment before a delayed payment (thus constructed as deteriorating) increases preferences for those prospects.
ISSN:1930-2975
1930-2975
DOI:10.1017/S1930297500005866