Cognition and Behavior in Studies of Choice

• Published in: Psychological review 1986-01, Vol.93 (1), p.33-45
• Main Authors: Rachlin, Howard, Logue, A. W, Gibbon, John, Frankel, Marvin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animals; Behavior; Biological and medical sciences; Choice Behavior; Experimentation; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; General aspects; Human; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Social research
• ISSN: 0033-295X; 1939-1471
• DOI: 10.1037/0033-295X.93.1.33

Kahneman and Tversky's cognitive model of human choice is compared with Herrnstein's behavioral model of animal choice. The two models have many corresponding concepts. A means is proposed for translating between the models so as to provide behavioral descriptions of cognitive experiments and cognitive descriptions of behavioral experiments. One important bridge between the two models is the correspondence between the concept of probability in the cognitive model and the concept of delay in the behavioral model. The behavior of human subjects who fail to choose a gamble of the highest expected value may correspond to the behavior of animal subjects who fail to choose the highest overall rate of reward. In the cognitive model such inconsistent behavior is ascribed to nonlinear subjective weighting of amounts or probabilities. In the behavioral model such behavior is ascribed to the sharp discounting of delayed rewards-a problem of self-control. We argue that these are just two competing descriptions of a single fundamental process.