Transitivity of Preferences

Transitivity of preferences is a fundamental principle shared by most major contemporary rational, prescriptive, and descriptive models of decision making. To have transitive preferences, a person, group, or society that prefers choice option x to y and y to z must prefer x to z. Any claim of empiri...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological review 2011-01, Vol.118 (1), p.42-56
Main Authors: Regenwetter, Michel, Dana, Jason, Davis-Stober, Clintin P
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitudes
Biological and medical sciences
Choice Behavior
Cognition. Intelligence
Data Analysis
Decision Making
Decision making. Choice
Empirical research
Evidence
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Illinois
Male
Mathematics
Methodology
Modelling
Models, Psychological
Preferences
Probability
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Rationality
Selection
Social psychology
Statistical Analysis
Stochastic Modeling
Stochastic models
Stochastic Processes
Theory
Undergraduate Students
Utility Theory
Validity
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Summary:Transitivity of preferences is a fundamental principle shared by most major contemporary rational, prescriptive, and descriptive models of decision making. To have transitive preferences, a person, group, or society that prefers choice option x to y and y to z must prefer x to z. Any claim of empirical violations of transitivity by individual decision makers requires evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. We discuss why unambiguous evidence is currently lacking and how to clarify the issue. In counterpoint to Tversky's (1969) seminal "Intransitivity of Preferences," we reconsider his data as well as those from more than 20 other studies of intransitive human or animal decision makers. We challenge the standard operationalizations of transitive preferences and discuss pervasive methodological problems in the collection, modeling, and analysis of relevant empirical data. For example, violations of weak stochastic transitivity do not imply violations of transitivity of preference. Building on past multidisciplinary work, we use parsimonious mixture models, where the space of permissible preference states is the family of (transitive) strict linear orders. We show that the data from many of the available studies designed to elicit intransitive choice are consistent with transitive preferences.
ISSN:0033-295X
1939-1471
DOI:10.1037/a0021150