Utility maximization and melioration: Internalities in individual choice

How do people go about choosing between alternatives in relatively simple settings? This study explores some of the variables that past work suggests may be relevant. Volunteer subjects worked for money in six procedures in which the probability of a payment from either of two alternatives was 1.0, but the rate of pay (i.e. the speed with which a payment was delivered or the size of the payment) interacted with the subjects recent allocation of choices, which we define as the ‘internalities’. Because of the internalities, choosing the currently more profitable alternative did not maximize total earnings. Subjects were more likely to fail to maximize when the interaction between present pay and past choices was spread over longer sequences of choices, or when the reward variable was the speed, rather than the value, of each payment. Subjects often disregarded the internalities and were instead guided by the current yields of the two alternatives, which is a frequently observed tendency, called ‘melioration’, in experiments on choices by animals. The tendency toward melioration was only partially counteracted by explicit instructions on how to maximize earnings. We discuss a theoretical framework for melioration that postulates both motivational and cognitive sources.     

Measuring the prevalence of questionable research practices with incentives for truth telling

Cases of clear scientific misconduct have received significant media attention recently, but less flagrantly questionable research practices may be more prevalent and, ultimately, more damaging to the academic enterprise. Using an anonymous elicitation format supplemented by incentives for honest reporting, we surveyed over 2,000 psychologists about their involvement in questionable research practices. The impact of truth-telling incentives on self-admissions of questionable research practices was positive, and this impact was greater for practices that respondents judged to be less defensible. Combining three different estimation methods, we found that the percentage of respondents who have engaged in questionable practices was surprisingly high. This finding suggests that some questionable practices may constitute the prevailing research norm.     

Compound invariance implies prospect theory for simple prospects

Behavioral conditions such as compound invariance for risky choice and constant decreasing relative impatience for intertemporal choice have surprising implications for the underlying decision model. They imply a multiplicative separability of outcomes and either probability or time. Hence the underlying model must be prospect theory or discounted utility on the domain of prospects with one nonzero outcome. We indicate implications for richer domains with multiple outcomes, and with both risk and time involved.     

The assumptions underlying the generalized matching law

Allen (1981) derived the power-function generalization of the matching law from a functional equation involving relative response rates on three concurrently available schedules of reinforcement. This paper defines the conditions (relative homogeneity and independence) under which a more general class of behavioral laws reduces to the power law. The proof also removes two deficiencies of Allen's result (discussed by Houston, 1982), which are, first, that his derivation produces a power law without a bias coefficient, and second, that it holds only for experiments with three or more concurrent schedules.