How Irrelevant Alternatives Influence Choices: Cognitive Reflection Related to Decoy Effect
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | An alternative that nobody finds attractive: how can it change our decisions? Violating the Independence from Irrelevant Alternatives axiom, decoy options included in choice sets may induce preference shifts. As noted by Pettibone and Wedell (2000), a person may be indifferent between A and B in pairwise choice, but she may strongly prefer A over B in a trinary choice that also includes decoy. Two types of decoys can be constructed: Dominated (D) decoy, that is inferior to A, and Nearly Dominated (ND) decoy, that is significantly worse than A in one attribute and only slightly better than A in the other attribute. This experiment investigates the conjecture of Dhar and Gorlin (2013) that D-decoys and ND-decoys operate within different processes: D-decoy utilizing System 1 and ND-decoy utilizing System 2. Employing Cognitive Reflection Test I find the degree of System 1 / System 2 engagement to predict D-decoy performance significantly (the higher System 2 engagement, the lower decoy success rate). I observe no such relation for ND-decoy performance, though. This suggests that D and ND decoys do, as hypothesized, operate within different cognitive processes. |
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