A model of non-informational preference change
Journal of Theoretical Politics 23 (2):145-164 (2011)
Abstract
According to standard rational choice theory, as commonly used in political science and economics, an agent's fundamental preferences are exogenously fixed, and any preference change over decision options is due to Bayesian information learning. Although elegant and parsimonious, such a model fails to account for preference change driven by experiences or psychological changes distinct from information learning. We develop a model of non-informational preference change. Alternatives are modelled as points in some multidimensional space, only some of whose dimensions play a role in shaping the agentís preferences. Any change in these "motivationally salient" dimensions can change the agent's preferences. How it does so is described by a new representation theorem. Our model not only captures a wide range of frequently observed phenomena, but also generalizes some standard representations of preferences in political science and economics.Author Profiles
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Citations of this work
Reason-based choice and context-dependence: An explanatory framework.Franz Dietrich & Christian List - 2016 - Economics and Philosophy 32 (2):175-229.
Democratic Deliberation and Social Choice: A Review.Christian List - 2018 - In André Bächtiger, Jane Mansbridge, John Dryzek & Mark Warren (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Where do preferences come from?Franz Dietrich & Christian List - 2013 - International Journal of Game Theory 42 (3):613-637.
Aggregating Causal Judgments.Richard Bradley, Franz Dietrich & Christian List - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (4):491-515.
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Deliberation, single-peakedness, and the possibility of meaningful democracy: evidence from deliberative polls.Christian List, Robert C. Luskin, James S. Fishkin & Iain McLean - 2013 - Journal of Politics 75 (1):80–95.