Our Seminars & Workshops

We ask if humans behave more consistently with theories of rational choice when they face the same decision problems repeatedly, without receiving any feedback. We designed an experiment where 15 menus of various sizes, drawn from a set of 7 lotteries with 3 monetary outcomes each, were presented 5 times in a structured semi-random order. We conducted this experiment in laboratories in the UK and in Germany. Significantly more subjects behaved like utility and expected-utility maximisers in the last 15 than in the first 15 identical decision problems. Taking the utility-maximising preferences revealed in those subjects' last 15 choices as their “true preferences”, we find that the probability of choosing their preferred lottery at a menu earlier in the experiment is significantly increasing in their prior exposure to that lottery. We discuss implications that such introspective learning and its “more exposure” driver have for preference elicitation.