Piantadosi Steven T, Hayden Benjamin Y
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester Rochester, NY, USA.
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester Rochester, NY, USA ; Center for Visual Science, University of Rochester Rochester, NY, USA.
Front Neurosci. 2015 Apr 9;9:105. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2015.00105. eCollection 2015.
Economists often model choices as if decision-makers assign each option a scalar value variable, known as utility, and then select the option with the highest utility. It remains unclear whether as-if utility models describe real mental and neural steps in choice. Although choices alone cannot prove the existence of a utility stage, utility transformations are often taken to provide the most parsimonious or psychologically plausible explanation for choice data. Here, we show that it is possible to mathematically transform a large set of common utility-stage two-option choice models (specifically ones in which dimensions are can be decomposed into additive functions) into a heuristic model (specifically, a dimensional prioritization heuristic) that has no utility computation stage. We then show that under a range of plausible assumptions, both classes of model predict similar neural responses. These results highlight the difficulties in using neuroeconomic data to infer the existence of a value stage in choice.
经济学家常常将选择建模，就好像决策者会为每个选项赋予一个标量值变量，即所谓的效用，然后选择效用最高的选项。尚不清楚这种效用模型是否描述了选择过程中真实的心理和神经步骤。虽然仅靠选择无法证明效用阶段的存在，但效用变换常常被视为对选择数据提供最简洁或最符合心理逻辑的解释。在此，我们表明，有可能将大量常见的效用阶段二选项选择模型（具体而言，是那些维度可分解为加性函数的模型）进行数学变换，转化为一个没有效用计算阶段的启发式模型（具体来说，是一种维度优先级启发式模型）。然后我们表明，在一系列合理假设下，这两类模型预测出相似的神经反应。这些结果凸显了利用神经经济学数据推断选择中价值阶段存在的困难。
