Regenwetter Michel, Robinson Maria M
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Psychol Rev. 2017 Oct;124(5):533-550. doi: 10.1037/rev0000067. Epub 2017 May 15.
Behavioral decision research compares theoretical constructs like preferences to behavior such as observed choices. Three fairly common links from constructs to behavior are (1) to tally, across participants and decision problems, the number of choices consistent with one predicted pattern of pairwise preferences; (2) to compare what most people choose in each decision problem against a predicted preference pattern; or (3) to enumerate the decision problems in which two experimental conditions generate a 1-sided significant difference in choice frequency 'consistent' with the theory. Although simple, these theoretical links are heuristics. They are subject to well-known reasoning fallacies, most notably the fallacy of sweeping generalization and the fallacy of composition. No amount of replication can alleviate these fallacies. On the contrary, reiterating logically inconsistent theoretical reasoning over and again across studies obfuscates science. As a case in point, we consider pairwise choices among simple lotteries and the hypotheses of overweighting or underweighting of small probabilities, as well as the description-experience gap. We discuss ways to avoid reasoning fallacies in bridging the conceptual gap between hypothetical constructs, such as, for example, "overweighting" to observable pairwise choice data. Although replication is invaluable, successful replication of hard-to-interpret results is not. Behavioral decision research stands to gain much theoretical and empirical clarity by spelling out precise and formally explicit theories of how hypothetical constructs translate into observable behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record
行为决策研究将诸如偏好等理论结构与诸如观察到的选择等行为进行比较。从结构到行为有三个相当常见的联系：（1）在参与者和决策问题中统计与一种预测的成对偏好模式一致的选择数量；（2）将每个决策问题中大多数人的选择与预测的偏好模式进行比较；或者（3）列举两个实验条件在与理论“一致”的选择频率上产生单侧显著差异的决策问题。虽然这些理论联系很简单，但它们是启发式的。它们容易受到众所周知的推理谬误的影响，最明显的是一概而论谬误和合成谬误。再多的重复也无法消除这些谬误。相反，在各项研究中反复重申逻辑不一致的理论推理会使科学变得模糊。作为一个例子，我们考虑简单彩票之间的成对选择以及小概率事件的过度加权或加权不足假设，以及描述-经验差距。我们讨论了在弥合假设结构（例如“过度加权”）与可观察的成对选择数据之间的概念差距时避免推理谬误的方法。虽然重复是非常有价值的，但成功重复难以解释的结果并非如此。行为决策研究通过阐明关于假设结构如何转化为可观察行为的精确且形式明确的理论，在理论和实证方面有望获得更大的清晰度。（PsycINFO数据库记录）
