Department of Psychology, Language Research Center, Georgia State University, PO Box 5010, Atlanta, GA 30302, USA.
Department of Psychology, Language Research Center, Georgia State University, PO Box 5010, Atlanta, GA 30302, USA; Department of Philosophy, Neuroscience Institute, Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, Georgia State University, PO Box 5030, Atlanta, GA 30302, USA.
Cognition. 2018 Sep;178:109-117. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.05.019. Epub 2018 May 28.
Human and animal decision-making is known to violate rational expectations in a variety of contexts. Previous models suggest that statistical structures of real-world environments can favor such seemingly irrational behavior, but this has not been tested empirically. We tested 16 capuchin monkeys, seven rhesus monkeys, and 30 humans in a computerized experiment that implemented such stochastic environments. Subjects chose from among up to three options of different value that disappeared and became available again with different probabilities. All species overwhelmingly chose transitively (A > B > C) in the control condition, where doing so maximized overall gain. Most subjects also adhered to transitivity in the test condition, where it was suboptimal, but ultimately led to negligible losses compared to the optimal, non-transitive strategy. We used a modelling approach to show that differences in temporal discounting may account for this pattern of choices on a proximate level. Specifically, when short- and long-term goals are valued similarly, near-optimal decision rules can map onto rational choice principles. Such cognitive shortcuts have been argued to have evolved to preserve mental resources without sacrificing good decision-making, and here we provide evidence that these heuristics can provide almost identical outcomes even in situations in which they lead to suboptimal choices.
人类和动物的决策在各种情境下都被认为违反了理性预期。先前的模型表明，现实世界环境的统计结构可以有利于这种看似非理性的行为，但这尚未得到实证检验。我们在一个计算机化实验中测试了 16 只卷尾猴、7 只恒河猴和 30 名人类，该实验实现了这种随机环境。被试者从不同价值的三个选项中选择，这些选项会消失并以不同的概率再次出现。所有物种在控制条件下都压倒性地选择了传递性（A>B>C），在这种条件下，这样做可以最大化总体收益。大多数被试者在测试条件下也坚持了传递性，尽管这不是最优选择，但与最优的非传递策略相比，最终损失可以忽略不计。我们使用一种建模方法表明，时间折扣的差异可能在接近的层面上解释了这种选择模式。具体来说，当短期和长期目标被同等重视时，接近最优的决策规则可以映射到理性选择原则上。这些认知捷径被认为是为了在不牺牲良好决策的情况下节省心理资源而进化出来的，在这里我们提供的证据表明，即使在导致次优选择的情况下，这些启发式也可以提供几乎相同的结果。
