A model of non-informational preference change
Franz Dietrich and
Christian List ()
Additional contact information
Christian List: LSE - London School of Economics and Political Science
Post-Print from HAL
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 agent's 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.
Keywords: choice under uncertainty; bounded rationality; dynamic inconsistency; multiple- criteria decision making; preference change; preference formation; representation theorem; salience; spatial voting theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)
Published in Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2011, 23, pp.145-164. ⟨10.1177/0951629810394700⟩
There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.
Related works:
Journal Article: A model of non-informational preference change (2011) 
Working Paper: A model of non-informational preference change (2011)
Working Paper: A model of non-informational preference change (2011)
Working Paper: A Model of Non-Informational Preference Change (2009) 
Working Paper: A model of non-informational preference change (2009) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01971020
DOI: 10.1177/0951629810394700
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().