A Descriptive Approach to the Dynamics of Choice Behavior

Abstract

Publisher Summary To provide an initial overview, this chapter assembles the various descriptive approaches for the dynamics of choice behavior. Interest in the prediction of choice has instigated the development of psychological scales and other models that relates choice probabilities to behavioral correlates and to observed independent variables. The theories include normative theories, quasi-normative theories, hypothetical model, and descriptive theories. For illustrative interpretation, this chapter considers a situation that involves uncertainty with respect to trial outcomes but no differences in utility for different outcomes—namely, the familiar experiment on simple predictive behavior or verbal conditioning. The subject's task is to choose between two response alternatives—for example, to operate one of two response keys or to say one of two designated words at the beginning of each trial, attempting to be “correct” as often as possible. In conceptualizing this experimental situation, the chapter assumes that the experimental conditions determine a set of N stimulus patterns anyone of that may be present at the beginning of any trial and all of which are equally likely to occur.