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How decisions and the desire for coherency shape subjective preferences over time.

ABSTRACT: Recent findings suggest a bidirectional relationship between preferences and choices such that what is chosen can become preferred. Yet, it is still commonly held that preferences for individual items are maintained, such as caching a separate value estimate for each experienced option. Instead, we propose that all possible choice options and preferences are represented in a shared, continuous, multidimensional space that supports generalization. Decision making is cast as a learning process that seeks to align choices and preferences to maintain coherency. We formalized an error-driven learning model that updates preferences to align with past choices, which makes repeating those and related choices more likely in the future. The model correctly predicts that making a free choice increases preferences along related attributes. For example, after choosing a political candidate based on trivial information (e.g., they like cats), voters' views on abortion, immigration, and trade subsequently shifted to match their chosen candidate.

SUBMITTER: Hornsby AN

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7315129 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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How decisions and the desire for coherency shape subjective preferences over time.

Hornsby Adam N AN Love Bradley C BC

Cognition 20200326

Recent findings suggest a bidirectional relationship between preferences and choices such that what is chosen can become preferred. Yet, it is still commonly held that preferences for individual items are maintained, such as caching a separate value estimate for each experienced option. Instead, we propose that all possible choice options and preferences are represented in a shared, continuous, multidimensional space that supports generalization. Decision making is cast as a learning process tha ...[more]

PMID: 32222615

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Project description:There is accumulating evidence of condition-dependent mate choice in many species, that is, individual preferences varying in strength according to the condition of the chooser. In humans, for example, people with more attractive faces/bodies, and who are higher in sociosexuality, exhibit stronger preferences for attractive traits in opposite-sex faces/bodies. However, previous studies have tended to use only relatively simple, isolated measures of rater attractiveness. Here we use 3D body scanning technology to examine associations between strength of rater preferences for attractive traits in opposite-sex bodies, and raters' body shape, self-perceived attractiveness, and sociosexuality. For 118 raters and 80 stimuli models, we used a 3D scanner to extract body measurements associated with attractiveness (male waist-chest ratio [WCR], female waist-hip ratio [WHR], and volume-height index [VHI] in both sexes) and also measured rater self-perceived attractiveness and sociosexuality. As expected, WHR and VHI were important predictors of female body attractiveness, while WCR and VHI were important predictors of male body attractiveness. Results indicated that male rater sociosexuality scores were positively associated with strength of preference for attractive (low) VHI and attractive (low) WHR in female bodies. Moreover, male rater self-perceived attractiveness was positively associated with strength of preference for low VHI in female bodies. The only evidence of condition-dependent preferences in females was a positive association between attractive VHI in female raters and preferences for attractive (low) WCR in male bodies. No other significant associations were observed in either sex between aspects of rater body shape and strength of preferences for attractive opposite-sex body traits. These results suggest that among male raters, rater self-perceived attractiveness and sociosexuality are important predictors of preference strength for attractive opposite-sex body shapes, and that rater body traits -with the exception of VHI in female raters- may not be good predictors of these preferences in either sex.

Dataset Information

How decisions and the desire for coherency shape subjective preferences over time.

Publications

How decisions and the desire for coherency shape subjective preferences over time.

Similar Datasets

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