CAREER: The Dynamics of Contextual Sensitivity in Multi-alternative Choice

Making choices among multiple options with different features is a critical part of everyday life, ranging from simple decisions such as choosing today's lunch, to complex decisions such as selecting a retirement portfolio. Importantly, it is well known that context (such as the presence of irrelevant options) can influence these types of decisions. This can have good or bad consequences. For example, a store's design can influence what products we buy, or how much we spend. This project uses experiments and cognitive modeling to understand how our choices are influenced by context. This knowledge can lead to strategies to improve decision-making (for example, avoiding the traps of advertisers). This project also promotes STEM education through the development of new materials to teach decision science and cognitive modeling to middle and high school students. In addition, the project supports increasing diversity in the quantitative social sciences through the promotion of gender equality. The research goal of this project is to advance theoretical understanding of how context influences multi-alternative, multi-attribute decision-making. This will be accomplished through a joint experimental and computational modeling approach where new experiments provide rich data sets for theory development. Empirically, the proposal will examine a wide range of different types of choice problems across both value-based and perceptual domains. These datasets will (1) provide valuable new knowledge about the general nature of contextual sensitivity and (2) serve as benchmarks for theory testing and development. To date, there are at least a dozen different computational models of context effects in decision-making. The project will first evaluate and compare these theories. The most promising models will be developed further to build more complete theories of contextual sensitivity in multi-alternative choice. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.