Date of Award

January 2015

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychological Sciences

First Advisor

Robert W Proctor

Committee Member 1

Richard Schweickert

Committee Member 2

Steven J Landry

Committee Member 3

Torsten O Reimer

Abstract

Procedure invariance is a basic assumption of rational theories of choice, however, it has been shown to be violated: Different response modes, or task frames, sometimes reveal opposite preferences. This study focused on selection and rejection task frames, involving a unique type of problem with enriched and impoverished options, which has led to conflicting findings and theoretical explanations. On the one hand, greater preference has been found for the enriched option in the selection task than in the rejection task; this result is explained by a compatibility account, in which the positive features of the enriched option are more compatible with the selection task and the negative features with the rejection task (Shafir, 1993). On the other hand, it has been found that this preference difference in the two tasks interacts with the relative attractiveness of the two options: The enriched option is preferred more (less) often in the selection task than in the rejection task when it is more (less) attractiveness than the impoverished option; this finding is attributed to the accentuation of difference between options in the selection task, as stated in the accentuation account (Wedell, 1997).

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