The most commonly employed paradigms for decision making under risk are expected utility, prospect theory, and regret theory. We examine the simple heuristic of maximizing the probability of being ahead, which in some natural economic situations may be in contradiction to all three of the above fundamental paradigms. We test whether this heuristic, which we call probability dominance (PD), affects decisions under risk. We set up head-to-head situations where all preferences of a given class (expected utility, original or cumulative prospect theory, or regret theory) favor one alternative yet PD favors the other. Our experiments reveal that 49% of subjects' choices are aligned with PD in contradiction to any form of expected utility or prospect theory maximization; 73% are aligned with PD as opposed to preferences under risk aversion and under original and cumulative prospect theory preferences; and 68% to 76% are aligned with PD contradicting preferences under regret theory. We conclude that probability dominance substantially affects choices and should therefore be incorporated into decision-making models. We show that PD has significant economic consequences. The PD heuristic may have evolved through situations of winner-take-all competition.

中文翻译：

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概率优势

最常用的风险决策范式是预期效用、前景理论和后悔理论。我们研究了最大化领先概率的简单启发式方法，这在某些自然经济情况下可能与上述所有三个基本范式相矛盾。我们测试这种启发式，我们称之为概率优势 (PD)，是否会影响风险下的决策。我们设置了正面交锋的情况，其中给定类别的所有偏好（预期效用、原始或累积前景理论或后悔理论）都偏爱一种选择，而 PD 偏爱另一种。我们的实验表明，49% 的受试者的选择与 PD 一致，与任何形式的预期效用或前景理论最大化相矛盾；73% 与 PD 一致，而不是在风险规避和原始和累积前景理论偏好下的偏好；68% 到 76% 的人与后悔理论下的 PD 矛盾偏好一致。我们得出结论，概率优势显着影响选择，因此应纳入决策模型。我们表明 PD 具有显着的经济后果。PD 启发式可能是通过赢家通吃竞争的情况演变而来的。