Re:People spend too much time on decisions with equally sati...
by SyneRyder on Tuesday August 02, 2022 @03:34AM
(#32316058)
Oh wow, they really were comparing Kit-Kat & Mars bars as an "economic-value-based food-choice task". If the scientists' criteria was economic, why were subjects asked "which of two food items they would prefer to eat at the end of the experiment"? And then they call this decision "Willingness To Pay", even though the subjects receive the chocolate for free.
Maybe we should just strip this back to actual facts. Scientists observed that subjects in a trial typically spent 250ms longer choosing between a free KitKat & Mars bar (that they may receive after the experiment), than they did on choosing between two groups of random dots on a screen.
The Sally-Ann problem is used to test "theory of mind" in autists: the subject watches Sally place a ball in box A and leave the room. Ann enters the room and removes the ball, placing it in box B. Sally returns to the room, looking for her ball. Which box will she open first?
Those supposedly without "theory of mind" will answer box B, because that's where the ball is. The correct answer is box A, because that's where Sally thinks the ball is.
For the scientists, the Kit-Kat and the Mars bar are equivalent, so taking a long time to choose between them is irrational. But what matters is not whether they are equivalent, it's whether they are equivalent to the chooser who must stop and consider their preferences before making a choice.