BonnMelbourneSeminar Decision Making, Computational Psychiatry

Computational Mechanisms of Irrational Decisions

Imagine that you are about to choose a large house with a long commute over a small flat with a short train
ride. Will the appearance of an irrelevant alternative–a small flat with a longer train ride–make you revise your
initial preference? A large body of research suggests that you will, more likely than not, switch to the small flat
with the short train ride. Changes of heart like that, dubbed preference reversals, defy the basic tenet of
rational choice theory, according to which reward-maximizing choices should stem from stable and “menuinvariant” preferences. What do these irrational behavioural patterns tell us about the cognitive and neural
processes that underlie preference formation? And why have these processes persisted in the face of
evolutionary pressure for reward-maximizing choices?