On the Heritability of Choice, Judgment, and "Irrationality": Genetic Effects on Prudence and Constructive Predispositions

Abstract

Dawes for his guidance and assistance in the application of structural equation modeling to twins study data, to Harikesh Nair for his assistance regarding structural equations, and to the staff of the SRI International Center for Health Sciences for their assistance with data collection. 2 Despite the very long history of research on heritable traits, we still know very little about genetic effects on judgment and choice, including consumer decision making. Building on recent advances in epigenetics, we hypothesize that people inherit a general prudence tendency, which affects their predisposition to choose options that vary on the prudence dimension. We use a classic twins study design whereby greater similarity between monozygotic twins than between dizygotic twins indicates a heritable trait. Unlike most prior studies that have focused on one or few characteristics, our study examines a broad range of judgment and choice phenomena simultaneously in order to gain insights into heritable tendencies (representing individual differences) and nonheritable tendencies. Consistent with our “prudence hypothesis,” we find a significant heritable effect on (a) preferences for compromise (but not perceptually dominating) options, (b) choosing a sure gain over a gamble, (c) preferences for a feasible

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