Reported violations of rationality may be aggregation artifacts

Abstract

In PNAS, Tsetsos et al. (1) report intransitive preferences consistent with selective integration (SI) theory. The Condorcet paradox warns that aggregating transitive (rational) preferences readily creates intransitive (irrational) collective preferences (2). Therefore, any study reporting intransitive behavior must guard against aggregation artifacts (3). In experiments 1–3, Tsetsos et al. (1) reported significant evidence against a null and in favor of F W : P A B > 1 / 2 and P B C > 1 / 2 and P C A > 1 / 2 (Fig. 1), in data aggregated across participants to infer intransitive “frequent-winner” (FW) effects for “cyclic trials.” In experiment 4, they supported SI theory indirectly through significant violations of weak stochastic transitivity (WST) … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: stoberc{at}missouri.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

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