Preference Ordering and the Epistemic Peril of Comparison

Abstract

Abstract According to the orthodox comparativist approach in rational choice theory, the ultimate conative basis for an agent’s preference ordering – and thus for their rational choice – is their comparative evaluation among competing options. However, it has been shown extensively in experimental psychology that an agent’s judgments about an option can be distorted by the contrast effects from their contextual reference point, which can sometimes be provided by the very competing option that they compare with. Such contrast effects from competing option, I argue, raise a new problem for comparativism: Sometimes an agent’s comparative evaluation might favor an option A over another option B only because their judgments about A’s appealing intrinsic features are distorted by B’s contrast effects. Such a comparative evaluation from contrast effects, however, is not only epistemically defective but also likely to lead to post-choice disenchantment with option A once the contrast effects from the competing option B are removed. While comparativists can either rationalize the choices made on the basis of comparative evaluations from contrast effects or idealize the type of comparative evaluations they appeal to, I argue that both strategies still face significant problems.

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