Positive spreading of ratings or rankings in the classical free-choice paradigm is commonly taken to indicate choice-induced change in preferences and has motivated influential theories as cognitive dissonance theory and self-perception theory. Chen and Risen (2010) argued by means of a...

Overwhelming evidence from the cognitive sciences shows that, in simple discrimination tasks (determining what is louder, longer, brighter, or even which number is larger) humans make more mistakes and decide more slowly when the stimuli are closer along the relevant scale. We investigate to...

Influential economic approaches as random utility models or quantal-response equilibria assume a monotonic relation between error rates and choice difficulty or "strength of preference", in line with widespread evidence from discrimination tasks in psychology and neuroscience. However, while the...

Differences in cognitive sophistication and effort are at the root of behavioral heterogeneity in economics. To explain this heterogeneity, behavioral models assume that certain choices indicate higher cognitive effort. A fundamental problem with this approach is that observing a choice does not...

Behavioral heterogeneity arising from cognitive differences among economic agents plays a fundamental role in the economy. To explain this heterogeneity, models of iterative thinking assume that certain choices indicate higher cognitive effort. That is, choices are used to infer the cognitive...

Influential economic approaches as random utility models or quantal-response equilibria assume a monotonic relation between error rates and choice difficulty or "strength of preference", in line with widespread evidence from discrimination tasks in psychology and neuroscience. However, while the...