Abstract
The decoy effect arises when the ratio of choosing B from A and B options is lower than the ratio of choosing B from A, B, and D options, wherein D is dominated by B. This decision pattern is obviously unreasonable but quite common. Previous research suggested that impulsive people have stronger decoy effect. Rs806379, as a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) locus of cannabis receptor 1 gene (CNR1), has significant effect on impulsivity—people of A/A genotype are more impulsive than others. Therefore, rs806379 may relate to the decoy effect, which was tested in this study. Participants (359 Han Chinese college students) finished a task of the decoy effect, in which they made decisions between two or three mobile hard disks with various prices and provided saliva for genotyping. The results revealed the existence of the decoy effect. Furthermore, we found that participants with A/A genotype (251 Han Chinese college students) showed stronger decoy effect than others, when the prices were not high. This is the first attempt to study the decoy effect from a gene perspective. The result shows that even an SNP of a gene can have a significant association with complex human economic decision-making activities.
Highlights
Imagine that a group of people choose between two options A and B, and the ratio of choosing B is x%
We performed a repeated-measures full-factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA), with the dependent variable being the score of decoy effect, and the independent variables being price and memory
We hypothesized that the decoy effect can be affected by cannabis receptor 1 gene (CNR1) rs806379
Summary
Imagine that a group of people choose between two options A and B, and the ratio of choosing B is x%. At a separate time point, this same group of people choose among three options A, B, and D, wherein D is dominated by B (D is worse than B in at least one aspect, and D is the same as B in all other aspects), and the ratio of choosing B is y%. Y should be no larger than x for the following reasons. The ratio of choosing B (y%) in the three-option condition should be no larger than that in the two-option condition (x%). People often get y being larger than x. This irrational decision phenomenon is called the decoy effect
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