Abstract
Hope is the emotional feeling experienced when a desired outcome happens with a positive probability. This article provides a behavioral definition of preference for hope. The definition requires the decision maker to have two behavioral patterns: hope preservation by delaying the resolution of uncertainty, and hope-seeking by taking risk. I show that if people have a preference for hope, then it violates simultaneously the axiom of time neutrality, dynamic consistency and expected stationarity. • A behavioral definition of preference for hope is provided, and the definition consists of two separate parts. • In the risk dimension, with a preference for hope people take risks to avoid safes prospects that are hopeless. • In the time dimension, with a preference for hope people delay the resolution of uncertainty. • Combining these two parts indicates that the preference violates three well-known and widely used assumptions.
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