Revealed deliberate preference change

Abstract

We propose a model of deliberate preference change that is identifiable, empirically testable, and founded on two normative principles. First, the decision maker (DM) must be able to justify her preference change by making attributes of the alternatives relevant or irrelevant to her choices. Second, DM's successive preference changes must result from consistent deliberations about which attributes to make relevant or irrelevant for her future choices. We show that these two principles are necessary and sufficient to rationalize preference changes by the maximization of a meta-preference. Finally, we illustrate how our model can generate the polarization of political preferences among ex-ante identical voters.