Testing Critical Properties of Decision Making on the Internet

Abstract

This article reviews recent findings that violate a broad class of descriptive theories of decision making. A new study compared 1,224 participants tested via the Internet and 124 undergraduates tested in the laboratory. Both samples confirmed systematic violations of stochastic dominance and cumulative independence; new tests also found violations of coalescing. The Internet sample was older, more highly educated, more likely male, and also more demographically diverse than the lab sample. Internet participants were more likely than undergraduates to choose the gamble with higher expected value, but no one conformed exactly to expected value. Violations of stochastic dominance decreased as education increased, but violations of stochastic dominance and coalescing were still substantial in persons with doctoral degrees who had read a scientific work on decision making. In their implications, Internet research and lab findings agree: Descriptive decision theories cannot assume that identical consequences can be coalesced.