Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T20:04:50.408Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Similarity and the trustworthiness of distributive judgements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Alex Voorhoeve Open the ORCID record for Alex Voorhoeve [Opens in a new window] ,
Arnaldur Stefánsson  and
Brian Wallace
Alex Voorhoeve*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK Department of Applied Economics and Department of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Arnaldur Stefánsson
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
Brian Wallace
Affiliation:
Source Clear, San Francisco, CA, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

When people must either save a greater number of people from a smaller harm or a smaller number from a greater harm, do their choices reflect a reasonable moral outlook? We pursue this question with the help of an experiment. In our experiment, two-fifths of subjects employ a similarity heuristic. When alternatives appear dissimilar in terms of the number saved but similar in terms of the magnitude of harm prevented, this heuristic mandates saving the greater number. In our experiment, this leads to choices that are inconsistent with all standard theories of justice. We argue that this demonstrates the untrustworthiness of distributive judgements in cases that elicit similarity-based choice.

Keywords

similaritydistributive justicemoral decision-makingheuristicsreflective equilibrium
Type
Article
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , November 2019 , pp. 537 - 561
Check for updates
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Author note: Brian Wallace’s work on this paper was carried out while at the Department of Economics, University College London, London, UK.

References

Adler, M. 2012. Well-Being and Fair Distribution: Beyond Cost-Benefit Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Arieli, A., Ben-Ami, Y. and Rubinstein, A. 2011. Tracking decision-makers under uncertainty. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 3, 68–76.Google Scholar
Baron, J. 1998. Judgment Misguided: Intuition and Error in Public Decision Making. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brandstätter, E., Gigerenzer, G. and Hertwig, R. 2006. The priority heuristic: making choices without trade-offs. Psychological Review 113, 409–432.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brandstätter, E. and Gussmack, E. 2013. The cognitive processes underlying risky choice. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 26, 185–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Budescu, D. and Weiss, W. 1987. Reflection of transitive and intransitive preferences: a test of prospect theory. Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes 39, 184–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buschena, D. and Zilberman, D. 1995. Performance of the similarity hypothesis relative to existing models of risky choice. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 11, 233–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buschena, D. and Zilberman, D. 1999. Testing the effects of similarity on risky choice: implications for violations of expected utility. Theory and Decision 46, 251–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Choudhry, N., Slaughter, P., Sykora, K. and Naylor, C.D. 1997. Distributional dilemmas in health policy: large benefits for a few or smaller benefits for many? Journal of Health Services Research and Policy 2, 212–216.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Daniels, N. 2013. Reflective equilibrium. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Zalta, E. N. (ed). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2013/entries/reflective-equilibrium/.Google Scholar
Day, B. and Loomes, G. 2010. Conflicting violations of transitivity and where they may lead us. Theory and Decision 68, 233–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dhar, R., Nowlis, S. M. and Sherma, S. J. 1999. Comparison effects on preference construction. Journal of Consumer Research 26, 293–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diener, E. and Biswas-Diener, R. 2017. The replication crisis in psychology. In Noba Textbook Series: Psychology, Biswas-Diener, R. and Diener, E. (eds). Champaign, IL: DEF Publishers.Google Scholar
Dolan, P. 2001. Output measures and valuation in health. In Economic Evaluation in Health Care, Drummond, M. and McGuire, A. (eds), 46–67. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Drechsler, M., Katsikopoulos, K. and Gigerenzer, G. 2014. Axiomatizing bounded rationality: the priority heuristic. Theory and Decision 77, 183–196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dreisbach, S. and Guevara, D. 2017. The Asian Disease Problem and the ethical implications of Prospect Theory. Noûs. Online early. doi:10.1111/nous.12227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engel, T. and Wang, X.-J. 2011. Same or different? A neural circuit mechanism of similarity-based pattern match decision making. Journal of Neuroscience 31, 6982–6996.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Feeny, D., Furlong, W., Boyle, M. and Torrance, G.W. 1995. Multi-attribute health status classification systems: Health Utilities Index. PharmacoEconomics 7, 490–502.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gaertner, W. and Schokkaert, E. 2012. Empirical Social Choice: Questionnaire-Experimental Studies on Distributive Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goldstone, R., Medin, D. and Halberstadt, J. 1997. Similarity in context. Journal of Memory and Cognition 25, 237–255.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greene, J. and Baron, J. 2001. Intuitions about declining marginal utility. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 14, 243–255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horowitz, T. 1998. Philosophical intuitions and psychological theory. Ethics 108, 367–385.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
HUI Inc. 2008. The Health Utilities Index Mark 3. http://www.healthutilities.com/.Google Scholar
Hukin, A. and Tsuchiya, A. 2005. Dispersion vs. concentration of health benefits: preliminary report, unpublished ms. School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D. 1994. The Cognitive Psychology of Consequences and Moral Intuition. Delivered as a Tanner Lecture on Moral Values, unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D. 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Kamm, F. M. 2007. Intricate Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Köszegi, B. and Szeidl, A. 2013. A model of focusing in economic choice. Quarterly Journal of Economics 128, 53–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kvamme, M. K., Gyrd-Hansen, D., Olsena, J. A. and Kristiansen, I. S. 2010. Increasing marginal utility of small increases in life-expectancy? Results from a population survey. Journal of Health Economics 29, 541–548.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leland, J. 1994. Generalized similarity judgments: an alternative explanation for choice anomalies. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 9, 151–172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindman, H. and Lyons, J. 1978. Stimulus complexity and choice inconsistency among gambles. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 21, 146–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loomes, G. 2010. Modeling choice and valuation in decision experiments. Psychological Review 117, 902–924.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Loomes, G. and Pogrebna, G. 2014. Testing for independence while allowing for probabilistic choice. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 49, 189–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manzini, P. and Mariotti, M. 2007. Sequentially rationalizable choice. American Economic Review 97, 1824–1839.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manzini, P. and Mariotti, M. 2012. Choice by lexicographic semiorders. Theoretical Economics 7, 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellers, B. 1982. Equity judgment: a revision of Aristotelian views. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 111, 242–270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellers, B. and Biagini, K. 1994. Similarity and choice. Psychological Review 101, 505–518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellers, B., Chang, S., Birnbaum, M. and Ordonez, L. 1992. Preferences, prices, and ratings in risky decision making. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 18, 347–361.Google Scholar
Nebel, J. 2015. Status quo bias, rationality, and conservatism about value. Ethics 125, 449–476.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nord, E. and Johansen, R. 2014. Concerns for severity in priority setting in health care: a review of trade-off data in preference studies and implications for societal willingness to pay for a QALY. Health Policy 116, 281–288.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Open Science Collaboration. 2015. Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science 349, aac4716.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quinn, W. 1990. The puzzle of the self-torturer. Philosophical Studies 59, 79–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rachels, S. 1998. Counterexamples to the transitivity of better than. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76, 71–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ranyard, B. 1995. Reversals of preference between compound and simple risks: the role of editing heuristics. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 11, 159–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawls, J. 1999. A Theory of Justice, revised (2nd edn). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Regenwetter, M., Dana, J. and Davis-Stober, C. 2011. Transitivity of preferences. Psychological Review 118, 42–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rodriguez-Miguez, E. and Pinto-Prades, J.-L. 2002. Measuring the social importance of concentration or dispersion of individual health benefits. Health Economics 11, 43–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rubinstein, A. 1988. Similarity and decision-making under risk (is there a utility theory resolution to the Allais Paradox?) Journal of Economic Theory 46, 145–153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubinstein, A. 2003. Economics and psychology? The case of hyperbolic discounting. International Economic Review 44, 1207–1216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singer, P. 2005. Ethics and intuitions. Journal of Ethics 9, 331–352.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (ed). 2008. Moral Psychology, Volume 2: The Cognitive Science of Morality: Intuition and Diversity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sunstein, C. 2005. Moral heuristics. Behavioural and Brain Sciences 28, 531–573.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Temkin, L. 2005. A new principle of aggregation. Philosophical Issues 15, 218–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Temkin, L. 2012. Rethinking the Good: Moral Ideals and the Nature of Practical Reasoning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tserenjigmid, G. 2015. Theory of decisions by intra-dimensional comparisons. Journal of Economic Theory 159, 326–338.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tungodden, B. 2003. The value of equality. Economics and Philosophy 19, 1–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tversky, A. 1969. Intransitivity of preferences. Psychological Review 76, 31–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tversky, A. 1972. Elimination by aspects: a theory of choice. Psychological Review 79, 281–299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tversky, A. and Kahneman, D. 1979. Prospect theory. Econometrica 47, 263–291.Google Scholar
Tversky, A. and Kahneman, D. 1983. Extensional vs. intuitive reasoning: the conjunction fallacy in probability judgment. Psychological Review 90, 293–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ubel, P. A., Loewenstein, G., Scanlon, D. and Kamlet, M. 1996. Individual utilities are inconsistent with rationing choices: a partial explanation of why Oregon’s cost-effectiveness list failed. Medical Decision-Making 16, 108–116.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Voorhoeve, A. 2008. Heuristics and biases in a purported counterexample to the acyclicity of ‘better than’. Politics, Philosophy and Economics 7, 285–299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voorhoeve, A. and Binmore, K. 2006. Transitivity, the sorites paradox, and similarity-based decision-making. Erkenntnis 64, 101–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Voorhoeve et al. supplementary material

Appendix A1

Download Voorhoeve et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 195.8 KB
Supplementary material: PDF

Voorhoeve et al. supplementary material

Appendix A2

Download Voorhoeve et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 525.5 KB
Supplementary material: File

Voorhoeve et al. supplementary material

Appendix A3

Download Voorhoeve et al. supplementary material(File)
File 246.2 KB