The advantages of model fitting compared to model simulation in research on preference construction

摘要

Mantonakis et al. (2009) suggested the pairwise-competition model (PCM) of preference construction. The basic idea is that humans form preferences among choice objects (e.g., types of wines) sequentially, such that the preferred object is the ultimate winner of a sequence of pairwise competitions: The object sampled first is compared to the second, the winner of this competition is then compared to the third object, resulting in a winner that is compared to the fourth, and so on. For a set of m objects, this recursive process terminates after m-1 pairwise competitions once the final object has been compared against the previous favorite. Canic and Pachur (2014) recently proposed a formal specification and elaboration of the PCM. Moreover, using computer simulations, they showed how variations in the model's parameters affect primacy and recency effects in sequential choice and how the model can account for various patterns of serial position effects documented in the literature.