Research Article Feedback Produces Divergence From Prospect Theory in Descriptive Choice

ABSTRACT—A recent study demonstrated that individuals making experience-based choices underweight small probabilities, in contrast to the overweighting observed in a typical descriptive paradigm. We tested whether trial-by-trial feedback in a repeated descriptive paradigm would engender choices more correspondent with experi-ential or descriptive paradigms. The results of a repeated gambling task indicated that individuals receiving feed-back underweighted small probabilities, relative to their no-feedback counterparts. These results implicate feed-back as a critical component during the decision-making process, even in the presence of fully specified descriptive information. Amodel comparison at the individual-subject level suggested that feedback drove individuals ’ decision weights toward objective probability weighting