Attitudes toward risk are complicated: experimental evidence for the re-individuation approach to risk-attitudes

Haim Cohen; Anat Maril; Sun Bleicher; Ittay Nissan-Rozen

doi:10.1007/s11098-022-01778-6

Attitudes toward risk are complicated: experimental evidence for the re-individuation approach to risk-attitudes

Haim Cohen, Anat Maril, Sun Bleicher, Ittay Nissan-Rozen^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present experimental evidence that supports the thesis (advanced recently by Stefánsson and Bradley in Philos Sci 82(4):602–625, 2015, Br J Philos Sci 70(1):77–102, 2019; Bradley in Decisions theory with a human face, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017; Goldschmidt and Nissan-Rozen in Synthese 198:7553–7575, 2021) that people might positively or negatively desire risky prospects conditional on only some of the prospects’ outcomes obtaining. We argue that this evidence has important normative implications for the central debate in normative decision theory between two general approaches on how to rationalize several common patterns of preference, which are ruled out as irrational by orthodox decision theory, namely the re-individuation approach and the non-expected utility approach.

Original language	American English
Pages (from-to)	2553-2577
Number of pages	25
Journal	Philosophical Studies
Volume	179
Issue number	8
Early online date	12 Jan 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01778-6
State	E-pub ahead of print - 12 Jan 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Earlier versions of this paper were presented in the “Lab” forum of the Edelstein Center for Philosophy of Science in the Hebrew University and in the Cork-Trinity departmental seminar (both via Zoom). We thank the participants of these events for their helpful comments. We also thank Richard Bradley, Ryan Doody, Graham Oddie, Orri Stefansson and two anonymous referees for helpful discussions and suggestions. This work was supported by Ittay Nissan-Rozen’s Israel Science Foundation Grant (Grant No. 327/18) and by a fellowship from the Edelstein Center for the Philosophy of Science to Haim Cohen.

Funding Information:
Earlier versions of this paper were presented in the “Lab” forum of the Edelstein Center for Philosophy of Science in the Hebrew University and in the Cork-Trinity departmental seminar (both via Zoom). We thank the participants of these events for their helpful comments. We also thank Richard Bradley, Ryan Doody, Graham Oddie, Orri Stefansson and two anonymous referees for helpful discussions and suggestions. This work was supported by Ittay Nissan-Rozen’s Israel Science Foundation Grant (Grant No. 327/18) and by a fellowship from the Edelstein Center for the Philosophy of Science to Haim Cohen.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

Keywords

Attitudes to risk
Conditional desires
Decision theory
Risk aversion

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10.1007/s11098-022-01778-6

Cite this

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abstract = "We present experimental evidence that supports the thesis (advanced recently by Stef{\'a}nsson and Bradley in Philos Sci 82(4):602–625, 2015, Br J Philos Sci 70(1):77–102, 2019; Bradley in Decisions theory with a human face, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017; Goldschmidt and Nissan-Rozen in Synthese 198:7553–7575, 2021) that people might positively or negatively desire risky prospects conditional on only some of the prospects{\textquoteright} outcomes obtaining. We argue that this evidence has important normative implications for the central debate in normative decision theory between two general approaches on how to rationalize several common patterns of preference, which are ruled out as irrational by orthodox decision theory, namely the re-individuation approach and the non-expected utility approach.",

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Attitudes toward risk are complicated: experimental evidence for the re-individuation approach to risk-attitudes

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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