Abstract

VIUDEZ, Álvaro; KEATING, José  and  ARANTES, Joana. The description-experience gap: a meta-analysis. JONNPR [online]. 2021, vol.6, n.1, pp.104-137.  Epub Oct 16, 2023. ISSN 2529-850X.  https://dx.doi.org/10.19230/jonnpr.3658.

Choice behavior differs depending on how the information about options is presented to the subjects, via either descriptions or experience(1), a phenomenon called the description-experience gap. Cumulative Prospect Theory(2) implies overweighting of rare events, but when options are experienced instead of described, the opposite result is found: rare events are underweighted(1,3). Our meta-analysis studied three important factors on the description-experience gap related to Cumulative Prospect Theory: the over-and under-weighting of rare events in description- and experience-based tasks, the task domain and the probability of the rare event. Aside from these three elements, another three additional factors were studied: the existence of a certain option, the description task paradigm and the experience task paradigm. Recently, a meta-analysis on this topic was published(4), which focused on one specific type of experience task paradigm called sampling. In the present meta-analysis, we focused on the other major experience task paradigm –feedback paradigm– and the combination of both paradigms, to see if we could find differential effects between their meta-analytical approach and ours. However, this was not the case, as we found similar results, being the effect consistent across factors and methods. We conclude that the fact that the reference model(2) is a descriptive one, and that the factor most frequently evoked to explain the description-experience gap is sampling biases in the experience-based tasks – which are part of the methodology of the task itself – suggests that the description-experience gap is an irreducible psychological phenomenon (i.e. a phenomenon that does not rely on other psychological mechanisms, but solely on the methodology of the task).

Keywords : description-experience gap; choice behavior; decision making; cumulative prospect theory.

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