Jennifer Trueblood, Psychological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, will give a presentation via Zoom in this week’s Social, Economic, and Decision Psychology research seminar (Thursday 4 November, 16:00-17:00).

Attentional dynamics explain the elusive nature of context effects

Over the past several decades, there has been extensive empirical and theoretical work on understanding “context effects” (attraction, compromise, and similarity) in multi-alternative, multi-attribute choice. These effects occur when choices among existing alternatives are altered by the addition of a new alternative to the choice set. While numerous studies have been published documenting the existence of the effects, recent studies have shown that the effects often disappear or reverse. In this talk, we show how changes in attentional processes account for the diversity of observed outcomes. In particular, we hypothesize that attention allocation based on (1) the spatial arrangement of options and (2) the similarity of options explains the elusiveness of context effects. With regards to the former, we reanalyze context effects data from Trueblood et al. (2015) showing that the spatial ordering of options (i.e., left to right placement of alternatives on the screen) impacts the strength of context effects, leading to null or reversed effects in some cases. These results likely arise because spatial layout biases attention towards particular options. With regards to similarity-based attention, we use model simulations to show that when similar options receive enhanced attention, standard effects emerge. However, when dissimilar options receive enhanced attention, the attraction and compromise effects reverse and the similarity effect strengthens. We test this hypothesis in new experiments manipulating similarity-based attention processes. We conclude by showing that differences in attentional processes could explain individual differences observed in context effects.