{"title":"Investigating the empirical validity of salience theory: The role of display format effects","authors":"Christoph Ostermair","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2025.102844","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The salience theory of choice under risk predicts that the correlation between lotteries will affect subjects’ preferences. We conduct two online experiments to challenge this perception. In our first experiment, we show that recent prominent experimental findings in support of salience-predicted correlation effects were driven by changes in the display format rather than the salience of payoffs: (i) salience effects vanish when controlling for simultaneous changes in the display format when varying the correlation structure; (ii) choice patterns previously attributed to the salience mechanism can be induced by keeping the correlation structure constant and simply varying the display format. In our second experiment, we find that, in a contest between display format and salience effects, the former are quantitatively more important than the latter. In a setup allowing the investigation of correlation effects in the absence of confounding changes in the display format, we are unable to detect significant salience-predicted correlation effects.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"111 ","pages":"Article 102844"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3000,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Economic Psychology","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016748702500056X","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The salience theory of choice under risk predicts that the correlation between lotteries will affect subjects’ preferences. We conduct two online experiments to challenge this perception. In our first experiment, we show that recent prominent experimental findings in support of salience-predicted correlation effects were driven by changes in the display format rather than the salience of payoffs: (i) salience effects vanish when controlling for simultaneous changes in the display format when varying the correlation structure; (ii) choice patterns previously attributed to the salience mechanism can be induced by keeping the correlation structure constant and simply varying the display format. In our second experiment, we find that, in a contest between display format and salience effects, the former are quantitatively more important than the latter. In a setup allowing the investigation of correlation effects in the absence of confounding changes in the display format, we are unable to detect significant salience-predicted correlation effects.
期刊介绍:
The Journal aims to present research that will improve understanding of behavioral, in particular psychological, aspects of economic phenomena and processes. The Journal seeks to be a channel for the increased interest in using behavioral science methods for the study of economic behavior, and so to contribute to better solutions of societal problems, by stimulating new approaches and new theorizing about economic affairs. Economic psychology as a discipline studies the psychological mechanisms that underlie economic behavior. It deals with preferences, judgments, choices, economic interaction, and factors influencing these, as well as the consequences of judgements and decisions for economic processes and phenomena. This includes the impact of economic institutions upon human behavior and well-being. Studies in economic psychology may relate to different levels of aggregation, from the household and the individual consumer to the macro level of whole nations. Economic behavior in connection with inflation, unemployment, taxation, economic development, as well as consumer information and economic behavior in the market place are thus among the fields of interest. The journal also encourages submissions dealing with social interaction in economic contexts, like bargaining, negotiation, or group decision-making. The Journal of Economic Psychology contains: (a) novel reports of empirical (including: experimental) research on economic behavior; (b) replications studies; (c) assessments of the state of the art in economic psychology; (d) articles providing a theoretical perspective or a frame of reference for the study of economic behavior; (e) articles explaining the implications of theoretical developments for practical applications; (f) book reviews; (g) announcements of meetings, conferences and seminars.