Exploring the Impact of Decoys on Decision-Making by Young Children

The asymmetric dominance effect (or decoy effect) is a decision-making phenomenon that occurs when preference for a target alternative shifts with the addition of a similar, yet inferior alternative dubbed the decoy. Despite the considerable number of studies examining the decoy effect with adult humans and animals, there is comparatively less research on context effects within the developmental domain. In this study, we explored the impact of a decoy on choice behavior by young children (3–9 years old) using a preferential choice task as well as a perceptual discrimination task. Introduction of an inferior decoy impacted choice behavior across 2-alternative (binary) versus 3-alternative (trinary) sets, such that inclusion of the dominated decoy in expanded sets decreased selection of the superior target alternative. This pattern of results indicates a reversal of the standard attraction effect, also known as the repulsion effect. We discuss these findings in light of the adult and comparative literatures on decoy effects as well as call for additional developmental studies exploring the impact of inferior alternatives in multialternative decision-making.