AN EXPERIMENTAL TEST OF A GENERAL-CLASS OF UTILITY-MODELS - EVIDENCE FOR CONTEXT DEPENDENCY

Generic utility theory, a general axiomatization of utility principles developed by Miyamoto (1988, 1992), is discussed as a formulation tha t captures a large class of utility theories. Several general mathemat ical functions were used to specify further the scaling of utility wit hin this class of models. Thr scaling parameters in the generic utilit y representation should remain invariant across gambling contexts, and this predicted invariance provided a means for testing the theory. Ev idence is presented that the prediction of scaling-parameter invarianc e is violated. This failure is interpreted as a consequence of employi ng an absolute reference system for a problem that is context-sensitiv e.