Conflict and the stochastic-dominance principle of decision making

One of the key principles underlying rational models of decision making is the idea that the decision maker should never choose an action that is stoc hastically dominated by another action. In the study reported in this artic le, violations of stochastic dominance frequently occurred when the payoffs produced by two actions were negatively correlated (in conflict), bur no v iolations occurred when the payoffs were positively correlated (no conflict ). This finding is contrary to model which assume that choice probability d epends on the utility of each action, and the utility for an action depends solely on its own payoffs and probabilities. This article also reports, So r the first time ever; the distribution of response rimes observed in a ris ky decision task. Both the violations of stochastic dominance and the respo nse rime distruibutions are explained in terms of a dynamic theory of decis ion making called multiattribute decision field theory.