New study reveals how people make decisions under uncertainty and risk.
The article presents a way to mathematically represent preferences that value having more over less and prefer average outcomes to extreme ones. The researchers developed a numerical model that can capture both risk and ambiguity attitudes without assuming independence between different events. By using a framework that distinguishes between risk and ambiguity, they found that preferences can be separated into state-dependent functions and an overall preference aggregator. This representation can accommodate various decision-making behaviors, such as being averse to uncertainty and preferring certain outcomes in different situations.