Does choice change preferences? An incentivized test of the mere choice effect - Data set

Data set, codebook, and pre-registered report for article

 Alós-Ferrer, Carlos, and Georg D. Granic (forthcoming).
"Does Choice Change Preferences? An Incentivized Test of the Mere Choice Effect", Experimental Economics. 

Abstract
Widespread evidence from psychology and neuroscience documents that previous choices unconditionally increase the later desirability of chosen objects, even if those choices were uninformative. This is problematic for economists who use choice data to estimate latent preferences, demand functions, and social welfare. The
evidence on this mere choice efect, however, exhibits serious shortcomings which prevent evaluating its possible relevance for economics. In this paper, we present
a novel, parsimonious experimental design to test for the economic validity of the mere choice efect addressing these shortcomings. Our design uses well-defned,
monetary lotteries, all decisions are incentivized, and we efectively randomize participants’ initial choices without relying on deception. Results from a large, preregistered online experiment fnd no support for the mere choice efect. Our results challenge conventional wisdom outside economics. The mere choice efect does not seem to be a concern for economics, at least in the domain of decision making under risk.

数据集、代码簿及预注册报告，用于文章《选择能否改变偏好？对单纯选择效应的激励性测试》

摘要
心理学和神经科学领域广泛的研究证据表明，先前的选择无条件地增加了后续所选择对象的吸引力，即便这些选择本身缺乏信息价值。这对使用选择数据来估计潜在偏好、需求函数和社会福利的经济学家而言是一个问题。然而，关于单纯选择效应的证据存在严重的不足，这阻碍了对其在经济学中可能相关性的评估。在本研究中，我们提出了一种新颖的、简约的实验设计，以检验单纯选择效应的经济有效性，并针对这些不足进行改进。我们的设计采用明确界定的货币彩票，所有决策均受到激励，且我们通过有效随机化参与者的初始选择，而不依赖于欺骗行为。来自一项大型、预注册的在线实验的结果未发现对单纯选择效应的支持。我们的研究挑战了经济学界外的传统观点。单纯选择效应似乎并不是经济学的关注点，至少在风险决策的领域内是这样的。