The Role Of Visual Attention In Preference Reversal Between Joint And Separate Evaluation

Preference reversal between joint and separate evaluation refers to the phenomenon that one prefers option A when evaluating option A and B simultaneously while prefers option B when evaluating option separately.As it against basically every fundamental assumptions that traditional economical theory advocates,scholars from economy and psychology tried to explain it from various prospects.Hsee"s(1996;1998)evaluability hypothesis suggests that subjects in joint evaluation mode thinks high value of the attributes that are less evaluable,while in separate evaluation mode attributes that has higher evaluability is more important to the decision making process.There"s been an increased interest in understanding the role of visual attention in the process of decision-making.However,very few researches have illuminated that visual attention plays an important role in preference reversal,let alone reversals between joint and separate evaluation.In such case,the current article aims to reveal two questions with two researches:one is the distribution of one" s visual attention in preference reversal between joint and separate evaluation,and another is to try to eliminate the reversal by experimental manipulation of one"s dwell time distributed on options.The first research included two experiments.Experiment 1 aims to understand how subjects" visual attention shift between attributes while their evaluability is different from each other,in other words,in the classical preference reversal situation.Experiment 2 is supplementary to Experiment 1,it aims to understand when no difference in evalubility exists,whether the distributional shifts of visual attention between attributes would occur.Experiment 1 uses 2(Evaluation mode:joint vs.separate)2(Evaluability:high vs.low)two factor mixed experimental design.The evaluation mode is a between-subjects factor while the evaluability is within-subjects factor.And the dependent variables are therefore subjects" evaluation of the options,dwell time and fixation count with the area of interests.Experiment 2 is consists of two sub-experiments,that aims to understand the results when the evaluabilities of attributes are both high or both low.Except for the manipulation of evaluability,the design of experiment 2 is identical to experiment 1.The second research tries to explore whether one can eliminate preference reversal by manipulating participants" dwell time on options" attributes.The experiment uses a 2(Options:option A vs.option A)2(Groups:experimental vs.control)two factor mixed design.The experimental group is a between-subjects factor while the option is within-subjects factor.And the dependent variables are therefore subjects" evaluation of the options,while dwell time and fixation count with the area of interests are also recorded to validate the experimental manipulation.With the two aforementioned researches,the results have lead to the following conclusions:1.The difference of evaluabilities in attributes is the key to the appearance of preference reversal between joint and separate evaluation;2.The results find gaze bias in joint evaluation but not in separate evaluation;3.the preference reversal is accompanied with the shifts of visual attention between attributes;4.The manipulation of dwell on attributes would not change how participants evaluation option in joint mode,nor eliminate the preference reversal.