Other-pleasing Choice under Incomplete Information about the Other’s Preference and Expectation

Other-pleasing choice refers to a situation where the decision-maker makes a choice to please another individual. There is no discrete choice model of such decision-making under incomplete information of the other's preference and expectation. A choice model has been developed in this paper considering the psychological utility of the other, which is dependent on his expectation. In the absence of complete information, a risky choice is made by the other-pleasing decision-maker, based on her belief about the other's preference and expectation. The choice decision depends on whether the chooser's utility from surprising the other offsets her disutility from disappointing them. A delight-seeker takes the risk of disappointing the other, while a disappointment-averse pleaser avoids such risk. Based on the model, hypotheses have been constructed and tested by inducing delight-seeking, disappointment-averse and neutral behaviours in three different treatment groups, in a ‘serious game' experiment. Unique choice architecture has been given to subjects in each treatment group to signal the expectation of a hypothetical other, and choice decisions were observed under elicited belief. Compared to the subjects in the control (neutral) group, those in delight-seeking treatment were observed to be less likely, and those in disappointment-averse more likely, to make a choice in conformity to the signal they received. Statistically significant results were obtained when the signals were strong