Preference Judgments and Choice : Is the Prominence Effect Due to Information Integration or Information Evaluation?

Several studies have shown that preference is not necessarily synonymous with choice. In particular, the most preferred object from a set of objects presented in a non-choice context is not necessarily chosen when the same objects are options in a choice situation (Lichtenstein & Slovic, 1971, 1973; Tversky, Sattah, & Slovic, 1988) . Our research on the choice-preference discrepancy replicates these findings and thus bears some resemblance to the study by Tversky, Sattah, and Slovic (1988). Two competing explanations are tested