Using Eye-Tracking Techniques to Understand the Role of Attention on Choice and Reversals

In classical preference reversal (PR) experiments, participants often choose the safer of two gambles but express a higher monetary evaluation for the riskier. We use eye-tracking techniques to explore two hypotheses regarding how attention may influence such behavior. Taking into account recent models of imprecise preferences, first, we predict that attention differentials will have a larger impact in more complex tasks, which have greater scope for inducing “mistakes”. Our data are in line with this prediction, as higher consistency associates with more fixations recorded by the eye-tracker during Evaluation, but not during Choice. Second, we hypothesize that PRs can be avoided when the deliberational approach is similar across tasks. Specifically, we extend the analysis to sequences of fixations, distinguishing transitions across the bets in a pair from those across attributes of a given bet. In this respect, we confirm that people compare bets differently in the two tasks, making substantially more transitions across bets in Choice. Yet variation in this trait does not correlate with behavior in any task, or with PRs