The most commonly employed decision making paradigms are expected utility, prospect theory and regret theory. We examine the simple heuristic of maximizing the probability of being ahead, which in some natural economic situations may be in contradiction to all three of the above fundamental...

This paper describes an experiment designed to study the effect of aspiration levels on individual choices under risk.We observe preferences for prospects that offer various probabilities of achieving aspiration levels; the resulting choice patterns characterize a heuristic for reducing the...