IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ebg/heccah/0873.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Three analyses of sour grapes

Author

Listed:
  • Hill, Brian

Abstract

The phenomenon of adaptive preferences – sometimes also known under the name of sour grapes – has long caused a stir in Social Theory. In this paper, the precise problem posed by adaptive preferences, as seen from the point of view of a theoretician who intends to model or understand the phenomenon, will be clarified, and three models of the phenomenon will be presented and compared. The general intention of the article is to sound out some of the wider consequences of the phenomenon for the project of modelling and understanding the relationship between decisions taken in different situations. Difficulties which arise when several decisions and several situations are involved shall be discussed, and an approach to these difficulties shall be suggested.

Suggested Citation

  • Hill, Brian, 2007. "Three analyses of sour grapes," HEC Research Papers Series 873, HEC Paris.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebg:heccah:0873
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.hec.fr/var/fre/storage/original/application/df20a79115a4069bfb333ad2c12257b3.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Edi Karni & Philippe Mongin, 2000. "On the Determination of Subjective Probability by Choices," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(2), pages 233-248, February.
    2. Karni, Edi & Schmeidler, David & Vind, Karl, 1983. "On State Dependent Preferences and Subjective Probabilities," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(4), pages 1021-1031, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fabien Vinckier & Lionel Rigoux & Irma T Kurniawan & Chen Hu & Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde & Jean Daunizeau & Mathias Pessiglione, 2019. "Sour grapes and sweet victories: How actions shape preferences," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(1), pages 1-24, January.
    2. Brian Hill, 2009. "Living without state-independence of utilities," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 67(4), pages 405-432, October.
    3. Schnellenbach, Jan, 2012. "Nudges and norms: On the political economy of soft paternalism," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 266-277.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hammond, Peter J, 2013. "Extending the Original Position : Revisiting the Pattanaik Critique of Vickrey/Harsanyi Utilitarianism," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1008, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    2. Hill, Brian, 2010. "An additively separable representation in the Savage framework," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(5), pages 2044-2054, September.
    3. Robert Nau, 2001. "De Finetti was Right: Probability Does Not Exist," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 51(2), pages 89-124, December.
    4. Karni, Edi, 2007. "Foundations of Bayesian theory," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 167-188, January.
    5. Hill, Brian, 2009. "When is there state independence?," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 1119-1134, May.
    6. Brian Hill, 2009. "Living without state-independence of utilities," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 67(4), pages 405-432, October.
    7. Robert F. Nau, 2006. "Uncertainty Aversion with Second-Order Utilities and Probabilities," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(1), pages 136-145, January.
    8. Robert F. Nau, 2003. "A Generalization of Pratt-Arrow Measure to Nonexpected-Utility Preferences and Inseparable Probability and Utility," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 49(8), pages 1089-1104, August.
    9. Edi Karni & David Schmeidler, 2016. "An expected utility theory for state-dependent preferences," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 81(4), pages 467-478, November.
    10. Helena Gaspars-Wieloch, 2018. "The Impact of the Structure of the Payoff Matrix on the Final Decision made Under Uncertainty," Asia-Pacific Journal of Operational Research (APJOR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 35(01), pages 1-27, February.
    11. Edi Karni & Philippe Mongin, 2000. "On the Determination of Subjective Probability by Choices," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(2), pages 233-248, February.
    12. Grant, Simon & Meneghel, Idione & Tourky, Rabee, 2013. "Savage Games: A Theory of Strategic Interaction with Purely Subjective Uncertainty," Risk and Sustainable Management Group Working Papers 151501, University of Queensland, School of Economics.
    13. Luiz Vitiello & Ser-Huang Poon, 2022. "Option pricing with random risk aversion," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 58(4), pages 1665-1684, May.
    14. Broll, Udo & Wong, Kit Pong, 2002. "Optimal full-hedging under state-dependent preferences," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(5), pages 937-943.
    15. Philippe Mongin, 2011. "La théorie de la décision et la psychologie du sens commun," Working Papers hal-00579359, HAL.
    16. Simon Grant & Edi Karni, 2005. "Why Does It Matter That Beliefs And Valuations Be Correctly Represented?," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 46(3), pages 917-934, August.
    17. Jean Baccelli & Marcus Pivato, 2021. "Philippe Mongin (1950–2020)," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 90(1), pages 1-9, February.
    18. Takashi Hayashi, 2019. "What Should Society Maximise Under Uncertainty?," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 70(4), pages 446-478, December.
    19. Stéphane Luchini, 2002. "De la singularité de la méthode d'évaluation contingente," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 357(1), pages 141-152.
    20. I. Gilboa & W. A. Postlewaite & D. Schmeidler, 2009. "Probability and Uncertainty in Economic Modeling," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 10.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Adaptive preferences; preference change; belief change; decision theory; belief and utility elicitation; representation theorems.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B49 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - Other
    • D89 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebg:heccah:0873. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Antoine Haldemann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/hecpafr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.