Futilitarianism in Decision Making. A Twofold Investigation into the Creation of an Age-Related Behavioural Utility Profile, and into How Age, Data Framing, and Context, Each Influence Different People’s Experiences of Decision Making Under Futilitarian Conditions

Decision making is an important and varied part of everyday life. There are many things that contribute to how a decision is made, from personal bias to the way our expectations alter our circumstances these evaluations change from person to person. Subjective expected utility has become a general rationalisation of decision making: the options picked are the ones perceived as most likely to take us closest to, if not achieve, our goals. This investigation challenges this. This investigation was two-fold. Firstly, it combined a framework of established decision- making factors into a Behavioural Utility Profile (BUP) which could be used to predict different individuals’ ages. Created and evaluated by a Machine Learning ‘Random Forest regression’ tool, this profile was found to be effective, indicating that the BUP represented a reliable profile for influences of decision making, and that how this profile is structured changes with age. Finally, with a specially designed Subjective Expected Futility taskset, the investigation reasoned that decision making rationale are changing. Instead of approaching goals with an ‘achieve the best outcome’ methodology, the investigation found that the context in which participants made decisions altered choices to present a shorter-term approach: ‘Seek flexibility. Choose shorter-term’.