Theories of Context Effects in Multialternative, Multiattribute Choice

Over the past several decades, researchers in psychology, neuroscience, marketing, and economics have been keen to understand context effects multialternative, multiattribute decision making. These occur when choices among existing alternatives are altered by addition of a new alternative choice set. The violate classic theories led development computational mathematical models that explain how underlying cognitive neural mechanisms give rise effects. This article reviews dynamic these effects, comparing across models. Most incorporate an attention mechanism, which suggests plays important role I conclude discussing recent empirical studies hypothesize changes could be responsible for recently observed reversals