Dorsa Amir

Date: 

Thursday, October 4, 2018, 12:00pm to 1:00pm

Location: 

Room 105 William James Hall

An uncertainty management perspective on preference and choice: Cross-cultural and developmental evidence

Dorsa Amir
Postdoctoral Fellow, Boston College

While preferences have sometimes been viewed as reflecting inherent traits, in this talk, I will outline an alternative perspective, suggesting that they function as flexible strategies for managing the downside costs of uncertainty. Utilizing a cross-cultural and developmental perspective, I argue that preferences are importantly shaped by early experience with the local socioecological environment. I first present the results of a cross-cultural investigation of risk and time preferences in children from India, Argentina, the United States, and the Ecuadorean Amazon, showing that market integration and related socioecological shifts, which fundamentally reduce the downside costs of uncertainty, lead to the development of more risk-seeking and future-oriented preferences.  I supplement these results with evidence from a large study of American adults, showing that access to resources in early development has persistent effects on preferences into adulthood, such that early deprivation is associated with greater risk-aversion, greater present-orientation, and social preferences that mitigate the costs of uncertainty. These findings suggest that preferences are malleable, with sensitive windows in development for integrating information from the local environment in ways that optimize decision-making.