Memory-biased preferences: How accessibility affects judgments and decision-making prospects.

In five experiments we studied the extent to which theories of judgment, decision-making and memory can predict people's preferences. Applying Prospect Theory and Support Theory to these data we find that (a) the weighting function required to model decisions with 'high-accessible' features in memory differs from the function required to model choices between monetary gambles and (b) the accessibility (Fox & Levav, 2000; Kahneman, 2003; Koriat, 2001) of events in memory affects choices between options, influencing participants' decisions about, but not their judgments of, these options. This result indicates a failure of the descriptive invariance axiom of Expected Utility Theory.