Selective Integration: An Attentional Theory of Choice Biases and Adaptive Choice

Human choice behavior shows a range of puzzling anomalies. Even simple binary choices are modified by accept/reject framing and by the presence of decoy options, and they can exhibit circular (i.e., intransitive) patterns of preferences. Each of these phenomena is incompatible with many standard models of choice but may provide crucial clues concerning the elementary mental processes underpinning our choices. One promising theoretical account proposes that choice-related information is selectively gathered through an attentionally limited window favoring goal-consistent information. We review research showing attentional-mediated choice biases and present a computationally explicit model—selective integration—that accounts for these biases.