preview

Difference Between Prospect Theory And Prospect Theory

Decent Essays

INTRODUCTION
Generally, it is believed the net effect of the gains and losses involved with each choice are combined to present an overall evaluation of whether a choice is desirable. Scholars tend to use "utility" to state enjoyment and contend that we prefer instances that maximize our utility.
However, studies have found that we don't actually process information in such a rational way. Kahneman and Tversky presented an idea called prospect theory in 1979, which contends that people value gains and losses differently, and, as such, will base decisions on perceived profits rather than perceived losses. Thus, if a person were given two equal choices, one expressed in terms of possible gains and the other in possible losses, people would choose …show more content…

In part, Prospect Theory offers insights into why people make non-optimizing decisions rather than only those that are profit maximizing. Prospect Theory is central to much of Behavioural Finance and is often contrasted with the more conventional Efficient Market Hypothesis and Expected Utility Theory.

"Prospect" refer to what we have so far called lotteries or gambles, i.e. a set of outcomes with a probability distribution over them. They also state that where winning is possible but not probable, i.e. when probabilities are low, most people choose the prospect that offers the larger gain.

EXPERIMENT & FINDINGS:
Kahnemann and Tversky also found strong evidence of what they referred to as the reflection effect. To illustrate: Imagine an Allais Paradox-type problem, framed in the following way. You must choose between one of the two gambles, or prospects:
Gamble A:
A 100% chance of losing $3000.
Gamble B:
An 80% chance of losing $4000, and a 20% chance of losing …show more content…

First, in prospect theory, people derive utility from gains and losses, measured relative to some reference point, rather than from absolute levels of wealth: the argument of Kahneman and Tversky motivate this assumption, known as “reference dependence,” with explicit experimental evidence (see, for example, Problems 11 and 12 in their 1979 paper), but also by noting that our perceptual system works in a similar way: we are more attuned to changes in attributes such as brightness, loudness, and temperature than we are to their absolute

Get Access