The Ladder Theory of Behavioral Decision Making

Abstract

We study individual decision-making behavioral on generic view. Using a formal mathematical model, we investigate the action mechanism of decision behavioral under subjective perception changing of task attributes. Our model is built on work in two kinds classical behavioral decision making theory: "prospect theory (PT)" and "image theory (IT)". We consider subjective attributes preference of decision maker under the whole decision process. Strategies collection and selection mechanism are induced according the description of multi-attributes decision making. A novel behavioral decision-making framework named "ladder theory (LT)" is proposed. By real four cases comparing, the results shows that the LT have better explanation and prediction ability then PT and IT under some decision situations. Furthermore, we use our model to shed light on that the LT theory can cover PT and IT ideally. It is the enrichment and development for classical behavioral decision theory and, it has positive theoretical value and instructive significance for explaining plenty of real decision-making phenomena. It may facilitate our understanding of how individual decision-making performed actually.