Rational
theories of choice assume that more options lead to better outcomes,
and psychological studies traditionally find that decision-makers
prefer more choice alternatives to less. However, emerging evidence
suggests that both psychological and behavioral costs emerge as choice
set sizes grow exceedingly large. Extensive choice sets are
demotivating, decreasing the incentive to make a selection, and
generate lower outcome satisfaction and more regret when a decision is
made. Behavioral examples of context-dependent preference and
violations of rationality suggest that these psychological costs may
reflect the effects of set size on the decision process itself. Here,
we examine how the array of alternatives influences neural activity in
the brain areas involved in decision-making, with a focus on the
primate visuo-saccadic system. Detailed knowledge about the neural
representation of value, in particular the role of normalization
mechanisms and uncertainty, may provide key insight on the source of
behavioral set size effects.
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