Violations of the betweenness axiom and nonlinearity in probability

Abstract

Betweenness is a weakened form of the independence axiom, stating that a probability mixture of two gambles should lie between them in preference. Betweenness is used in many generalizations of expected utility and in applications to game theory and macroeconomics. Experimental violations of betweenness are widespread. We rule out intransitivity as a source of violations and find that violations are less systematic when mixtures are presented in compound form (because the compound lottery reduction axiom fails empirically). We also fit data from nine studies using Gul's disappointment-aversion theory and two variants of EU, which weight separate or cumulative probabilities nonlinearly. The three theories add only one parameter to EU and fit much better.

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