Preference Information & Preference Links at HealthHaven.com

For other uses, see Preference (disambiguation).

Preference (also called "taste" or "penchant") is a concept, used in the social sciences, particularly economics. It assumes a real or imagined "choice" between alternatives and the possibility of rank ordering of these alternatives, based on happiness, satisfaction, gratification, enjoyment, utility they provide. More generally, it can be seen as a source of motivation. In cognitive sciences, individual preferences enable choice of objectives/goals.

[edit] Preference in economics

In microeconomics, preferences of consumers and other entities are modelled with preference relations.

Let S be the set of all "packages" of goods and services (or more generally "possible worlds"). Then ≤ is a preference relation on S if it is a binary relation on S such that a ≤ b if and only if b is at least as preferable as a. It is conventional to say "b is weakly preferred to a", or just "b is preferred to a". If a ≤ b but not b ≤ a, then the consumer strictly prefers b to a, which is written a < b. If a ≤ b and b ≤ a then the consumer is indifferent between a and b.

These assumptions are commonly made:

The relation is reflexive: a ≤ a
The relation is transitive: a ≤ b and b ≤ c then a ≤ c. Together with reflexivity this means it is a preorder
The relation is complete: for all a and b in S we have a ≤ b or b ≤ a or both (notice that completeness implies reflexivity). This means the consumer is able to form an opinion about the relative merit of any pair of bundles.
The relation is continuous (if S is a topological space, then for each point x in S, the set of points that are strictly preferred to x and the set of points that x is strictly preferred to are both open).

If ≤ is both transitive and complete, then it is a rational preference relation. In some literature, a transitive and complete relation is called a weak order (or total preorder).

If a consumer has a preference relation that violates transitivity, then an unscrupulous person can milk them as follows. Suppose the consumer has an apple, and prefers apples to oranges, oranges to bananas, and bananas to apples. Then, the consumer would be prepared to pay, say, one cent to trade their apple for a banana, because they prefer bananas to apples. After that, they would pay another cent to trade their banana for an orange, and again the orange for an apple, and so on. (See: Intransitivity. Occurrences.)

Completeness is more philosophically questionable. In most applications, S is an infinite set and the consumer is not conscious of all preferences. For example, one does not have to make up one's mind about whether one prefers to go on holiday by plane or by train if one does not have enough money to go on holiday anyway (although it can be nice to dream about what one would do if one would win the lottery). However, preference can be interpreted as a hypothetical choice that could be made rather than a conscious state of mind. In this case, completeness amounts to an assumption that the consumer can always make up their mind whether they are indifferent or prefer one option when presented with any pair of options.

It is also possible that extreme circumstances can arise in which no "rational" choice is possible - for example if asked to choose which one of one's children will be killed as in Sophie's Choice. In that case preferences would be incomplete, since "not being able to choose" is not the same as "being indifferent".

Behavioral economics investigates the circumstances when human behavior is consistent and inconsistent with these assumptions.

The indifference relation ~ is an equivalence relation. Thus we have a quotient set S/~ of equivalence classes of S, which forms a partition of S. Each equivalence class is a set of packages that is equally preferred. If there are only two commodities, the equivalence classes can be graphically represented as indifference curves. Based on the preference relation on S we have a preference relation on S/~. As opposed to the former, the latter is antisymmetric and a total order.

It is usually more convenient to describe a preference relation on S with a utility function $u : S \rightarrow \textbf R$ , such that u(a) ≤ u(b) if and only if a ≤ b. A continuous utility function always exists if ≤ is a continuous rational preference relation on $R n$ . For any such preference relation, there are many continuous utility functions that represent it. Conversely, every utility function can be used to construct a unique preference relation.

All the above is independent of the prices of the goods and services and independent of the budget of the consumer. These determine the feasible packages (those he or she can afford). In principle the consumer chooses a package within his or her budget such that no other feasible package is preferred over it; the utility is maximized.

[edit] Notation

Sometimes symbols like $\prec, \succ, \precsim, \succsim$ are used as a reminder that equivalence is not necessarily equality.

[edit] See also

Look up prefer in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

[edit] References

Kreps, David (1990). A Course in Microeconomic Theory. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-04264-0
Mas-Colell, Andreu; Whinston, Michael; & Green, Jerry (1995). Microeconomic Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507340-1

[edit] External links

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on 'Preferences'
Customer preference formation DOC (white paper from ICR)

Contents

[edit] Preference in economics

[edit] Notation

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] External links