The falsifiability of actual decision-making models
| Authors |
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|---|---|
| Publication date | 2014 |
| Journal | Psychological Review |
| Volume | Issue number | 121 | 4 |
| Pages (from-to) | 676-678 |
| Organisations |
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| Abstract |
Jones and Dzhafarov (2014) provided a useful service in pointing out that some assumptions of modern decision-making models require additional scrutiny. Their main result, however, is not surprising: If an infinitely complex model was created by assigning its parameters arbitrarily flexible distributions, this new model would be able to fit any observed data perfectly. Such a hypothetical model would be unfalsifiable. This is exactly why such models have never been proposed in over half a century of model development in decision making. Additionally, the main conclusion drawn from this result—that the success of existing decision-making models can be attributed to assumptions about parameter distributions—
is wrong. |
| Document type | Article |
| Language | English |
| Published at | https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037771 |
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