ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2017
Monkeys choose as if maximizing utility compatible with basic principles of revealed preference theory.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- Neuronal Activity in Orbitofrontal Cortex during Trinary Choices under Risk.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Preferences for fat, sugar, and oral-sensory food qualities in monkeys and humans.Physiology & behavior · 2025Review
- Neuronal Activity in Orbitofrontal Cortex during Trinary Choices under Risk.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Nutrient-Sensitive Reinforcement Learning in Monkeys.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023Article
- Risky choice: Probability weighting explains independence axiom violations in monkeys.Journal of risk and uncertainty · 2022Article
- Emergence and Embodiment in Economic Modeling.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Review
- Rational regulation of water-seeking effort in rodents.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Reward-specific satiety affects subjective value signals in orbitofrontal cortex during multicomponent economic choice.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Preferences for nutrients and sensory food qualities identify biological sources of economic values in monkeys.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Anterior Cingulate Cortex Lesions Abolish Budget Effects on Effort-Based Decision-Making in Rat Consumers.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2021Article
- Single-Dimensional Human Brain Signals for Two-Dimensional Economic Choice Options.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2021Article
- Conditional valuation for combinations of goods in primates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- Excitatory-inhibitory tone shapes decision strategies in a hierarchical neural network model of multi-attribute choice.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Quantity-quality trade-off in the acquisition of token preference by capuchin monkeys (Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Experimentally revealed stochastic preferences for multicomponent choice options.Journal of experimental psychology. Animal learning and cognition · 2020Article
- Orbitofrontal signals for two-component choice options comply with indifference curves of Revealed Preference Theory.Nature communications · 2019Article
- Neural encoding of choice during a delayed response task in primate striatum and orbitofrontal cortex.Experimental brain research · 2018Article
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3 authors.
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Abstract
Revealed preference theory provides axiomatic tools for assessing whether individuals make observable choices "as if" they are maximizing an underlying utility function. The theory evokes a tradeoff between goods whereby individuals improve themselves by trading one good for another good to obtain the best combination. Preferences revealed in these choices are modeled as curves of equal choice (indifference curves) and reflect an underlying process of optimization. These notions have far-reaching applications in consumer choice theory and impact the welfare of human and animal populations. However, they lack the empirical implementation in animals that would be required to establish a common biological basis. In a design using basic features of revealed preference theory, we measured in rhesus monkeys the frequency of repeated choices between bundles of two liquids. For various liquids, the animals' choices were compatible with the notion of giving up a quantity of one good to gain one unit of another good while maintaining choice indifference, thereby implementing the concept of marginal rate of substitution. The indifference maps consisted of nonoverlapping, linear, convex, and occasionally concave curves with typically negative, but also sometimes positive, slopes depending on bundle composition. Out-of-sample predictions using homothetic polynomials validated the indifference curves. The animals' preferences were internally consistent in satisfying transitivity. Change of option set size demonstrated choice optimality and satisfied the Weak Axiom of Revealed Preference (WARP). These data are consistent with a version of revealed preference theory in which preferences are stochastic; the monkeys behaved "as if" they had well-structured preferences and maximized utility.
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