Preference Judgments (Individuals)

Preferences are based on evaluations of objects (i.e., targets) or choices between objects (i.e., alternatives) resulting from subjective assessments of the objects' overall value, and often include the subjective assessment of probabilities with which particular outcomes could materialize. Preferences can be stable or unstable, implicit or explicit, and based on nonconscious or conscious thoughts. In psychological research, preferences are assessed by a variety of measures and analyzed using a variety of statistical procedures. Importantly, although preferences can reflect rational thought and behavior, they often violate norms of rationality. Overall, research throughout the last decades suggests that preferences are vastly context dependent.