Two Kinds of Adaptation, Two Kinds of Relativity

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper presents a review of adaptation concepts at the evolutionary, environmental, neural, sensory, mental and mathematical levels, including Helson’s and Parducci’s theories of perception and category judgments. Two kinds of adaptation can be clearly distinguished. The first, known as level adaptation, refers to the shift of the neutral perception level to the average stimulus value. It results in a single reference point and stimuli changes represented in absolute terms. This concept is employed by Prospect Theory, which assumes that gains and losses are perceived as monetary amounts. The second kind of adaptation refers to the adjustment of perception sensitivity to stimuli range. It results in two reference points (minimum and maximum stimulus) and stimuli changes perceived in relative terms. Both range adaptation and range relativity are well documented phenomena and have even been confirmed by the creators of Prospect Theory. This makes room for another decision making theory based on the range relativity approach. As shown by Kontek (2009), such a theory would not require the concept of probability weighting to describe lottery experiments or behavioral paradoxes.

Keywords: Adaptation-Level Theory; Range-Frequency Theory; Prospect Theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D03 D81 D87 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-09-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-hpe, nep-neu and nep-upt
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/25169/1/MPRA_paper_25169.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:25169

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().