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The Falsifiability of Actual Decision-Making Models

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-22, 02:29 authored by Heathcote, A, Wagenmakers, E-J, Brown, SD
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.

History

Publication title

Psychological Review

Volume

121

Issue

4

Pagination

676-678

ISSN

0033-295X

Department/School

Tasmanian School of Medicine

Publisher

Amer Psychological Assoc

Place of publication

750 First St Ne, Washington, USA, Dc, 20002-4242

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Expanding knowledge in psychology

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