Till Grüne-Yanoff & Sven Ove Hansson 
Preference Change 
Approaches from philosophy, economics and psychology

Changing preferencesis a phenomenonoften invoked but rarely properlyaccounted for. Throughout the history of the social sciences, researchers have come against the possibility that their subjects’ preferenceswere affected by the phenomenato be explainedor by otherfactorsnot taken into accountin the explanation.Sporadically, attempts have been made to systematically investigate these in uences, but none of these seems to have had a lasting impact. Today we are still not much further with respect to preference change than we were at the middle of the last century. This anthology hopes to provide a new impulse for research into this important subject. In particular, we have chosen two routes to amplify this impulse. First, we stress the use of modellingtechniquesfamiliar from economicsand decision theory. Instead of constructing complex, all-encompassing theories of preference change, the authors of this volume start with very simple, formal accounts of some possible and hopefully plausible mechanism of preference change. Eventually, these models may nd their way into larger, empirically adequate theories, but at this stage, we think that the most importantwork lies in building structure.Secondly, we stress the importance of interdisciplinary exchange. Only by drawing together experts from different elds can the complex empirical and theoretical issues in the modelling of preference change be adequately investigated.

Table of Content

Preference Change: An Introduction.- Three Analyses of Sour Grapes.- For Better or for Worse: Dynamic Logics of Preference.- Preference, Priorities and Belief.- Why the Received Models of Considering Preference Change Must Fail.- Exploitable Preference Changes.- Recursive Self-prediction in Self-control and Its Failure.- From Belief Revision to Preference Change.- Preference Utilitarianism by Way of Preference Change?.- The Ethics of Nudge.- Preference Kinematics.- Population-Dependent Costs of Detecting Trustworthiness: An Indirect Evolutionary Analysis.