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Behavioral Sciences
Special Issues
Decision Aggregation Processes and Sociocultural Influences
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Decision Aggregation Processes and Sociocultural Influences

A special issue of Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X). This special issue belongs to the section "Behavioral Economics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2024 | Viewed by 3151

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Ruth Ben-Yashar

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Economics, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel
Interests: collective decision-making; decision aggregation; voting theory

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In a decision-making context, aggregation refers to the process of combining individuals' choices or opinions to arrive at a collective decision. Decision aggregation is used by economic organizations, committees, and juries. Within this context, decisions (i.e., choices between two alternatives) are made by a group of individuals (or criteria) who have the same objective function (as defined in Condorcet’s jury theorem). In this vein, this Special Issue will have a twofold focus: the formal and behavioral aspects of decision aggregation.

The formal aspect of decision aggregation is the identification of the optimal decision rule, i.e., the optimal decision rule determined under constraints that incorporates behavioral considerations, as well as the analysis of the decision rule's characteristics and features.

Regarding the behavioral aspect, sociocultural influences play a significant role in decision aggregation, shaping not only the decisions of individuals, such as individual preferences, skills, and strategies, but also the means of aggregation, such as democracy, unanimity, and dictatorship.

The formal and behavioral aspects of decision aggregation, as well as the recognition of their interplay, provide a deeper understanding of how societies make collective choices that reflect their values and norms.

Prof. Ruth Ben-Yashar
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Behavioral Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Condorcet’s jury theorem
  • decision rule
  • simple majority rule
  • unanimity rule
  • democracy
  • aggregation of decisions
  • skill
  • sociocultural influences

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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7 pages, 422 KiB  
Article
Manipulations in Democracy?
by Ruth Ben-Yashar
Behav. Sci. 2024, 14(4), 315; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14040315 - 11 Apr 2024
Viewed by 490
Abstract
Democracy is upheld through the principle of majority rule. To validate the application of democracy, it is imperative to assess the sincerity of voter decisions. When voter sincerity is compromised, manipulation may occur, thereby undermining the legitimacy of democratic processes. This paper presents [...] Read more.
Democracy is upheld through the principle of majority rule. To validate the application of democracy, it is imperative to assess the sincerity of voter decisions. When voter sincerity is compromised, manipulation may occur, thereby undermining the legitimacy of democratic processes. This paper presents a general version of a symmetric dichotomous choice model. Using simple majority rule, we show that when a voter receives one or more private signals, sincere voting is an equilibrium behavior. A slight change to this basic model may create an incentive to vote insincerely. We show that even in a more restricted model where every voter receives only one private signal whose level of precision is the same for all the voters but depends on the state of nature, voters may have an incentive to vote insincerely. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Decision Aggregation Processes and Sociocultural Influences)
18 pages, 1056 KiB  
Article
Household Decision-Making Choices: Investment in Children’s Education or Self-Consumption
by Heng Jiang, Lili Liu and Yonglin Zhang
Behav. Sci. 2024, 14(3), 224; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14030224 - 10 Mar 2024
Viewed by 914
Abstract
Analyzing the sustainable decision-making mechanism between household consumption and education investment can theoretically develop education. This study uses the continuous-time utility model to demonstrate the independent characteristics of consumption and education investment, as well as the principle of decision incompatibility in the decision-making [...] Read more.
Analyzing the sustainable decision-making mechanism between household consumption and education investment can theoretically develop education. This study uses the continuous-time utility model to demonstrate the independent characteristics of consumption and education investment, as well as the principle of decision incompatibility in the decision-making process of the utility maximization problem. Then, we establish a three-phase logarithmic utility model to obtain the intertemporal decision-making path of a family. The analysis shows that the investment allocation ratio between the two phases depends on the expected and discounted level of the offsprings’ abilities, while the total investment level is related to parental altruism. When parents, with foresight, factor in prospective transfer payments from progeny, the optimal decision is to maximize their children’s ultimate human capital within a given total investment. Education investment not only squeezes out consumption but also promotes consumption in various periods due to future transfer payments. The decision-making process of three typical growth stages indicates that as offspring mature and their human capital increases, parents’ willingness to invest in education decreases while self-consumption escalates. This study provides a new perspective and theoretical basis for studying household education expenditure, motivation, and related policy formulation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Decision Aggregation Processes and Sociocultural Influences)
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Review

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15 pages, 268 KiB  
Review
Deliberative Democracy and Incompatibilities of Choice Norms
by Hannu Nurmi
Behav. Sci. 2023, 13(12), 985; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs13120985 - 29 Nov 2023
Viewed by 1046
Abstract
Deliberative democracy aims at reaching collective decisions through mechanisms that involve flexible opinions, variable alternative sets and information gathering in the process of decision making as opposed to exogenously fixed alternative sets and preference rankings. Deliberative democracy includes elements derived from bargaining and [...] Read more.
Deliberative democracy aims at reaching collective decisions through mechanisms that involve flexible opinions, variable alternative sets and information gathering in the process of decision making as opposed to exogenously fixed alternative sets and preference rankings. Deliberative democracy includes elements derived from bargaining and negotiation. Among its virtues, some proponents of deliberative democracy have included the possibility that several important negative results of the theory of voting can be avoided. The basic stratagem is to dismiss the universal domain condition typically assumed in social choice results. Thus, the validity of the results escaped from is obviously not in question. The position taken in this paper is that, while in some respects plausible, the escape argument is based on a too narrow view of the incompatibility results of the social choice theory. Some fundamental paradoxes remain beyond the reach of the deliberative techniques and are even exacerbated by them. That said, the deliberative approach can certainly be adopted for making voting alternatives more meaningful to those involved. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Decision Aggregation Processes and Sociocultural Influences)
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