Task: How do people choose between options? At one extreme, the ‘value-first’ view is that the brain computes the value of different options and simply favours options with higher values. An...

Task: How do people choose between options? At one extreme,
the ‘value-first’ view is that the brain computes
the value of different options and simply favours options
with higher values. An intermediate position, taken by
many psychological models of judgment and decision
making, is that values are computed but that the resulting
choices depend heavily on the context of available
options. At the other extreme, the ‘comparison-only’
view argues that choice depends directly on comparisons,
with or even without any intermediate computation
of value. In this paper, we place past and current
psychological and neuroscientific theories on this spectrum,
and review empirical data that have led to an
increasing focus on comparison rather than value as
the driver of choice.