A multi-self model of self-punishment

TL;DR

This paper introduces a model of self-punishment in decision-making, characterizing how individuals deny themselves pleasure, explaining certain biases, and providing methods to estimate and understand the extent of self-punishment.

Contribution

It develops a formal framework for understanding self-punishment in choices, identifying conditions for estimation, and characterizing behaviors with maximal self-punishment.

Findings

Identifies conditions to estimate self-punishment levels

Characterizes preferences explaining minimal denial of pleasure

Shows most choices exhibit high self-punishment

Abstract

We investigate the choice of a decision maker (DM) who harms herself, by maximizing in each menu some distortion of her true preference, in which the first i alternatives are moved, in reverse order, to the bottom. This pattern has no empirical power, but it allows to define a degree of self-punishment, which measures the extent of the denial of pleasure adopted by the DM. We characterize irrational choices displaying the lowest degree of self-punishment, and we fully identify the preferences that explain the DM's picks by a minimal denial of pleasure. These datasets account for some well known selection biases, such as second-best procedures, and the handicapped avoidance. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the estimation of the degree of self-punishment of a choice are singled out. Moreover the linear orders whose harmful distortions justify choice data are partially elicited. Finally, we offer a simple characterization of the choice behavior that exhibits the highest degree of self-punishment, and we show that this subclass comprises almost all choices.