Delight or disappointment? A model of signal-based other-pleasing choice

This paper develops a discrete choice model to address the problem of an other-pleasing decision-maker (DM), who makes a choice for another individual without knowing her/his preferences and expectation. The DM's choice may delight or disappoint the other, depending on her/his expectation from the DM. The psychological utility of the other is a function of the emotion triggered by the DM's choice. The objective of the DM is to maximise the expected psychological utility of the other. In the absence of complete information, a risky choice is made by the DM, based on signals about the other's expectation that s/he receives. In terms of personality trait, the DM may be a delight-seeker, or disappointment-averse, or neutral. While a delight-seeker overweighs the other's psychological utility from delight, a disappointment-averse DM overweighs the disutility of disappointment. Based on the model, hypotheses have been constructed and tested in a gamified decision-making scenario that simulated the model conditions. In this serious game experiment, delight-seeking, disappointment-averse, and neutral behaviours were induced by use of appropriate incentivisation of the subjects in the corresponding treatment groups. Unique choice architecture has been given to subjects in each treatment group to signal the expectation of a hypothetical other, and choice decisions were observed under elicited belief. Compared to the control (neutral) group, those in delight-seeking treatment were observed to be less likely, and those in disappointment-averse more likely, to make a choice in conformity to the signal they received. Statistically significant results were obtained only when the signals were strong.