Choices, Values, and Frames

INTRODUCTION

The concept of utility has carried two different meanings in its long history. As Bentham (1789) used it, utility refers to the experiences of pleasure and pain, the “sovereign masters” that “point out what we ought to do, as well as determine what we shall do.” In modern decision research, however, the utility of outcomes refers to their weight in decisions: utility is inferred from observed choices and is in turn used to explain choices. To distinguish the two notions I refer to Bentham's concept as experienced utility and to the modern usage as decision utility. Experienced utility is the focus of this chapter. Contrary to the behaviorist position that led to the abandonment of Bentham's notion (Loewenstein 1992), the claim made here is that experienced utility can be usefully measured.

The chapter has three main goals: (1) to present a detailed analysis of the concept of experienced utility and of the relation between the pleasure and pain of moments and the utility of more extended episodes; (2) to argue that experienced utility is best measured by moment-based methods that assess current experience; (3) to develop a moment-based conception of an aspect of well-being that I will call “objective happiness.” The chapter also introduces several unfamiliar concepts that will be used in later chapters.

Pleasure and pain are attributes of a moment of experience, but the outcomes that people value extend over time. It is therefore necessary to establish a concept of experienced utility that applies to temporally extended outcomes. Two approaches to this task will be compared here.