Paradox, Performance, and the Architecture of Decision-Making in Animals

SYNPOSIS. The analysis of risk-sensitive foraging is beginning to explore the psychological and cognitive mechanisms involved in decision-making under uncertainty as well as the more traditional functional analysis. Over the past 40 years cognitive psychologists exploring human decision-mak- ing have made great use of apparent "paradoxes" in rational choice be- havior in elucidating aspects of information-processing. In this paper I review several of these paradoxes as they might relate to animal decision- making and the interpretation of cognitive architecture. The St. Petersburg Paradox can be related directly to the original analysis of risk-sensitive foraging by focusing on the non-linear translation of resources into cur- rencies of evolutionary value, e.g., rate of energy gain. The Allais Paradox focuses on the need to evaluate the organism's perception of probabilities and possible non-linearities in the assignment of likelihood. Various con- text-effects illustrate the potential difficulties associated with decision- making over options with multiple attributes. Where possible I illustrate the biological evaluation of the paradoxes discussed.