Glossary
Utility Expectation Model
What is the Utility Expectation Model?
The Utility Expectation Model (UEM) is Timothy Gohmann's label for a proposed account of the mental processes behind choices. His 2015 essay in the Behavioral Economics Guide combines decision processes, individual characteristics, situational influences, and feedback from experienced outcomes.
What the proposal covers
The essay discusses how time pressure, self-control, and previous outcomes might interact. It offers a conceptual perspective and thought experiments, while identifying validation as work still needed.
An illustration of the proposal
Gohmann uses choices between immediate and delayed gratification to ask how personal characteristics, such as self-control, interact with external conditions, such as time pressure and stress. His proposed feedback component adds what the person experienced after earlier choices.
To make those components concrete, imagine a shopper choosing between buying now and waiting. A deadline is a situational input; the shopper’s tolerance for risk is an individual characteristic; disappointment with a previous rushed purchase is experienced-outcome feedback. This shopping scenario illustrates the essay’s proposed components. It is not an experiment from the essay or evidence that the model correctly predicts the purchase.
Utility Expectation Model vs. expected utility theory
The names sound similar, but they refer to different ideas. Expected utility theory represents choices through probability-weighted utilities. Gohmann's proposal concerns a mental process incorporating behavioral effects and feedback.
Evidence and limitations
The essay establishes what its author means by the label. The proposed model still needs empirical validation.
Why it matters
Check which model is being discussed before applying its name. A plausible account of how choices unfold is a proposal to test, rather than proof of how everyone decides.