The DOI matches its Crossref record; 89 of the 89 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
PROSPECT THEORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE
Abstract
▪ Abstract Prospect theory is the most influential behavioral theory of choice in the social sciences. Its creators won a Nobel Prize in economics, and it is largely responsible for the booming field of behavioral economics. Although international relations theorists who study security have used prospect theory extensively, Americanists, comparativists, and political economists have shown little interest in it. The dominant explanation for political scientists' tepid response focuses on the theoretical problems with extending a theory devised in the lab to explain political decisions in the field. This essay focuses on these problems and reviews suggested solutions. It suggests that prospect theory's failure to ignite the imagination of more political scientists probably results from their aversion to behavioral assumptions and not from problems unique to prospect theory.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979) · Econometrica · doi:10.2307/1914185 · Cited by 48,524
Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1988) · Decision, Probability and Utility · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511609220.014 · Cited by 32,474
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.185.4157.1124 · Cited by 28,810
Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1975) · Utility, Probability, and Human Decision Making · doi:10.1007/978-94-010-1834-0_8 · Cited by 22,650
Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
(1982) · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511809477 · Cited by 8,240
Well-being : the foundations of hedonic psychology
Kahneman, D. J., Diener, E. F., & Schwarz, N. (1999) · Cited by 7,466
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1984) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/0003-066x.39.4.341 · Cited by 6,544
Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.
Shafer, G. R., Kahnerman, D., Slovic, P., & Tversky, A. (1984) · Journal of the American Statistical Association · doi:10.2307/2288362 · Cited by 5,657
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (2013) · World Scientific Handbook in Financial Economics Series · doi:10.1142/9789814417358_0016 · Cited by 5,320
Judgment under uncertainty: List of contributors
Kahneman, D. J., Slovic, P., & Tversky, A. (1982) · Cited by 4,670
Cited by
The Economic Psychology of Tax Behaviour
Kirchler, E., & Braithwaite, V. (2007) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511628238 · Cited by 1,206
Amygdala damage eliminates monetary loss aversion
De Martino, B., Camerer, C. F., & Adolphs, R. (2010) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0910230107 · Cited by 444
Segregation by Design: Local Politics and Inequality in American Cities
Trounstine, J. (2018) · doi:10.1017/9781108555722 · Cited by 428
News, Politics, and Negativity
Soroka, S., & McAdams, S. (2015) · Political Communication · doi:10.1080/10584609.2014.881942 · Cited by 420
Timely Decisions: The Effects of Past National Elections on Party Policy Change
Somer-Topcu, Z. (2009) · The Journal of Politics · doi:10.1017/s0022381608090154 · Cited by 294
Metadata
- Authors
- Mercer, J.
- Venue
- Annual Review of Political Science
- Publisher
- Annual Reviews
- Published
- 2005-06-15
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 1-21
- ISSN
- 1094-2939 (ISSN-L)
- 1545-1577
- OpenAlex
- W2096604669
- Cited by
- 364
- References
- 89
- FWCI
- 1.20
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: PROSPECT THEORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1146/annurev.polisci.8.082103.104911
- The paper
- Mercer, J. (2005). PROSPECT THEORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. Annual Review of Political Science. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.8.082103.104911
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
