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The research was described in detail in preceding technical reports. This final report draws extensively on earlier ones', but it is somewhat selective, focusing on the more important and/or successful themes of the research. The report is organized as follows: (1) Studies of normality. (2) Further studies of contingent coding. (3) Processing of dimensional information in priming. (4) The language of counterfactuals. (5) Comparisons of intrapersonal and interpersonal norms. (6) Mental contamination. (7) Unintended comparisons. (8) Topic and referent in perceptual comparisons. (9) Anchoring.

In the second year of the grant I continued three projects initiated in the first year, and began two new lines of research. A study of contingent coding in normality judgements yielded disappointing results. We started a systematic exploration of the relation between discriminability and similarity, which we plan to extend to categorization and normality. A series of studies established essentially perfect dimensional independence in object-specific priming. We conducted a theoretical and empirical examination of close counterfactuals. Two separate projects dealt with the process of comparison, continuing and extending work reported last year. Keywords: Perception, (Psychology), Categorization, Comparison processes, Normality.

The theoretical basis of decision analysis is utility theory, which describes the principles upon which people wish to base their decisions. This article questions the validity of utility theory and offers an alternative, 'prospect theory.' In addition to providing evidence in support of prospect theory, this paper discusses its implications for the theory and practice of decision analysis. It suggests, for example, ways in which subtle changes in elicitation procedure can have marked effects on people's expressed values.