Spring Break
Psychology colloquium examines utility concept
Hilary Brady
Issue date: 2/3/09 Section: News
02/03/09 - University of Rhode Island professor John Burkett gave a lecture yesterday entitled "Expected Utility Theory, Prospect Theory, and Applications to Health and Medicine." The approximately hour-long presentation, held in the Cancer Prevention Research Center, discussed the idea of utility and its impact on human behaviors and feelings.
The concept of utility is to "indicate the usefulness of something for a particular purpose," Burkett said.
In essence, the purpose of human action is the "pursuit of happiness." This pursuit is aimed toward the gain of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Thus, the utility of an object is "its capacity to attribute to that pursuit of happiness," Burkett said. "It's a function people strive to maximize."
The amount of utility one can measure varies depending on the time relative to the experience. For example, "experienced utility" measures the instantaneous gratification from a moment in time, like a student attending a concert and responding to it during the concert.
If that student was to think back about that same concert a few days later, he or she would be analyzing "remembered utility"-a measure of happiness based upon memory.
In the future, the student could use that memory to influence a decision to see another concert, based on how happy she or he was in the past. In this instance, the student would be exercising "predicted utility."
The differences between these types of utility have a strong influence in judging patients' reactions to medical procedures. A patient who gets a quick procedure has less total pain than a patient who gets an extended procedure that gets gradually less invasive.
However, people do not tend to "remember the whole curve of the experience," but rather the "most painful moment and end moment," Burkett said. As a result, the patient with the faster procedure remembers the experience as more painful because the procedure began and ended with peaks of pain.
The concept of utility is to "indicate the usefulness of something for a particular purpose," Burkett said.
In essence, the purpose of human action is the "pursuit of happiness." This pursuit is aimed toward the gain of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Thus, the utility of an object is "its capacity to attribute to that pursuit of happiness," Burkett said. "It's a function people strive to maximize."
The amount of utility one can measure varies depending on the time relative to the experience. For example, "experienced utility" measures the instantaneous gratification from a moment in time, like a student attending a concert and responding to it during the concert.
If that student was to think back about that same concert a few days later, he or she would be analyzing "remembered utility"-a measure of happiness based upon memory.
In the future, the student could use that memory to influence a decision to see another concert, based on how happy she or he was in the past. In this instance, the student would be exercising "predicted utility."
The differences between these types of utility have a strong influence in judging patients' reactions to medical procedures. A patient who gets a quick procedure has less total pain than a patient who gets an extended procedure that gets gradually less invasive.
However, people do not tend to "remember the whole curve of the experience," but rather the "most painful moment and end moment," Burkett said. As a result, the patient with the faster procedure remembers the experience as more painful because the procedure began and ended with peaks of pain.
