Preference

Preference refers to a person’s or group's choice of one option over another, reflecting the strength of liking or valuation. Preferences can be expressed as rankings, scores, or stated choices and guide decisions in everyday life as well as in formal modeling.

In economics and decision theory, preferences are often modeled as a complete and transitive relation over alternatives: for any two options, a person can prefer one, prefer the other, or be indifferent, and the ranking is consistent across chains. These relations can be represented by a utility function, usually ordinal (only the order matters) or cardinal (magnitude of differences matters). Revealed preference theory derives preferences from observed choices, linking theory to real behavior.

Preferences influence consumer behavior, risk tolerance, and policy evaluation. They are shaped by information, framing, context, and social influences, and may change with experience. In collectivist or policy contexts, aggregating individual preferences into a social ranking raises questions addressed by social choice theory and, in some cases, results like Arrow's impossibility theorem.

Measuring preferences relies on surveys, experiments, or observed choices. Preferences can be context-dependent and constructed or revised as new information emerges. Understanding preferences is central across economics, psychology, marketing, and decision sciences.