Cohen et al. (2016; J Exp Psychol Learn Memory Cognit 48:2015, 2022) proposed and defined a theoretical construct termed Psychological Value. They validated this construct by measuring the perceived Psychological Values of a variety of stimuli and demonstrating that those measurements predict participants’ RTs and response choices in preferential choice tasks. Here, we examine how the perceived Psychological Value of a group of items changes as a function of (a) the number of items and (b) the perceived Psychological Values of the individual items in the group. Many utility functions assume the value of a group of items is some function of the summed value of the individual items (e.g., Monotonicity). In contrast, Cohen et al. (J Exp Psychol Learn Memory Cognit 48:2015, 2022) propose that Psychological Value is perceived. If Psychological Value is perceived, perceptual averaging is likely to occur. In Experiment 1, we used both exploratory and confirmatory analyses to determine the relation between the value of a group of items and its’ individual items. Results indicate that perceived Psychological Value of groups is well predicted by perceptual averaging (rather than summing) with some influence of the maximum valued item (i.e., attentional capture of high valued stimuli). In Experiment 2, we presented novel participants with forced choices between heterogenous groups of varying numbers of items. Results validate the biased perceptual averaging grouping function identified in Experiment 1.
