  Complicating matters is empirical research suggesting that our preferences are subject to such powerful contextual influences that it is better to talk about the construction of coherent preferences than about their derivation from underlying desires (see, e.g., the papers in Lichtenstein and Slovic 2006). For example, in a classic study, it was found that offering subjects a free choice between one of two bets (of almost identical expected value—around $4—but with different maximum payoffs and different maximum penalties) led to subjects revealing a preference for one of the two bets. Offering the same subjects a chance to bid on each bet revealed that subjects were often willing to pay more to play the other of the two bets, apparently showing that subjects preferred the other of the two bets when bidding but not when choosing freely (Lichtenstein and Slovic 1971). Thus, something as minimal as the difference between choosing and bidding can shift preferences between two near-equivalent bets, or so it would seem, calling into question the very existence of a stable fact about preference independent of the way a choice is framed. If this is the best way to look at things, then perhaps it will turn out that a small number of preferences are basic, and that there just are no facts about the degree to which something is desired overall by a person.