Jun Hyun Ji
2026
My wife is upset about the undone dishes.
I ask, “Why didn’t you just tell me to do it?”
She says, “Because you should want to do it.”
The quality of a choice is relative to constraints: it is evaluated not only by its outcome but also by what the choice reveals about the decision-maker’s preferences. I develop an axiomatic framework for preferences over choices, where an evaluator values each observed choice for its outcome and for the revelation that the chosen outcome is preferred to all other feasible alternatives. I define “second-order preference” through an axiom that captures the relative nature of choice quality. Within the expected-utility framework, my axioms yield a unique representation that separately identifies the evaluator’s preference for outcomes and her second-order preference. As a special case, the model accommodates temptation and self-control as determinants of choice quality, generating a trade-off between achieving the best outcome and making the best choice. This provides a revealed-preference characterization of preferences over preferences, with implications for menu choice, paternalistic policy, and welfare evaluation.