Blanche Carter Has Devised a System for Rating the Males

question 27

Essay

Blanche Carter has devised a system for rating the males in her economics class.She cares about their intelligence and their looks.She has ranked each male on a scale of 1 to 5 for intelligence and 1 to 3 for looks.She defines a preference relation, R, as follows: xRy if boy x scores at least as high as boy y in either looks or intelligence.Give an example to show that Blanche's method of determining preferences might not lead to transitive preferences.

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Definitions:

Libido

A term used in psychoanalytic theory to denote the energy associated with sexual drives and desires.

Oedipus Complex

A Freudian theory that suggests a child's unconscious sexual desire for the opposite-sex parent and jealousy toward the same-sex parent.

Unconscious

A term in psychology referring to the part of the mind that is not currently in focal awareness, containing processes, memories, and desires beyond conscious access.

Preconscious

The part of the mind containing information that is not currently in focal awareness but can easily be accessed, as described in psychoanalytic theory.