Interpreting the will of the people: social preferences over ordinal outcomes

We investigate the nature of social preferences when a decision maker's information is limited to group members' ordinal rankings. By studying choices made on behalf of others, we identify social choice rules that embody the normative values decision makers implicitly favor. Few people are attracted to majority or plurality rule as a normative principle. Most favor scoring rules that promote compromise. People evaluate relative sacrifice by inferring cardinal utility from ordinal ranks, but also care about ranks intrinsically. Cluster analysis reveals that our social preference classification is comprehensive. Ordinal aggregation principles are stable across domains and countries with divergent traditions.