Randomization in individual choice behavior

There is ample evidence that people cannot generate random series when instructed to do so. Rather, they produce sequences with too few symmetries and long runs and too many alternations among events. The authors propose a psychological theory to account for these findings, which assumes that subjects generate nonrandom sequences that locally represent theoretical random series subject to a constraint on their short-term memory. Closed-form expressions are then derived for the major statistics that have been used to test for deviations from randomness. Results from 3 experiments with 2 and 3 equiprobable alternatives support the model on both the individual and group levels.