Pre-Decision Structuring in AI-Mediated Systems: How Decision Spaces Are Shaped Before Choice Formation

Pre-Decision Structuring (PDS) is a conceptual framework for understanding how AI systems shape decision spaces before explicit choice formation. Traditional decision-making theories assume that individuals evaluate alternatives within a given set of options. This paper argues that in AI-mediated environments, the available option space is increasingly constructed through upstream processes such as filtering, framing, ranking, and simulation before evaluation occurs. The framework introduces four core mechanisms of pre-decision structuring and examines their implications for AI-mediated decision systems, human-AI interaction, and the broader transformation of decision-making processes. This Version 2 expands the theoretical grounding, literature references, and conceptual clarification of the framework while preserving the original definition and core mechanisms of Pre-Decision Structuring.