How costs affect preferences: experiments on state dependence, hedonic state and within-trial contrast in starlings

Aw, Justine; Vasconcelos, Marco; Kacelnik, Alex

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.02.015

Cited by 50 publications

(63 citation statements)

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“…These studies reported that when participants were given a choice between the S+ that followed a delay and the S+ that followed no delay, they showed a significant preference for the delayed as compared to the not-delayed S+. According to these studies, our results could also be interpreted in terms of the effect of time rather than the effect of differential efforts or difficulty, although in a previous report two preprogrammed delays (fixed intervals; FI 3 s vs. FI 18 s) did not produce a preference for the subsequent stimuli (Aw et al, 2011).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…In a series of previous studies in which the delay was manipulated, obtained the contrast effect in humans, whereas Aw et al (2011) failed to replicate the effect in starlings. Aw et al argued, in terms of the nature of effort, that if the main factor affecting the birds is an energetic one, then waiting a certain time would not be sufficient for the birds to manifest the contrast effect.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…That is, the efforts in Experiment 1 that obtained the contrast effect required the participants to respond constantly. Aw et al (2011) reported that starlings did not show a preference for the outcomes when the initial task consisted of an FI, which contained a waiting time, until a reinforcement was set up, whereas they did show the preference for the outcomes that followed energetically expensive responses, such as flying between the travel perches at the far ends of the cage. In general, an FI has a low rate of responding correlated with nonreinforcement at and near the beginning of the interval (Ferster & Skinner, 1957).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the WTC has been demonstrated in numerous studies, other studies have reported failures to find the contrast effect in both humans and nonhuman animals (Arantes & Grace, 2008;Aw, Vasconcelos, & Kacelnik, 2011;Shibasaki & Kawai, 2008;Shibasaki & Kawai, 2011;Vasconcelos, Urcuioli, & Lionello-DeNolf, 2007;Vasconcelos & Urcuioli, 2008). For example, Arantes and Grace (2008), who tried to replicate the contrast effect, trained pigeons using the same response requirement (FR20 vs. FR1) as Clement et al (2000).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Effects of effort and difficulty on human preference for a stimulus: Investigation of the within-trial contrast

2016

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The within-trial contrast hypothesis (WTC) provides a more parsimonious explanation for the phenomenon that humans and animals prefer outcomes that follow more effortful events to outcomes that follow less effortful events (Zentall, 2013). We conducted two WTC experiments with human adults. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the difficulty of a preceding event by varying the interresponse time and the limited-hold interval during differential reinforcement with a low response rate schedule, to examine the effect of effort on the preference for the subsequent stimuli. In Experiment 2, we attempted to identify the variables that had affected the results of Experiment 1, by manipulating time as the delay of reinforcement. The results showed preferences based on WTC only when participants made a high rate of incorrect responses in the preceding event, which was used as an index of the strength of individual effort. These results extend the findings of previous human WTC studies and suggest that the difficulty of a task could serve as an aversive event that affects the WTC effect. It is possible that an index based on performance in the preceding event would provide useful information for predicting the contrast effect.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Effects of effort and difficulty on human preference for a stimulus: Investigation of the within-trial contrast

2016

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“…It is also assumed that obtaining the reinforcer causes a shift to a more positive value (relative to the value at the start of the trial). The final assumption is that the value of the reinforcer depends on the relative change in value; that is, the change in value from the end of the response requirement to the appearance of the reinforcer (or the appearance A similar model of suboptimal choice has been proposed by Aw, Vasconcelos, and Kacelnik (2011). They indicate "that animals may attribute value to their options as a function of the experienced fitness or hedonic change at the time of acting" (p. 1118).…”

Section: A Model Of Justification Of Effort For Animalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Animals prefer reinforcement that follows greater effort: Justification of effort or within-trial contrast?

Zentall¹

2013

CCBR

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Justification of effort by humans is a form of reducing cognitive dissonance by enhancing the value of rewards when they are more difficult to obtain. Presumably, assigning greater value to rewards provides justification for the greater effort needed to obtain them. We have found such effects in adult humans and children with a highly controlled laboratory task. More importantly, under various conditions we have found similar effects in pigeons, animals not typically thought to need to justify their behavior to themselves or others. To account for these results, we have proposed a mechanism based on within-trial contrast between the end of the effort and the reinforcement (or the signal for reinforcement) that follows. This model predicts that any relatively aversive event can serve to enhance the value of the reward that follows it, simply through the contrast between those two events. In support of this general model, we have found this effect in pigeons when the prior event consists of: (a) more rather than less effort (pecking), (b) a long rather than a short delay, and (c) the absence of food rather than food. We also show that within-trial contrast can occur in the absence of relative delay reduction theory. Contrast of this kind may also play a role in other social psychological phenomena that have been interpreted in terms of cognitive dissonance. Keywords: cognitive dissonance, justification of effort, contrast, delay reduction When humans behave in a way that is inconsistent with the way they think they should behave, they will often try to justify their behavior by altering their beliefs. The theory on which this behavior is based is known as cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957). Evidence for the attempt to reduce cognitive dissonance comes from the classic study by Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) who found that subjects, who were given a small reward for agreeing to tell a prospective subject that a boring task was interesting, then rated the task more interesting than subjects who were given a large reward. Presumably, those given a small reward could not

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Gambling on an empty stomach: Hunger modulates preferences for learned but not described risks

2023

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Introduction:We assess risks differently when they are explicitly described, compared to when we learn directly from experience, suggesting dissociable decision-making systems. Our needs, such as hunger, could globally affect our risk preferences, but do they affect described and learned risks equally? On one hand, decision-making from descriptions is often considered flexible and context sensitive, and might therefore be modulated by metabolic needs. On the other hand, preferences learned through reinforcement might be more strongly coupled to biological drives.Method: Thirty-two healthy participants (females: 20, mean age: 25.6 ± 6.5 years) with a normal weight (Body Mass Index: 22.9 ± 3.2 kg/m 2 ) were tested in a within-subjects counterbalanced, randomized crossover design for the effects of hunger on two separate risk-taking tasks. We asked participants to choose between two options with different risks to obtain monetary outcomes. In one task, the outcome probabilities were described numerically, whereas in a second task, they were learned. Result:In agreement with previous studies, we found that rewarding contexts induced risk-aversion when risks were explicitly described (F 1,31 = 55.01, p < .0001, η p 2 = .64), but risk-seeking when they were learned through experience (F 1,31 = 10.28, p < .003, η p 2 = .25). Crucially, hunger attenuated these contextual biases, but only for learned risks (F 1,31 = 8.38, p < .007, η p 2 = .21). Conclusion:The results suggest that our metabolic state determines risk-taking biases when we lack explicit descriptions.

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How costs affect preferences: experiments on state dependence, hedonic state and within-trial contrast in starlings

Cited by 50 publications

References 47 publications

Effects of effort and difficulty on human preference for a stimulus: Investigation of the within-trial contrast

Effects of effort and difficulty on human preference for a stimulus: Investigation of the within-trial contrast

Animals prefer reinforcement that follows greater effort: Justification of effort or within-trial contrast?

Gambling on an empty stomach: Hunger modulates preferences for learned but not described risks

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