Is Payoff Necessarily Weighted by Probability When Making a Risky Choice? Evidence from Functional Connectivity Analysis

Rao, Li‐Lin; Li, Shu; Jiang, Tianzi; Zhou, Yuan

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0041048

Cited by 9 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 85 publications

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“…The main body of decision making research focuses on decision making with financial incentives, and is based on the Expected Value (EV) theory, which states that the decision maker chooses the option that has the most EV while weighing the probabilities related to the payoffs [30] . Experimental tasks involving financial risk-taking ask participants to decide among choices in which the odds explicitly favor one of the available options, rewarding or punishing choices with arbitrary points.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Higher Landing Accuracy in Expert Pilots is Associated with Lower Activity in the Caudate Nucleus

et al. 2014

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The most common lethal accidents in General Aviation are caused by improperly executed landing approaches in which a pilot descends below the minimum safe altitude without proper visual references. To understand how expertise might reduce such erroneous decision-making, we examined relevant neural processes in pilots performing a simulated landing approach inside a functional MRI scanner. Pilots (aged 20–66) were asked to “fly” a series of simulated “cockpit view” instrument landing scenarios in an MRI scanner. The scenarios were either high risk (heavy fog–legally unsafe to land) or low risk (medium fog–legally safe to land). Pilots with one of two levels of expertise participated: Moderate Expertise (Instrument Flight Rules pilots, n = 8) or High Expertise (Certified Instrument Flight Instructors or Air-Transport Pilots, n = 12). High Expertise pilots were more accurate than Moderate Expertise pilots in making a “land” versus “do not land” decision (CFII: d′ = 3.62±2.52; IFR: d′ = 0.98±1.04; p<.01). Brain activity in bilateral caudate nucleus was examined for main effects of expertise during a “land” versus “do not land” decision with the no-decision control condition modeled as baseline. In making landing decisions, High Expertise pilots showed lower activation in the bilateral caudate nucleus (0.97±0.80) compared to Moderate Expertise pilots (1.91±1.16) (p<.05). These findings provide evidence for increased “neural efficiency” in High Expertise pilots relative to Moderate Expertise pilots. During an instrument approach the pilot is engaged in detailed examination of flight instruments while monitoring certain visual references for making landing decisions. The caudate nucleus regulates saccade eye control of gaze, the brain area where the “expertise” effect was observed. These data provide evidence that performing “real world” aviation tasks in an fMRI provide objective data regarding the relative expertise of pilots and brain regions involved in it.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Higher Landing Accuracy in Expert Pilots is Associated with Lower Activity in the Caudate Nucleus

et al. 2014

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“…This means that our results do not exclude the possibility that the large majority of participants in affect‐poor problems who are well captured by CPT relied on heuristic principles rather than on an expectation‐based calculus. In fact, process analyses of risky choice in the monetary domain have provided evidence for heuristic processes (such as limited and intradimensional search; e.g., Pachur et al, ; Rao, Li, Jiang, & Zhou, ; Rao et al, ; Su, Rao, Sun, Du, Li, & Li, ; Venkatraman, Payne, & Huettel, ). Therefore, our result that cognitive mechanisms appear to be altered qualitatively (e.g., one‐reason decision making) rather than quantitatively (different degree of probability weighting) when affect enters the picture (at least for some respondents) should be extended in future research to understand more precisely the cognitive mechanisms in affect‐poor risky choice.…”

Section: Modeling the Impact Of Affect On Choice: Multiple Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Affect Shapes Risky Choice: Distorted Probability Weighting Versus Probability Neglect

Suter

Pachur

Hertwig

2015

Behavioral Decision Making

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People's choices between prospects with relatively affect-rich outcomes (e.g., medical side effects) can diverge markedly from their choices between prospects with relatively affect-poor outcomes (e.g., monetary losses). We investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying this "affect gap" in risky choice. One possibility is that affect-rich prospects give rise to more distortion in probability weighting. Another is that they lead to the neglect of probabilities. To pit these two possibilities against each other, we fitted cumulative prospect theory (CPT) to the choices of individual participants, separately for choices between options with affect-rich outcomes (adverse medical side effects) and options with affect-poor outcomes (monetary losses); additionally, we tested a simple model of probability neglect, the minimax rule. The results indicated a qualitative difference in cognitive mechanisms between the affect-rich and affect-poor problems. Specifically, in affect-poor problems, the large majority of participants were best described by CPT; in affect-rich problems, the proportion of participants best described by the minimax rule was substantially higher. The affect gap persisted even when affect-rich outcomes were supplemented by numerical information, thus providing no support for the thesis that choices in affect-rich and affect-poor problems diverge because the information provided in the former is nonnumerical. Our findings suggest that the traditional expectation-based framework for modeling risky decision making may not readily generalize to affect-rich choices.Additional supporting information may be found in the online version of this article at the publisher's web-site. key words risky choice; affect; probability weighting; prospect theory; minimax rule 1 Note that our distinction between "affect-rich" and "affect-poor" choices and outcomes is an ordinal rather than an absolute one. Even affect-poor outcomes are not completely devoid of affective quality. MaterialsParticipants were presented with a total of four tasks: a monetary evaluation task, two choice tasks (involving affect-poor and affect-rich problems, respectively), and an affective evaluation task. In the monetary evaluation task, participants were first asked to rank the following 12 side effects from most to least unpleasant: fatigue,

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“…According to mainstream theories, risky decision making assume that the core processes involved in reaching a risky decision include weighting each payoff or reward magnitude by its probability and then summing the expected outcomes (negative or positive; Rao et al, 2012 ). In the so-called payoff network, the striatum is the structure most consistently reported to be involved in the influence of reward magnitude/payoff on the neural substrate.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural Correlates of Direct Access Trading in a Real Stock Market: An fMRI Investigation

et al. 2017

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Background: While financial decision making has been barely explored, no study has previously investigated the neural correlates of individual decisions made by professional traders involved in real stock market negotiations, using their own financial resources.Aim: We sought to detect how different brain areas are modulated by factors like age, expertise, psychological profile (speculative risk seeking or aversion) and, eventually, size and type (Buy/Sell) of stock negotiations, made through Direct Access Trading (DAT) platforms.Subjects and methods: Twenty male traders underwent fMRI while negotiating in the Italian stock market using their own preferred trading platform.Results: At least 20 decision events were collected during each fMRI session. Risk averse traders performed a lower number of financial transactions with respect to risk seekers, with a lower average economic value, but with a higher rate of filled proposals. Activations were observed in cortical and subcortical areas traditionally involved in decision processes, including the ventrolateral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC, dlPFC), the posterior parietal cortex (PPC), the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), and dorsal striatum. Regression analysis indicated an important role of age in modulating activation of left NAcc, while traders' expertise was negatively related to activation of vlPFC. High value transactions were associated with a stronger activation of the right PPC when subjects' buy rather than sell. The success of the trading activity, based on a large number of filled transactions, was related with higher activation of vlPFC and dlPFC. Independent of chronological and professional age, traders differed in their attitude to DAT, with distinct brain activity profiles being detectable during fMRI sessions. Those subjects who described themselves as very self-confident, showed a lower or absent activation of both the caudate nucleus and the dlPFC, while more reflexive traders showed greater activation of areas involved in strategic decision making.Discussion: The neural correlates in DAT are similar to those observed in other decision making contexts. Trading is handled as a well-learned automatic behavior by expert traders; for those who mostly rely on heuristics, cognitive effort decreases, and transaction speed increases, but decision efficiency lowers following a poor involvement of the dlPFC.

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Is Payoff Necessarily Weighted by Probability When Making a Risky Choice? Evidence from Functional Connectivity Analysis

Cited by 9 publications

References 85 publications

Higher Landing Accuracy in Expert Pilots is Associated with Lower Activity in the Caudate Nucleus

Higher Landing Accuracy in Expert Pilots is Associated with Lower Activity in the Caudate Nucleus

How Affect Shapes Risky Choice: Distorted Probability Weighting Versus Probability Neglect

Neural Correlates of Direct Access Trading in a Real Stock Market: An fMRI Investigation

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