Decomposing loss aversion from gaze allocation and pupil dilation

Decomposing loss aversion from a single neural signal

People often display stronger aversion to losses than appetite for equivalent gains, a widespread phenomenon known as loss aversion. The prevailing theory attributes loss aversion to a valuation bias that amplifies losses relative to gains. An alternative account attributes loss aversion to a response bias that avoids choices that might result in loss. By modeling the temporal dynamics of scalp electrical activity during decisions to accept or reject gambles within a sequential sampling framework, we decomposed valuation bias and response bias from a single event-related neural signal, the P3. Specifically, we found valuation bias manifested as larger sensitivity of P3 to losses than gains, which was localizable to reward-related brain regions. By contrast, response bias manifested as larger P3 preceding gamble acceptance than rejection and was localizable to motor cortex. Our study reveals the dissociable neural biomarkers of response bias and valuation bias underpinning loss-averse decisions.

Exploring the Loss Aversion Scale's psychometric properties in Spain

Loss aversion is a psychological construct defined as a tendency to value potential losses more than gains in a situation that requires decision-making. The Loss Aversion Scale (LAS, eight items) measures an individual's loss aversion to various situations. However, the generalization of its psychometric properties to different population groups is unknown. This study aimed to validate the LAS instrument for use among Spanish university adults. To this end, two studies were conducted: a content validity study calculating the substantive validity (N = 24) of the instrument's translation from original English to Spanish and a study of internal structure and association (N = 766) among Spanish university men and women aged 18-35. The analyses performed for each sample indicated that the instrument had adequate validity and reliability values as a one-dimensional measure; however, items 5 and 8 had to be removed. Their scores indicated moderate-magnitude correlations with social desirability. This article debates the study's limitations, practical implications, and future lines of research based on the results. The conclusion is that the Loss Aversion Scale instrument suits general Spanish population samples and requires probable methodological control concerning social desirability.

Multiple timescales of temporal context in risky choice: Behavioral identification and relationships to physiological arousal

Context-dependence is fundamental to risky monetary decision-making. A growing body of evidence suggests that temporal context, or recent events, alters risk-taking at a minimum of three timescales: immediate (e.g. trial-by-trial), neighborhood (e.g. a group of consecutive trials), and global (e.g. task-level). To examine context effects, we created a novel monetary choice set with intentional temporal structure in which option values shifted between multiple levels of value magnitude ("contexts") several times over the course of the task. This structure allowed us to examine whether effects of each timescale were simultaneously present in risky choice behavior and the potential mechanistic role of arousal, an established correlate of risk-taking, in context-dependency. We found that risk-taking was sensitive to immediate, neighborhood, and global timescales: risk-taking decreased following large (vs. small) outcome amounts, increased following large positive (but not negative) shifts in context, and increased when cumulative earnings exceeded expectations. We quantified arousal with skin conductance responses, which were related to the global timescale, increasing with cumulative earnings, suggesting that physiological arousal captures a task-level assessment of performance. Our results both replicate and extend prior research by demonstrating that risky decision-making is consistently dynamic at multiple timescales and that the role of arousal in risk-taking extends to some, but not all timescales of context-dependence.

Material Hardship Predicts Response Bias in Loss-Averse Decisions: The Roles of Anxiety and Cognitive Control

Income poverty is associated with an enhanced tendency to avoid losses in economic decisions, which can be driven by a response bias (risk avoidance) and a valuation bias (loss aversion). However, the impact of non-income dimensions of poverty on these biases remains unclear. The current study tested the impact of material hardship on these biases, and the mediating effects of anxiety, depression, and cognitive control in these associations. Healthy adults (N = 188) completed questionnaire and behavioral measures of the variables. Results of regression-based analyses showed that participants who reported higher material hardship exhibited greater response bias, but not valuation bias. This effect was mediated by anxiety. Although material hardship predicted lower cognitive control, cognitive control did not mediate the association between material hardship and either type of bias. These findings suggest that material hardship may lead to economic decision-making biases because it impacts emotional states rather than cognitive control.

Mapping the bioimaging marker of Alzheimer's disease based on pupillary light response-driven brain-wide fMRI in awake mice

Pupil dynamics has emerged as a critical non-invasive indicator of brain state changes. In particular, pupillary-light-responses (PLR) in Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients may be used as biomarkers of brain degeneration. To characterize AD-specific PLR and its underlying neuromodulatory sources, we combined high-resolution awake mouse fMRI with real-time pupillometry to map brain-wide event-related correlation patterns based on illumination-driven pupil constriction ( P c ) and post-illumination pupil dilation recovery (amplitude, P d , and time, T ). The P c -driven differential analysis revealed altered visual signal processing coupled with reduced thalamocortical activation in AD mice compared with the wild-type normal mice. In contrast, the post-illumination pupil dilation recovery-based fMRI highlighted multiple brain areas related to AD brain degeneration, including the cingulate cortex, hippocampus, septal area of the basal forebrain, medial raphe nucleus, and pontine reticular nuclei (PRN). Also, brain-wide functional connectivity analysis highlighted the most significant changes in PRN of AD mice, which serves as the major subcortical relay nuclei underlying oculomotor function. This work combined non-invasive pupil-fMRI measurements in preclinical models to identify pupillary biomarkers based on neuromodulatory dysfunction coupled with AD brain degeneration.

Risky decisions are influenced by individual attributes as a function of risk preference

It has long been assumed in economic theory that multi-attribute decisions involving several attributes or dimensions - such as probabilities and amounts of money to be earned during risky choices - are resolved by first combining the attributes of each option to form an overall expected value and then comparing the expected values of the alternative options, using a unique evidence accumulation process. A plausible alternative would be performing independent comparisons between the individual attributes and then integrating the results of the comparisons afterwards. Here, we devise a novel method to disambiguate between these types of models, by orthogonally manipulating the expected value of choice options and the relative salience of their attributes. Our results, based on behavioral measures and drift-diffusion models, provide evidence in favor of the framework where information about individual attributes independently impacts deliberation. This suggests that risky decisions are resolved by running in parallel multiple comparisons between the separate attributes - possibly alongside an additional comparison of expected value. This result stands in contrast with the assumption of standard economic theory that choices require a unique comparison of expected values and suggests that at the cognitive level, decision processes might be more distributed than commonly assumed. Beyond our planned analyses, we also discovered that attribute salience affects people of different risk preference type in different ways: risk-averse participants seem to focus more on probability, except when monetary amount is particularly high; risk-neutral/seeking participants, in contrast, seem to focus more on monetary amount, except when probability is particularly low.

Measuring utility with diffusion models

The drift diffusion model (DDM) is a prominent account of how people make decisions. Many of these decisions involve comparing two alternatives based on differences of perceived stimulus magnitudes, such as economic values. Here, we propose a consistent estimator for the parameters of a DDM in such cases. This estimator allows us to derive decision thresholds, drift rates, and subjective percepts (i.e., utilities in economic choice) directly from the experimental data. This eliminates the need to measure these values separately or to assume specific functional forms for them. Our method also allows one to predict drift rates for comparisons that did not occur in the dataset. We apply the method to two datasets, one comparing probabilities of earning a fixed reward and one comparing objects of variable reward value. Our analysis indicates that both datasets conform well to the DDM. We find that utilities are linear in probability and slightly convex in reward.

The art of the deal: Deciphering the endowment effect from traders' eyes

People are often reluctant to trade, a reticence attributed to the endowment effect. The prevailing account attributes the endowment effect to valuation-related bias, manifesting as sellers valuing goods more than buyers, whereas an alternative account attributes it to response-related bias, manifesting as both buyers and sellers tending to stick to the status quo. Here, by tracking and modeling eye activity of buyers and sellers during trading, we accommodate both views within an evidence-accumulation framework. We find that valuation-related bias is indexed by asymmetric attentional allocation between buyers and sellers, whereas response-related bias is indexed by arousal-linked pupillary reactivity. A deal emerges when both buyers and sellers attend to their potential gains and dilate their pupils. Our study provides preliminary evidence for our computational framework of the dynamic processes mediating the endowment effect and identifies physiological biomarkers of deal-making.

Implicit Negativity Bias Leads to Greater Loss Aversion and Learning during Decision-Making

It is widely accepted there is the existence of negativity bias, a greater sensitivity to negative emotional stimuli compared with positive ones, but its effect on decision-making would depend on the context. In risky decisions, negativity bias could lead to non-rational choices by increasing loss aversion; yet in ambiguous decisions, it could favor reinforcement-learning and better decisions by increasing sensitivity to punishments. Nevertheless, these hypotheses have not been tested to date. Our aim was to fill this gap. Sixty-nine participants rated ambiguous emotional faces (from the NimStim set) as positive or negative to assess negativity bias. The implicit level of the bias was also obtained by tracking the mouse's trajectories when rating faces. Then, they performed both a risky and an ambiguous decision-making task. Participants displayed negativity bias, but only at the implicit level. In addition, this bias was associated with loss aversion in risky decisions, and with greater performance through the ambiguous decisional task. These results highlight the need to contextualize biases, rather than draw general conclusions about whether they are inherently good or bad.

Influence of the Location of a Decision Cue on the Dynamics of Pupillary Light Response

The pupils of the eyes reflexively constrict in light and dilate in dark to optimize retinal illumination. Non-visual cognitive factors, like attention, arousal, decision-making, etc., also influence pupillary light response (PLR). During passive viewing, the eccentricity of a stimulus modulates the pupillary aperture size driven by spatially weighted corneal flux density (CFD), which is the product of luminance and the area of the stimulus. Whether the scope of attention also influences PLR remains unclear. In this study, we contrasted the pupil dynamics between diffused and focused attentional conditions during decision-making, while the global CFD remained the same in the two conditions. A population of 20 healthy humans participated in a pair of forced choice tasks. They distributed attention to the peripheral decision cue in one task, and concentrated at the center in the other to select the target from four alternatives for gaze orientation. The location of this cue did not influence participants' reaction time (RT). However, the magnitude of constriction was significantly less in the task that warranted attention to be deployed at the center than on the periphery. We observed similar pupil dynamics when participants either elicited or canceled a saccadic eye movement, which ruled out pre-saccadic obligatory attentional orientation contributing to PLR. We further addressed how the location of attentional deployment might have influenced PLR. We simulated a biomechanical model of PLR with visual stimulation of different strengths as inputs corresponding to the two attentional conditions. In this homeomorphic model, the computational characteristic of each element was derived from the physiological and/or mechanical properties of the corresponding biological element. The simulation of this model successfully mimicked the observed data. In contrast to common belief that the global ambient luminosity drives pupillary response, the results of our study suggest that the effective CFD (eCFD) determined via the luminance multiplied by the size of the stimulus at the location of deployed attention in the visual space is critical for the magnitude of pupillary constriction.

Prosocial Gains and Losses: Modulations of Human Social Decision-Making by Loss-Gain Context

The role of the loss-gain context in human social decision-making remains heavily debated, with mixed evidence showing that losses (vs. gains) boost both selfish and prosocial motivations. Herein, we propose that the loss context, compared to the gain context, exacerbates intuitive reactions in response to the conflict between self-interest and prosocial preferences, regardless of whether those dominant responses are selfish or altruistic. We then synthesize evidence from three lines of research to support the account, which indicates that losses may either enhance or inhibit altruistic behaviors depending on the dominant responses in the employed interactive economic games, prosocial/proself traits, and the explicit engagement of deliberative processes. The current perspective contributes to the ongoing debate on the association between loss-gain context and human prosociality by putting forward a theoretical framework to integrate previous conflicting perspectives.

Webcam-based online eye-tracking for behavioral research

Experiments are increasingly moving online. This poses a major challenge for researchers who rely on in-lab techniques such as eye-tracking. Researchers in computer science have developed web-based eye-tracking applications (WebGazer; Papoutsaki et al., 2016) but they have yet to see them used in behavioral research. This is likely due to the extensive calibration and validation procedure, inconsistent temporal resolution (Semmelmann & Weigelt, 2018), and the challenge of integrating it into experimental software. Here, we incorporate WebGazer into a JavaScript library widely used by behavioral researchers (jsPsych) and adjust the procedure and code to reduce calibration/validation and improve the temporal resolution (from 100–1000 ms to 20–30 ms). We test this procedure with a decision-making study on Amazon MTurk, replicating previous in-lab findings on the relationship between gaze and choice, with little degradation in spatial or temporal resolution. This provides evidence that online web-based eye-tracking is feasible in behavioral research.

Decoding the brain state-dependent relationship between pupil dynamics and resting state fMRI signal fluctuation

Pupil dynamics serve as a physiological indicator of cognitive processes and arousal states of the brain across a diverse range of behavioral experiments. Pupil diameter changes reflect brain state fluctuations driven by neuromodulatory systems. Resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) has been used to identify global patterns of neuronal correlation with pupil diameter changes; however, the linkage between distinct brain state-dependent activation patterns of neuromodulatory nuclei with pupil dynamics remains to be explored. Here, we identified four clusters of trials with unique activity patterns related to pupil diameter changes in anesthetized rat brains. Going beyond the typical rs-fMRI correlation analysis with pupil dynamics, we decomposed spatiotemporal patterns of rs-fMRI with principal component analysis (PCA) and characterized the cluster-specific pupil-fMRI relationships by optimizing the PCA component weighting via decoding methods. This work shows that pupil dynamics are tightly coupled with different neuromodulatory centers in different trials, presenting a novel PCA-based decoding method to study the brain state-dependent pupil-fMRI relationship.

Neural correlates of visual attention during risky decision evidence integration

Value-based decision-making is presumed to involve a dynamic integration process that supports assessing the potential outcomes of different choice options. Decision frameworks assume the value of a decision rests on both the desirability and risk surrounding an outcome. Previous work has highlighted neural representations of risk in the human brain, and their relation to decision choice. Key neural regions including the insula and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) have been implicated in encoding the effects of risk on decision outcomes, including approach and avoidance. Yet, it remains unknown whether these regions are involved in the dynamic integration processes that precede and drive choice, and their relationship with ongoing attention. Here, we used concurrent fMRI and eye-tracking to discern neural activation related to visual attention preceding choice between sure-thing (i.e. safe) and risky gamble options. We found activation in both dorsal ACC (dACC) and posterior insula (PI) scaled in opposite directions with the difference in attention to risky rewards relative to risky losses. PI activation also differentiated foveations on both risky options (rewards and losses) relative to a sure-thing option. These findings point to ACC involvement in ongoing evaluation of risky but higher value options. The role of PI in risky outcomes points to a more general evaluative role in the decision-making that compares both safe and risky outcomes, irrespective of potential for gains or losses.

The adaptive value of probability distortion and risk-seeking in macaques' decision-making

In humans, the attitude toward risk is not neutral and is dissimilar between bets involving gains and bets involving losses. The existence and prevalence of these decision features in non-human primates are unclear. In addition, only a few studies have tried to simulate the evolution of agents based on their attitude toward risk. Therefore, we still ignore to what extent Prospect theory's claims are evolutionarily rooted. To shed light on this issue, we collected data from nine macaques that performed bets involving gains or losses. We confirmed that their overall behaviour is coherent with Prospect theory's claims. In parallel, we used a genetic algorithm to simulate the evolution of a population of agents across several generations. We showed that the algorithm selects progressively agents that exhibit risk-seeking, and has an inverted S-shape distorted perception of probability. We compared these two results and found that monkeys' attitude toward risk is only congruent with the simulation when they are facing losses. This result is consistent with the idea that gambling in the loss domain is analogous to deciding in a context of life-threatening challenges where a certain level of risk-seeking behaviour and probability distortion may be adaptive. This article is part of the theme issue 'Existence and prevalence of economic behaviours among non-human primates'.

Using dynamic monitoring of choices to predict and understand risk preferences

Navigating conflict is integral to decision-making, serving a central role both in the subjective experience of choice as well as contemporary theories of how we choose. However, the lack of a sensitive, accessible, and interpretable metric of conflict has led researchers to focus on choice itself rather than how individuals arrive at that choice. Using mouse-tracking-continuously sampling computer mouse location as participants decide-we demonstrate the theoretical and practical uses of dynamic assessments of choice from decision onset through conclusion. Specifically, we use mouse tracking to index conflict, quantified by the relative directness to the chosen option, in a domain for which conflict is integral: decisions involving risk. In deciding whether to accept risk, decision makers must integrate gains, losses, status quos, and outcome probabilities, a process that inevitably involves conflict. Across three preregistered studies, we tracked participants' motor movements while they decided whether to accept or reject gambles. Our results show that 1) mouse-tracking metrics of conflict sensitively detect differences in the subjective value of risky versus certain options; 2) these metrics of conflict strongly predict participants' risk preferences (loss aversion and decreasing marginal utility), even on a single-trial level; 3) these mouse-tracking metrics outperform participants' reaction times in predicting risk preferences; and 4) manipulating risk preferences via a broad versus narrow bracketing manipulation influences conflict as indexed by mouse tracking. Together, these results highlight the importance of measuring conflict during risky choice and demonstrate the usefulness of mouse tracking as a tool to do so.

Psychological mechanisms of loss aversion: A drift-diffusion decomposition

Decision makers often reject mixed gambles offering equal probabilities of a larger gain and a smaller loss. This important phenomenon, referred to as loss aversion, is typically explained by prospect theory, which proposes that decision makers give losses higher utility weights than gains. In this paper we consider alternative psychological mechanisms capable of explaining loss aversion, such as a fixed utility bias favoring rejection, as well as a bias favoring rejection prior to gamble valuation. We use a drift diffusion model of decision making to conceptually distinguish, formally define, and empirically measure these mechanisms. In two preregistered experiments, we show that the pre-valuation bias provides a very large contribution to model fits, predicts key response time patterns, reflects prior expectations regarding gamble desirability, and can be manipulated independently of the valuation process. Our results indicate that loss aversion is the result of multiple different psychological mechanisms, and that the pre-valuation bias is a fundamental determinant of this well-known behavioral tendency. These results have important implications for how we model behavior in risky choice tasks, and how we interpret its relationship with various psychological, clinical, and neurobiological variables.