Individual Differences in Subjective Utility and Risk Preferences: The Influence of Hedonic Capacity and Trait Anxiety

Immediate emotions and subjective stakes in risky decision-making under uncertainty

BACKGROUND

Previous research has shown that immediate emotions and cognitive processing of the stakes of outcomes influence decision-making under uncertainty. The effect of perceived beneficial stakes and different types of immediate emotions on decision-making is an important topic that has received little attention in the literature. This study investigated the effects of trait anxiety and anticipatory emotions (fear, sadness, excitement and comfortability) on the perception of thee stakes of outcomes and behavioral intentions.

METHOD

Participants from the community completed a task measuring anticipatory emotions and their perceived stakes of risky and beneficial outcomes in a range of uncertain situations. Trait anxiety was also measured.

RESULTS

Results revealed that anticipatory emotions (except for sadness), trait anxiety and subjective stakes all demonstrated significant associations with risky behavioral intention in uncertain situations. Anticipatory emotions, but not trait anxiety, had stable effects on stake perceptions. However, trait anxiety moderated the effect of excitement on risky behavioral intention. In addition, positive emotions (comfortability and excitement) and beneficial stakes demonstrated consistent effects in the decision-making process.

CONCLUSIONS

The current study sheds light on future immediate-emotion-based interventions for deficits in uncertain decision-making.

The influence of fear on risk taking: a meta-analysis

A common finding in the study of emotion and decision making is the tendency for fear and anxiety to decrease risk taking. The current meta-analysis summarises the strength and variability of this effect in the extant empirical literature. Our analysis of 136 effect sizes, derived from 68 independent samples and 9,544 participants, included studies that experimentally manipulated fear or measured naturally varying levels of fear or anxiety in both clinical and non-clinical samples, and studies measuring risky decision making and risk estimation. A multilevel random effects model estimated a small to moderate average effect size (r = 0.22), such that fear was related to decreased risky decision making and increased risk estimation. There was also high heterogeneity in the effect sizes. Moderator analyses showed that effect sizes were greater when risk tasks used tangible (e.g. monetary) outcomes and when studies used clinically anxious participants. However, there also remained considerable variability in effect sizes, the sources of which remain unknown. We posit several potential factors that may contribute to observed variability in this effect for future study, including factors concerning both the nature of fear experience and the risk taking context.

A parallel accumulator model accounts for decision randomness when deciding on risky prospects with different expected value

In decision-making situations individuals rarely have complete information available to select the best option and often show decisional randomness, i.e. given the same amount of knowledge individuals choose different options at different times. Dysfunctional processes resulting in altered decisional randomness can be considered a target process for psychiatric disorders, yet these processes remain poorly understood. Advances in computational modeling of decision-making offer a potential explanation for decisional randomness by positing that decisions are implemented in the brain through accumulation of noisy evidence, causing a generally less preferred option to be chosen at times by chance. One such model, the linear ballistic accumulator (LBA), assumes that individuals accumulate information for each option independently over time and that the first option to reach a threshold will be selected. To investigate the mechanisms of decisional randomness, we applied the LBA to a decision-making task in which risk and expected value (EV) were explicitly signaled prior to making a choice, and estimated separate drift rates for each of the four task stimuli (representing high and low EV and high and low risk). We then used the fitted LBA parameters to predict subject response rates on held-out trials for each of the 6 possible stimulus pairs. We found that choices predicted by LBA were correlated with actual choices across subjects for all stimulus pairs. Taken together, these findings suggest that sequential sampling models can account for decisional randomness on an explicit probabilistic task, which may have implications for understanding decision-making in healthy individuals and in psychiatric populations.

Counterfactual Thinking-Related Emotional Responses in Patients With Major Depressive Disorder

Objective: To explore the emotional characteristics of counterfactual thinking (CT)-related emotion responses in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) via the "counterfactual thinking gambling task (CTGT)." Method: Twenty-five patients with MDD (the MDD group) and twenty-five healthy controls (the HC group) with matched demographic features were included. The 17-item Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD) and the 14-item Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HAMA) were used to assess the severity of depression and anxiety symptoms. The counterfactual thinking gambling task was applied to assess the situation-focused- and behavior-focused-CT-related emotion responses in the MDD group and the HC group. Results: There was no significant difference in general demographic data between the two groups (p > 0.05). Compared with the HC group, the MDD group experienced higher levels of "disappointment" and lower levels of "joy" in the situation-focused CT paradigm (p < 0.05). However, the experience of "regret" and "relief" in the behavior-focused CT paradigm were not significantly different between the two groups (p > 0.05). Conclusions: MDD is associated with an impaired situation-focused-CT-related emotion responses, and is often accompanied by increased disappointment and decreased joy; however, behavior-focused-CT-related emotion responses are not significantly affected in MDD. This pattern may represent the characteristic CT-related emotion responses of MDD.

Working memory loads differentially influence frame-induced bias and normative choice in risky decision making

Risky decision making can be biased by several types of contextual factors—in particular, framing of outcomes. A popular explanation for outcome framing effects is based on presumed affective reactions that contribute to accepting sure gains and avoiding sure losses. Other theories propose that selective weighting of information about gains and losses contributes to framing bias. Prior research on framing bias has focused on preferences rather than on decisions in which choices can be classified as advantageous (correct) or disadvantageous (incorrect) by a normative criterion. The current study used a novel hypothetical risky decision making task offering choices between a sure option and a gamble option. The gamble was advantageous or disadvantageous on different trials based on the normative criterion of expected value. Results showed risk avoidance with a gain frame and risk seeking with a loss frame, comparable to findings when choices involve preferences. We also examined the impact of working memory loads of either non-affective stimuli, most likely to interfere with acquisition of choice information, or affective stimuli, which might influence affective processes contributing to framing. The results were that non-affective working memory load produced the greatest framing magnitude, while affective load produced changes in framing magnitude across trials that varied by valence. In addition, only the non-affective load decreased advantageous choices and reduced the accuracy of answers to knowledge probe questions about the choices. The findings are consistent with the notion that framing effects may arise from cognitive non-engagement with the task, rather than arising by way of affective processes. Affective loads had a limited influence on framing and no reliable impact on choice accuracy or choice knowledge, suggesting that the affective loads influenced the weighting of choice information.

The role of trait anxiety in associative learning during and after an aversive event

Trait anxiety is considered to be a risk factor for anxiety disorders. The aim of the present study was to investigate how trait anxiety affects associative learning during and after an aversive event in laboratory rats. For this, rats were first submitted to a light–dark box test, followed by relief, safety, and fear learning. Our data demonstrate that all types of learning were affected by trait anxiety, both on a group and on an individual level. Whereas high levels of anxiety impaired relief and safety learning, fear learning was more pronounced. These findings help to show how trait anxiety might be involved in the etiology of anxiety disorders and pathological sensation- and risk-seeking.