ArticleNature communications2021
Memory and decision making interact to shape the value of unchosen options.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- Action repetition biases choice in context-dependent decision-making.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- How working memory and reinforcement learning interact when avoiding punishment and pursuing reward concurrently.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2025Article
- Age-Related Changes in Curiosity: The Influence of Locus Coeruleus on Information-Seeking Behavior.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Cognitive Graphs: Representational Substrates for Planning.Decision (Washington, D.C.) · 2024Article
- Different learning aberrations relate to delusion-like beliefs with different contents.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2024Article
- Memory for rewards guides retrieval.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- Editorial: Memories for the future.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Computational mechanisms underlying latent value updating of unchosen actions.Science advances · 2023Article
- Memory precision and age differentially predict the use of decision-making strategies across the lifespan.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Article
- The intersection of the retrieval state and internal attention.Nature communications · 2023Article
- The role of memory in counterfactual valuation.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2023Article
- Counterfactual curiosity: motivated thinking about what might have been.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Training diversity promotes absolute-value-guided choice.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- Lessons learned about willingness to adopt various protective measures during the early COVID-19 pandemic in three countries.PloS one · 2022Article
- Why unchosen options linger in our minds.Communications biology · 2021Article
- Memory and decision making interact to shape the value of unchosen options.Nature communications · 2021Article
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Abstract
The goal of deliberation is to separate between options so that we can commit to one and leave the other behind. However, deliberation can, paradoxically, also form an association in memory between the chosen and unchosen options. Here, we consider this possibility and examine its consequences for how outcomes affect not only the value of the options we chose, but also, by association, the value of options we did not choose. In five experiments (total n = 612), including a preregistered experiment (n = 235), we found that the value assigned to unchosen options is inversely related to their chosen counterparts. Moreover, this inverse relationship was associated with participants' memory of the pairs they chose between. Our findings suggest that deciding between options does not end the competition between them. Deliberation binds choice options together in memory such that the learned value of one can affect the inferred value of the other.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.