ArticleNature human behaviour2023
Individual risk attitudes arise from noise in neurocognitive magnitude representations.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Identifiability of Bayesian models of perception.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- A large-scale heterogeneous 3D magnetic resonance brain imaging dataset for self-supervised learning.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Endogenous precision of the number sense.eLife · 2026Article
- A non-monotonic code for event probability in the human brain.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Bayesian estimation yields anti-Weber variability.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Altered Effective Connectivity of the Numerical Brain in Children With Developmental Dyscalculia.Journal of neuroscience research · 2025Article
- Economic Consequences of Numerical Adaptation.Psychological science · 2025Article
- Neural Representation Precision of Distance Predicts Children's Arithmetic Performance.Human brain mapping · 2025Article
- Recent Opioid Use Impedes Range Adaptation in Reinforcement Learning in Human Addiction.Biological psychiatry · 2024Article
- A boundedly rational model for category learning.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- The Future of Decisions From Experience: Connecting Real-World Decision Problems to Cognitive Processes.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Humans are generally risk averse, preferring smaller certain over larger uncertain outcomes. Economic theories usually explain this by assuming concave utility functions. Here, we provide evidence that risk aversion can also arise from relative underestimation of larger monetary payoffs, a perceptual bias rooted in the noisy logarithmic coding of numerical magnitudes. We confirmed this with psychophysics and functional magnetic resonance imaging, by measuring behavioural and neural acuity of magnitude representations during a magnitude perception task and relating these measures to risk attitudes during separate risky financial decisions. Computational modelling indicated that participants use similar mental magnitude representations in both tasks, with correlated precision across perceptual and risky choices. Participants with more precise magnitude representations in parietal cortex showed less variable behaviour and less risk aversion. Our results highlight that at least some individual characteristics of economic behaviour can reflect capacity limitations in perceptual processing rather than processes that assign subjective values to monetary outcomes.
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Registered trials
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.