ArticleComputational psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.)2021
Economic Decisions with Ambiguous Outcome Magnitudes Vary with Low and High Stakes but Not Trait Anxiety or Depression.
Article in Computational psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Comparing descriptive and theoretical models of decision-making under uncertainty and their relation to socioeconomic factors.PloS one · 2025Article
- Heterogeneity in strategy use during arbitration between experiential and observational learning.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Identifying Transdiagnostic Mechanisms in Mental Health Using Computational Factor Modeling.Biological psychiatry · 2023Review
- Computationally-defined markers of uncertainty aversion predict emotional responses during a global pandemic.Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · 2023Article
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4 authors.
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Abstract
Most of life's decisions involve risk and uncertainty regarding whether reward or loss will follow. Decision makers often face uncertainty not only about the likelihood of outcomes (what are the chances that I will get a raise if I ask my supervisor? What are the chances that my supervisor will be upset with me for asking?) but also the magnitude of outcomes (if I do get a raise, how large will it be? If my supervisor gets upset, how bad will the consequences be for me?). Only a few studies have investigated economic decision making with ambiguous likelihoods, and even fewer have investigated ambiguous outcome magnitudes. In the present report, we investigated the effects of ambiguous outcome magnitude, risk, and gains/losses in an economic decision-making task with low stakes (Study 1; $3.60-$5.70; N = 367) and high stakes (Study 2; $6-$48; N = 210) using a within-subjects design. We conducted computational modeling to determine individuals' preferences/aversions for ambiguous outcome magnitudes, risk, and gains/losses. We additionally investigated the association between trait anxiety and trait depression and decision-making parameters. Our results show that increasing stakes increased ambiguous gain aversion and unambiguous risk aversion but increased ambiguous sure loss preference; participants also became more averse to ambiguous sure gains relative to unambiguous risky gains. There were no significant effects of trait anxiety or trait depression on economic decision making. Our results suggest that as stakes increase, people tend to avoid uncertainty in the gain domain (especially ambiguous gains) but prefer ambiguous vs unambiguous sure losses.
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