1. Fear-induced increases in loss aversion are linked to increased neural negative-value coding.
- Author
-
Schulreich S, Gerhardt H, Meshi D, and Heekeren HR
- Subjects
- Adolescent, Adult, Brain diagnostic imaging, Brain Mapping, Decision Making physiology, Female, Gambling psychology, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Prospective Studies, Young Adult, Affect physiology, Brain physiology, Emotions physiology, Fear physiology
- Abstract
Human decisions are often influenced by emotions. An economically relevant example is the role of fear in generating loss aversion. Previous research implicates the amygdala as a key brain structure in the experience of fear and loss aversion. The neural mechanism behind emotional influences on loss aversion is, however, unclear. To address this, we measured brain activation with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while participants made decisions about monetary gambles after viewing fearful or neutral faces. We observed that loss aversion following the presentation of neutral faces was mainly predicted by greater deactivations for prospective losses (relative to activations for prospective gains) in several brain regions, including the amygdala. By contrast, increases in loss aversion following the presentation of fearful faces were mainly predicted by greater activations for prospective losses. These findings suggest a fear-induced shift from positive to negative value coding that reflects a context-dependent involvement of distinct valuation processes., (© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)
- Published
- 2020
- Full Text
- View/download PDF