Social comparison and risky choices

Medial prefrontal cortex and striatum mediate the influence of social comparison on the decision process.

We compared private and social decision making to investigate the neural underpinnings of the effect of social comparison on risky choices. We measured brain activity using functional MRI while participants chose between two lotteries: in the private condition, they observed the outcome of the unchosen lottery, and in the social condition, the outcome of the lottery chosen by another person. Th...

Can a single model account for both risky choices and inter-temporal choices? Testing the assumptions underlying models of risky inter-temporal choice.

There is growing interest in modelling how people make choices that involve both risks and delays, i.e., risky inter-temporal choices. We investigated an untested assumption underlying several proposed risky inter-temporal choice models: that pure risky choices and pure inter-temporal choices are special cases of risky inter-temporal choice. We tested this assumption by presenting a single grou...

Does the Ability to Make a New Business Need More Risky Choices during Decisions? Evidences for the Neurocognitive Basis of Entrepreneurship

Is Utilitarianism Risky? How the Same Antecedents and Mechanism Produce Both Utilitarian and Risky Choices.

Philosophers and psychologists have long been interested in identifying factors that influence moral judgment. In the current analysis, we compare the literatures on moral psychology and decision making under uncertainty to propose that utilitarian choices are driven by the same forces that lead to risky choices. Spanning from neurocognitive to hormonal to interpersonal levels of analysis, we i...

Cooperation in risky environments: Decisions from experience in a stochastic social dilemma

Often in cooperative situations, many aspects of the decisionmaking environment are uncertain. We investigate how cooperation is shaped by the way information about risk is presented (from description or from experience) and by differences in risky environments. Drawing on research from risky choice, we compare choices in stochastic social dilemmas to those in lotteries with equivalent levels o...