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Biased sequential sampling underlies the effects of time pressure and delay in social decision making.

ABSTRACT: Social decision making involves balancing conflicts between selfishness and pro-sociality. The cognitive processes underlying such decisions are not well understood, with some arguing for a single comparison process, while others argue for dual processes (one intuitive and one deliberative). Here, we propose a way to reconcile these two opposing frameworks. We argue that behavior attributed to intuition can instead be seen as a starting point bias of a sequential sampling model (SSM) process, analogous to a prior in a Bayesian framework. Using mini-dictator games in which subjects make binary decisions about how to allocate money between themselves and another participant, we find that pro-social subjects become more pro-social under time pressure and less pro-social under time delay, while selfish subjects do the opposite. Our findings help reconcile the conflicting results concerning the cognitive processes of social decision making and highlight the importance of modeling the dynamics of the choice process.

SUBMITTER: Chen F

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6120923 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Biased sequential sampling underlies the effects of time pressure and delay in social decision making.

Chen Fadong F Krajbich Ian I

Nature communications 20180903 1

Social decision making involves balancing conflicts between selfishness and pro-sociality. The cognitive processes underlying such decisions are not well understood, with some arguing for a single comparison process, while others argue for dual processes (one intuitive and one deliberative). Here, we propose a way to reconcile these two opposing frameworks. We argue that behavior attributed to intuition can instead be seen as a starting point bias of a sequential sampling model (SSM) process, an ...[more]

PMID: 30177719

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Project description:Many decisions are expressed as a preference for one item over another. When these items are familiar, it is often assumed that the decision maker assigns a value to each of the items and chooses the item with the highest value. These values may be imperfectly recalled, but are assumed to be stable over the course of an interview or psychological experiment. Choices that are inconsistent with a stated valuation are thought to occur because of unspecified noise that corrupts the neural representation of value. Assuming that the noise is uncorrelated over time, the pattern of choices and response times in value-based decisions are modeled within the framework of Bounded Evidence Accumulation (BEA), similar to that used in perceptual decision-making. In BEA, noisy evidence samples accumulate over time until the accumulated evidence for one of the options reaches a threshold. Here, we argue that the assumption of temporally uncorrelated noise, while reasonable for perceptual decisions, is not reasonable for value-based decisions. Subjective values depend on the internal state of the decision maker, including their desires, needs, priorities, attentional state, and goals. These internal states may change over time, or undergo revaluation, as will the subjective values. We reasoned that these hypothetical value changes should be detectable in the pattern of choices made over a sequence of decisions. We reanalyzed data from a well-studied task in which participants were presented with pairs of snacks and asked to choose the one they preferred. Using a novel algorithm (Reval), we show that the subjective value of the items changes significantly during a short experimental session (about 1 hour). Values derived with Reval explain choice and response time better than explicitly stated values. They also better explain the BOLD signal in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, known to represent the value of decision alternatives. Revaluation is also observed in a BEA model in which successive evidence samples are not assumed to be independent. We argue that revaluation is a consequence of the process by which values are constructed during deliberation to resolve preference choices.

Dataset Information

Biased sequential sampling underlies the effects of time pressure and delay in social decision making.

Publications

Biased sequential sampling underlies the effects of time pressure and delay in social decision making.

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