| Popis: |
Many, if not most, decisions involve risks-reward trade-offs. For example, crossing a busy road while in the face of an oncoming car is risky but potentially valuable (less waiting time), while waiting for the car to pass is safer but less valuable (more waiting time). Similarly, when contemplating long-term investments in normal economies stocks are high risk/reward compared to bonds which are low risk/reward. In the lab, risk-reward trade-offs are often studied with verbal decision-problems. A participant might, for example, be asked to choose between a 0.5 probability of gaining £8 and a 0.2 probability of gaining £20. For these kinds of problems, people have shown to be prone to errors and biases that often lead to sub-optimal trade-offs (Kahneman and Tversky, 1992). However, people can improve their risk-reward trade-offs through cognitive training (Jarvstad, subm, Ubiali et al., in prep.) - at least when the value information is provided in the form of money (i.e., £). In this study, we seek to establish whether previously observed training effects transfer from money to other value domains. Specifically, we will test whether training someone on risk-reward trade-offs with money also changes how they trade-off risk and reward when the value domain concerns foods. Participants will perform two tasks. An initial rating task, where they will be asked to indicate how much valuable is for them a certain amount of snacks (i.e. one snack, ten snacks, etc.). They will then complete a decision-making task, where they will be asked to choose between a series of gambles like the ones described above (0.5 £8 and 0.2 £20). In half of the total trials, the value money will be replaced with snacks pictures. There will be 16 levels of money between £0.60 and £9.60. The snack stimuli will be matched to the money stimuli (£0.60 = 1 snack), for a total of 16 snacks stimuli. Probabilities will range between 0.05 and 0.95. Participants will complete the rating task and decision-making task on day 1, and then will undergo a six days training regime where they will complete the decision-making task once daily, with the difference that they will received feedback on their choices. Participants will only be trained on the value domain. Participants will be divided in a training with feedback group (experimental group) and in a training without feedback group (control). After the training, participants will complete a follow-up session where they will perform the same task as in the pre-training session. |
