The Value of Exercising Control Over Monetary Gains and Losses

“As a result, the value of choice was more variable across participants, depending on possible individual differences in loss aversion and perceived control in the face of failure, which people tend to attribute to external sources beyond their control (Brewin & Shapiro, 1984; Rotter, 1966).”

“Furthermore, individuals may vary in their tendency to accept the status quo, as opposed to overtly acting in a way that could lead to an error and potential regret (Baron & Ritov, 1994; Samuelson & Zeckhauer, 1988).”

“Because deficits in perceived control are believed to be at the core of many psychiatric diseases (Beck, Emery, & Greenberg, 1985; Maier & Seligman, 1976; Shapiro et al., 1996), fully characterizing the affective experience of choice will be critical for learning about both the development and…”

“Belief in one’s ability to exert control over the environment is essential for an individual’s well-being.”

“In humans, the opportunity for choice enhances subjective affective ratings of choice options and concurrently increases BOLD reward responses in the striatum (Leotti & Delgado 2011, 2014).”

“A similar experimental paradigm has been used previously to investigate agency in the context of valuebased decision-making (Leotti and Delgado, 2011, 2014).”

“These neural findings were replicated by other neuroscience studies using similar types of experimental manipulations (Leotti & Delgado, 2014; Murayama et al., 2015).”

“For example, human participants showed greater activation in corticostriatal regions in response to the anticipation of choice compared to no-choice cues (Leotti and Delgado, 2011; Leotti and Delgado, 2014).”

“Nevertheless, humans and animals alike demonstrate a preference for choice (Bown et al., 2003; Leotti and Delgado, 2011, 2014) and for options that were freely chosen over equally valued options that were not (Egan et al., 2007; Lieberman et al., 2001; Sharot et al., 2009, 2010).”

“…which are easy to manipulate and robustly recruit DA activity, to elicit reward-related behaviour and neural activity (Foti, Weinberg, Bernat, & Proudfit, 2015; Izuma, Saito, & Sadato, 2008; Knutson, Bhanji, Cooney, Atlas, & Gotlib, 2008; Leotti & Delgado, 2014; Weinberg, Riesel, & Proudfit, 2014).”

“…decisions involving unwanted outcomes in order to avoid regret (Loomes and Sugden 1982) and instead supports the notion that in important contexts, choice may be preferred regardless of expected valence of the outcome (Cockburn et al. 2014; Leotti and Delgado 2011, 2014; Sharot et al. 2009, 2010a).”

“com concurrently [86].”

“These regions play a fundamental role in goal-directed behavior via biasing action selection based on the anticipation of imminent rewards and the opportunity to exercise choice (Knutson, Adams, Fong, & Hommer, 2001; Leotti & Delgado, 2014).”

“The option o pass was added because prior studies demonstrated that outome monitoring (or reward processing) is more salient when the utcome is the result of an active choice (Leotti and Delgado, 2014).”

“…empirically and computationally, that it is based on a multilevel evaluation of the subjective evidence in favor of one potential action over another in the light of prior beliefs about the utility of maintaining con-trol ( 33 ), gaining information, and taking responsibility for others ’ outcomes.”

“Choice has been shown to be associated with increased activity of brain regions directly involved in reward processing (Fujiwara et al., 2013; Leotti & Delgado, 2011, 2014), and temporally earlier than the execution of choice or the values of choices could be experienced.”

“Because humans and animals exhibit strong preference for the opportunity to freely choose among options (Leotti and Delgado, 2014, 2011), mechanistic insights into agency-related enhancements of content memory during AL may leverage specialized brain circuits for reward and motivation.”

“When participants are given the opportunity to choose which of two gambles to partake in there is increased engagement of the striatum and dopaminergic midbrain (Leotti & Delgado, 2011, 2014).”

“…this story from objective contingency to “per-ceptions” of control, a recent fMRI study showed that VS responses to rewarded outcomes were greater following an initial decision between two response keys, even when the choice was randomly associated with trial success (Leotti and Delgado 2014).”

“The development of “bordering” or “bridging” disciplines, such as neuropsychoanalysis, that study conceptual methodologies of modeling of experimental data that can be understood with a theory of the functioning of the mind and that have possible clinical applications, seems to confirm the need for integrated knowledg…”

“The ventral striatum is activated during the anticipation of imminent rewards and the opportunity to exercise choice (Knutson et al., 2001; Leotti and Delgado, 2014), and may provide motivational signals to the mid-LPFC that promotes the engagement of cognitive control to obtain immediately…”

“From an agency perspective, perhaps people assign more reward value to a desired outcome that arose from their own behaviour (‘I made that happen!’) [55,56].”

“They found that cues indicating personal control elicited greater reward system activation in both reward-obtaining (15) and loss-avoiding (16) contexts.”

“imaging (fMRI) has attempted to address this issue (Leotti and Delgado, 2014).”

“Exercising control over one’s environment in the form of executing an action seems to be a rewarding behaviour (Leotti & Delgado, 2014), even when no external reward is afforded (Eitam, Kennedy, & Higgins, 2013; Leotti & Delgado, 2011).”

“This connectivity relationship was enhanced for individuals who reported greater valuation for rewards. toward hedonic and/or aversive outcomes (Sharot et al., 2009, 2010; Leotti and Delgado, 2014).”

“Notably, when directly assessing neural activity during anticipation of free choice, Leotti and Delgado13,14 found that activity in the ventral striatum, an area frequently implicated in reward anticipation and reward prediction-errors51,52, was greater for a cue that indicated an upcoming…”

“For example, when both gains and losses are presented, individuals prefer choice in the gain, but not the loss condition (Leotti and Delgado, 2014).”

“In addition, neuroimaging studies have indicated that, like external rewards, choice activates the dopaminergic reward regions (Leotti & Delgado, 2011, 2014), which further interact with the hippocampal memory system to produce enhanced memory performance (Murty et al., 2015, 2019).”

“Additionally, increased con-trol has been associated with increased persistence after failures [2, 13, 42, 66], which is in line with research on the buffering effect of choice on negative emotion and losses [68, 69, 85].”

“Perceived agency refers to belief in one ’ s ability to have control over the external environment and achieve desired goals (Leotti & Delgado, 2011, 2014; Leotti, Iyengar, & Ochsner, 2010).”

“Similar neural evidence was also found in cases where people perceived a sense of con-trol even though it was illusory (Leotti and Delgado 2014).”

“For example, a series of experiments by Leotti and Delgado (2014) demonstrated that losses, compared to gains, can diminish the affective experience of exercising personal control via making choices.”

“…caudate, putamen, and nucleus accumbens, plays a central role in tagging stimuli with incentive salience during learning and generating the motivational force underlying behavior (Bartra, et al., 2013; Everitt & Robbins, 2005; Haber & Behrens, 2014; Leotti & Delgado, 2014; O’Doherty, et al., 2004).”

“The self-play versus auto-play manipulation also relates the preference for high instrumental divergence to a well-established preference for free over forced choice (e.g., Leotti and Delgado, 2011, 2014).”

“At first glance, this exploratory finding contradicts our key assumption and earlier research, which showed that control is desirable (Bown et al., 2003) and rewarding (Leotti & Delgado, 2011, 2014).”

“In a subsequent study, Leotti and Delgado (2014) explored if neural circuits involved in choice opportunity depended on the valence of potential outcomes.”

“ROIs were set from the brain regions significantly activated in these analyses, and the BOLD signal changes of all trials in these ROIs were calculated from the individuals’ MNI-normalized pre-processed data.”

“…that 1) people still attempted to simulate future interactions in uncontrollable situations due to their innate preference and tendency to control (Leotti and Delgado, 2014; Shenhav et al., 2016), and 2) those with higher levels of estimated control potentially experienced larger prediction…”

“Prior research has demonstrated that value of choice decreases in the complex or emotionally challenging decisions (Chen et al., 2018; Leotti and Delgado, 2014; Matute and Blanco, 2014; Mei et al., 2018b).”

“Recent findings in neuroeconomics have shown that having a choice, in and of itself, is rewarding [18, 19].”

“These results are compatible with earlier findings showing that negative affect increases at the subjective level when punishment is used (e.g., Lu et al., 2013; Leotti and Delgado, 2014).”

“This finding runs counter to the idea that people prefer to delegate decisions involving unwanted outcomes in order to avoid regret (Loomes and Sugden 1982) and instead supports the notion that choice may be preferred regardless of expected valence of the outcome (Leotti and Delgado 2011, 2014).”

“Making decisions can also be unpleasant when choosing between aversive, mundane, or numerous options (Botti et al., 2009; Iyengar & Lepper, 2000; Leotti & Delgado, 2014; Shenhav et al., 2018).”

“Moreover, “the opportunity to exercise control through choice is desirable for choices that lead to both obtaining rewards and avoiding punish-ment” (Leotti & Delgado, 2014, p. 603).”

“Support for this hypothesis is bolstered by recent neuroimaging findings from Leotti and Delgado (3,4), who demonstrated that the opportunity to choose in situations leading to potentially positive outcomes recruited corticostriatal regions typically implicated in reward processing, particularly the ventral striatum.”

“In another study, Leotti and Delgado (2014) examined participants’ subjective liking and neuropsychological reaction to conditions where choice or no-choice was followed by either a positive ($0, $10, or $50) or negative (−$0, −$10, −$50) outcome.”

“This finding aligns with research from various domains, consistently demonstrating that options that are freely chosen are more highly valued than those that are not (e.g., Cockburn et al., 2014; Leotti & Delgado, 2014; Patall et al., 2008; Stolz et al., 2020).”

“People generally value having options and making choices, as this activates brain regions associated with motivation and reward (leotti & Delgado, 2014).”

“Research on coping behavior has shown that negative affect and perceived control, which are negatively related (Leotti & Delgado, 2014), can be influenced by perceived health risks (Arslan & Allen, 2021; Smyth et al., 2008; Viscusi & Zeckhauser, 2015 ) and can be strong predictors of optimism…”

“…2016; Salomons et al., 2004)。基于这些证据我们 可以推测：通过自主选择来增加控制感可能是自主选择偏好的原因之一。不过，目前仍然 缺乏直接证据证明自主选择就增加了个体的控制感，或是在自主选择并不引起控制感时人 们的自主选择行为就会减少。 2.3 模糊厌恶 模糊厌恶是指相较不熟悉的事物，人们更喜欢熟悉的事物，而回避不熟悉的事物(Fox & Tversky, 1995)。当个体面临自主选择或委托他人选择时，若没有足够的信息以推算自 主选择和让渡选择权所带来的收益，他可能认为亲自选择的模糊度低于让渡选择权的模糊 度，进而更多地进行自我选择。Owens…”

“The rationale for this comes from behavioural studies reporting individual differences in the way people experience having choice, with some being more sensitive to choice freedom and others more indifferent (Leotti and Delgado, 2014; Patall et al., 2008; Ryan and Deci, 2006).”

“…should increase if internal models of behavior are available that explain how actions – if executed correctly – yield a specific outcome (Ly, Wang, Bhanji, & Delgado, 2019), in contrast to settings in which the available choices are unrelated to the outcomes obtained (Leotti & Delgado, 2011, 2014).”

“…potential gain versus potential loss contexts, researchers noted increased activity in the ventral striatum in choice as compared to no-choice trials when there was a potential gain, but found no significant difference between choice and no-choice in potential loss trials (Leotti & Delgado, 2014).”

“For example, Leotti and Delgado (2014) [10] attempted to assess the effect of financial losses on preference for choice.”