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.”

“Converging evidence suggests that perception of control enhances positive emotions and can also buffer negative emotional responses to aversive events (e.g., Leotti, Iyengar, & Ochsner, 2010; Ryan & Deci, 2006; Shapiro, Schwartz, & Astin, 1996).”

“Converging evidence suggests that perception of control enhances positive emotions and can also buffer negative emotional responses to aversive events (e.g., Leotti, Iyengar, & Ochsner, 2010; Ryan & Deci, 2006; Shapiro, Schwartz, & Astin, 1996).”

“The recruitment of neural circuitry involved in reward-related processes, such as VS (Delgado, 2007; Montague & Berns, 2002; O’Doherty, 2004; Rangel, Camerer, & Montague, 2008; Robbins & Everitt, 1996), suggests that in the context of positive outcomes, choice opportunity may be inherently valuable.”

“The recruitment of neural circuitry involved in reward-related processes, such as VS (Delgado, 2007; Montague & Berns, 2002; O’Doherty, 2004; Rangel, Camerer, & Montague, 2008; Robbins & Everitt, 1996), suggests that in the context of positive outcomes, choice opportunity may be inherently valuable.”

“To explore our a priori hypotheses, we first conducted a region-of-interest (ROI) analysis, with ROIs in the midbrain and VS defined by coordinates reported in the literature as selective to the anticipation of monetary reward (Knutson et al., 2005).”

“The recruitment of neural circuitry involved in reward-related processes, such as VS (Delgado, 2007; Montague & Berns, 2002; O’Doherty, 2004; Rangel, Camerer, & Montague, 2008; Robbins & Everitt, 1996), suggests that in the context of positive outcomes, choice opportunity may be inherently valuable.”

“The current study is also distinguishable from other studies investigating action-outcome contingency (e.g., O’Doherty et al., 2004; Tricomi et al., 2004).”

“In contrast, in Experiment 2, avoiding a monetary loss may have been perceived as a positive outcome (Kim et al., 2006), thus enhancing perceived control (Thompson, Armstrong, & Thomas, 1998) and producing greater reward-related activity.”

“Additionally, there may be individual differences in the perceived threat of monetary losses (Sokol-Hessner et al., 2009) or loss aversion (Tom, Fox, Trepel, & Poldrack, 2007) that could influence neural activity in VS and the subjective value of choice opportunity.”

“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).”

“Consistent with our previous study (Leotti & Delgado, 2011), results of the present study showed that participants in Experiment 1 reported greater preference for choice opportunity and demonstrated increased activity in VS and midbrain when anticipating choices leading to potential monetary gains…”

“In fact, increased activity in lateral PFC has been associated with a tendency to avoid cognitive demand in decision making (McGuire & Botvinick, 2010).”

“…been linked to regulation of negative emotion, including avoidance learning (Delgado, Jou, Ledoux, & Phelps, 2009), reappraisal of negative affect (Schiller & Delgado, 2010; Wager, Davidson, Hughes, Lindquist, & Ochsner, 2008), and reevaluation of aversive events (Sharot, Shiner, & Dolan, 2010).”

“For example, other researchers have found that VS responds to the anticipation of action when execution and withholding of responses are contrasted (Guitart-Masip et al., 2011).”

“Furthermore, our findings demonstrate that context effects previously observed in VS (De Martino et al., 2009) also extend to the mere opportunity for choice.”

“…impaired coping ability and exacerbated stress responses to aversive events are observed in the absence of perceived control (e.g., Bandura, 1992; Maier, 1986), which suggests that perceived control may mitigate the negative emotional response elicited by anticipating potentially negative…”

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

“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).”

“The act of choosing may be more stressful to some individuals than to others when there is not sufficient information to make an informed selection (Paterson & Neufeld, 1995); this was the case in the current experiments, in which there was no real difference between options, and outcomes occurred…”

“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).”