Neuronal origins of reduced accuracy and biases in economic choices under sequential offers

Abstract
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Abstract

Economic choices are characterized by a variety of biases. Understanding their origins is a long-term goal for neuroeconomics, but progress on this front has been limited. Here we examined choice biases observed when two goods are offered sequentially. In the experiments, rhesus monkeys chose between different juices offered simultaneously or in sequence. Choices under sequential offers were less accurate (higher variability). They were also biased in favor of the second offer (order bias) and in favor of the preferred juice (preference bias). Analysis of neuronal activity recorded in the orbitofrontal cortex revealed that these phenomena emerged at different computational stages. Lower choice accuracy reflected weaker offer value signals (valuation stage), the order bias emerged during value comparison (decision stage), and the preference bias emerged late in the trial (post-comparison). By neuronal measures, each phenomenon reduced the value obtained on average in each trial and was thus costly to the monkey.

Data availability

Neuronal data and analysis scripts are deposited in GitHub: https://github.com/PadoaSchioppaLab/2022_eLife_choicebias

The following data sets were generated

1. Padoa-Schioppa C
(2022) Neuronal origins of reduced accuracy and biases in economic choices under sequential offers
GitHub.

https://github.com/PadoaSchioppaLab/2022_eLife_choicebias

Article and author information

Author details

Weikang Shi

Department of Neuroscience, Washington University in St. Louis, Saint Louis, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-4068-1168
Sebastien Ballesta

Department of Neuroscience, Washington University in St. Louis, Saint Louis, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Camillo Padoa-Schioppa

Department of Neuroscience, Washington University in St. Louis, Saint Louis, United States

For correspondence
camillo@wustl.edu

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-7519-8790

Funding

National Institute of Mental Health (R01-MH104494)

Camillo Padoa-Schioppa

McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience (CCSN Fellowship)

Weikang Shi

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All the experimental procedures adhered to the NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) at Washington University (protocol number 190931).

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.