Maintaining homeostasis by decision-making.

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Economics
• Neuroscience
• Decision Science

Background:

• Organisms must maintain energetic homeostasis, often involving choices with delayed consequences.
• Human decision-making models often focus on endpoint utility, contrasting with biological principles emphasizing sustained energy levels.

Purpose of the Study:

• To empirically test whether biological principles or economic models better explain human decision-making under risk.
• To differentiate between models predicting choices based on sustained energy homeostasis versus endpoint utility maximization.

Main Methods:

• A virtual foraging task was designed where participants chose between environments with probabilistic energy gains and losses over time.
• Random walk mathematics were used to derive endpoint outcome distributions and equivalent lotteries.
• Bayesian model comparison was employed to analyze participant choices in both foraging and economic (casino) frames.

Main Results:

• Participant choices in both foraging and economic frames depended on both starvation probability and expected endpoint value.
• Economic models based on statistical moments or rank-dependent utility could not explain the observed choices.
• Decisions were better explained by models incorporating biological principles of maintaining energy homeostasis.

Conclusions:

• Human decision-making, particularly under conditions of risk and delayed consequences, is better described by biological principles of energetic homeostasis.
• Economic models focused solely on endpoint utility maximization are insufficient to capture the complexities of these choices.
• Future research should integrate biological constraints into decision-making models.