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The Joint Effect of Social Comparison and Social Distance on Evaluation of Intertemporal Choice Outcomes in Event-related Potential Studies
Published on: August 25, 2023
Receipt of reward leads to altered estimation of effort
Arezoo Pooresmaeili1, Aurel Wannig2, Raymond J Dolan3
1Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10099 Berlin, Germany; arezoo.pooresmaeili@gmail.com.
Abstract:
Effort and reward jointly shape many human decisions. Errors in predicting the required effort needed for a task can lead to suboptimal behavior. Here, we show that effort estimations can be biased when retrospectively reestimated following receipt of a rewarding outcome. These biases depend on the contingency between reward and task difficulty and are stronger for highly contingent rewards. Strikingly, the observed pattern accords with predictions from Bayesian cue integration, indicating humans deploy an adaptive and rational strategy to deal with inconsistencies between the efforts they expend and the ensuing rewards.
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