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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 15, 2025

Using the Threat Probability Task to Assess Anxiety and Fear During Uncertain and Certain Threat
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Fear-induced increases in loss aversion are linked to increased neural negative-value coding.

Stefan Schulreich1,2,3, Holger Gerhardt4,5, Dar Meshi6

  • 1Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany.

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
|July 10, 2020
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Summary

Fearful faces amplify loss aversion by altering brain activity in key regions like the amygdala. This suggests emotions dynamically shift how we value potential gains and losses.

Keywords:
amygdaladecision makingemotionloss aversionpsychopathyvalue

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Behavioral Economics
  • Decision Science

Background:

  • Human decision-making is significantly influenced by emotions, particularly fear.
  • Loss aversion, a key economic concept, is closely linked to the experience of fear.
  • The amygdala is implicated in fear and loss aversion, but the precise neural mechanisms remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the neural mechanisms underlying the influence of fear on loss aversion.
  • To examine how viewing fearful versus neutral faces affects brain activity during economic decision-making.

Main Methods:

  • Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure brain activation.
  • Participants viewed fearful or neutral faces before making decisions about monetary gambles.

Main Results:

  • Loss aversion with neutral faces correlated with deactivations in regions like the amygdala for prospective losses.
  • Fearful faces led to increased loss aversion, associated with greater activations for prospective losses.
  • Distinct neural valuation processes were involved depending on emotional context.

Conclusions:

  • Fear induces a shift in value coding from positive to negative, impacting loss aversion.
  • Emotional context dynamically modulates neural valuation processes during decision-making.
  • Findings highlight the interplay between emotion, brain activity, and economic behavior.