Sebastian Gluth, Jared Hotaling and Jörg Rieskamp have a new paper on the influence of the attraction effect on intertemporal choices and the coding of reward value in the brain.

The Attraction Effect Modulates Reward Prediction Errors and Intertemporal Choices

The attraction effect is a well-established phenomenon in decisions between three alternative. If a person is indifferent between two choice options (let’s say between staying in a cheap 2-star hotel vs an expensive 5-star hotel), adding a third option that is clearly inferior to one of the option (let’s say another 5-star hotel that is even more expensive) can change the preference between the inital options (in this case in favor of the first 5-star hotel). This effect refutes any model of decision making that assumes independent evaluations of options.

In our paper, we show that the attraction effect also influences the evaluation of rewards in the absence of choice, with respect to both self-reported satisfaction about rewards and brain activation of the reward system (measured with fMRI). We used intertemporal choices and rewards to elicit the attraction effect. Thus, we also demonstrated the attraction effect in intertemporal choice for the first time.

In summary, our study has important implications for models of intertemporal choice and shows the context-dependency of reward signals in the human brain.

Gluth, S., Hotaling, J.M., & Rieskamp, J. (2017). The attraction effect modulates reward prediction errors and intertemporal choices. Journal of Neuroscience, 37(2), 371-382.