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Attraction to similar options: The Gestalt law of proximity is related to the attraction effect.

ABSTRACT: Previous studies have suggested that there are common mechanisms between perceptual and value-based processes. For instance, both perceptual and value-based choices are highly influenced by the context in which the choices are made. However, the mechanisms which allow context to influence our choice process as well as the extent of the similarity between the perceptual and preferential processes are still unclear. In this study, we examine a within-subject relation between the attraction effect, which is a well-known effect of context on preferential choice, and the Gestalt law of proximity. Then, we aim to use this link to better understand the mechanisms underlying the attraction effect. We conducted one study followed by an additional pre-registered replication study, where subjects performed a Gestalt-psychophysical task and a decoy task. Comparing the behavioral sensitivity of each subject in both tasks, we found that the more susceptible a subject is to the proximity law, the more she displayed the attraction effect. These results demonstrate a within-subject relation between a perceptual phenomenon (proximity law) and a value-based bias (attraction effect) which further strengthens the notion of common rules between perceptual and value-based processing. Moreover, this suggests that the mechanism underlying the attraction effect is related to grouping by proximity with attention as a mediator.

SUBMITTER: Izakson L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7592845 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Attraction to similar options: The Gestalt law of proximity is related to the attraction effect.

Izakson Liz L Zeevi Yoav Y Levy Dino J DJ

PloS one 20201028 10

Previous studies have suggested that there are common mechanisms between perceptual and value-based processes. For instance, both perceptual and value-based choices are highly influenced by the context in which the choices are made. However, the mechanisms which allow context to influence our choice process as well as the extent of the similarity between the perceptual and preferential processes are still unclear. In this study, we examine a within-subject relation between the attraction effect, ...[more]

PMID: 33112897

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Project description:Classical economic theory contends that the utility of a choice option should be independent of other options. This view is challenged by the attraction effect, in which the relative preference between two options is altered by the addition of a third, asymmetrically dominated option. Here, we leveraged the attraction effect in the context of intertemporal choices to test whether both decisions and reward prediction errors (RPE) in the absence of choice violate the independence of irrelevant alternatives principle. We first demonstrate that intertemporal decision making is prone to the attraction effect in humans. In an independent group of participants, we then investigated how this affects the neural and behavioral valuation of outcomes using a novel intertemporal lottery task and fMRI. Participants' behavioral responses (i.e., satisfaction ratings) were modulated systematically by the attraction effect and this modulation was correlated across participants with the respective change of the RPE signal in the nucleus accumbens. Furthermore, we show that, because exponential and hyperbolic discounting models are unable to account for the attraction effect, recently proposed sequential sampling models might be more appropriate to describe intertemporal choices. Our findings demonstrate for the first time that the attraction effect modulates subjective valuation even in the absence of choice. The findings also challenge the prospect of using neuroscientific methods to measure utility in a context-free manner and have important implications for theories of reinforcement learning and delay discounting.Significance statementMany theories of value-based decision making assume that people first assess the attractiveness of each option independently of each other and then pick the option with the highest subjective value. The attraction effect, however, shows that adding a new option to a choice set can change the relative value of the existing options, which is a violation of the independence principle. Using an intertemporal choice framework, we tested whether such violations also occur when the brain encodes the difference between expected and received rewards (i.e., the reward prediction error). Our results suggest that neither intertemporal choice nor valuation without choice adhere to the independence principle.

Dataset Information

Attraction to similar options: The Gestalt law of proximity is related to the attraction effect.

Publications

Attraction to similar options: The Gestalt law of proximity is related to the attraction effect.

Similar Datasets

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