Table of Contents
Front-matter
Neuroscience of Preference and Choice
NEUROSCIENCE OF PREFERENCE AND CHOICE
COGNITIVE AND NEURAL MECHANISMS
Edited by
R aymond D olan Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging University College London London, UK
T ali S harot Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging University College London London, UK
AMSTERDAM BOSTON HEIDELBERG LONDON NEW YORK OXFORD PARIS SAN DIEGO SAN FRANCISCO SINGAPORE SYDNEY TOKYO
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Academic Press is an imprint of Elsevier
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ISBN: 978-0-12-381431-9
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Preface
Ray Dolan and Tali Sharot
Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London
How preferences are generated, and choices made, is the central focus of this book. Mindful that preferences is a subject of broad interest we asked the contributing authors to detail diverse approaches, appropriate to their core expertise ranging from evolutionary biology to social psychology, psychophysics, cognitive neuroscience and economics. The contributions explore the neural and psychological processes that underlie decision-making, propose formal models of the associated mechanisms and illustrate their application to domains that include perception, social interaction and policy.
We see these various contributions as supporting two general claims. First, they argue that contrary to traditional decision-making theories, which assume choices are based on relatively steady preferences, preferences are in fact highly volatile and susceptible to the context in which the alternatives are presented. For example, the same object seems to be worth more if we are engaged in selling as opposed to buying it. Moreover, our preferences are modified by the mere act of choosing and altered by changing choice sets.
The observation that preferences are fluid invokes the idea that fluidity is embedded in the architecture of our brain. Part II of this book, in particular, is dedicated to this theme. Data from different scientific modalities, going from single cell recordings in non-human primates right through to brain imaging data in human adults, supports the notion that preferences are unstable and easily altered by context. One might assume that this instability in preferences is generated by an abundance or tyranny of choice in modern society. After all, unlike our ancestors, we can select from a near-infinite number of possibilities on where to live, who to marry, which profession to embark upon and how to spend our leisure time. However, by comparing valuation processes across non-human primates, human children, and human adults, Lakshminarayanan and Santos show that there are evolutionary conserved constraints on our preferences. Thus, like adults, children and non-human primates change their preferences based on the context in which the options are presented. Like humans, primates show loss aversion, post-choice re-evaluation, and the endowment effect.
The second theme to emerge is the commonality of the processes underlying preference generation. We suggest that regardless of whether we are selecting a musical tune, a perfume, or a new car the brain uses similar computational principles to compute the value of our options, which are tracked by common neural systems. Part I of this book describes these systems and offers possible models for how decisions are taken. Part III then asks how these processes underlie social preferences and Part IV focuses on the perceptual processes that underlie preference generation.
The book concludes with a discussion of the implications of the research presented to policy, health and well-being. It highlights the societal importance of how understanding the neuroscience of preference and choice might help us make better decisions in our personal life and aid policy makers in enhancing the well-being of citizens.
Contributors
Andrew Caplin
Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Center for Experimental Social Science, New York University
Daniel Campbell-Meiklejohn
Center for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University and Wellcome Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London
Nick Chater
Behavioural Science Group, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick
Graldine Coppin
Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, and Laboratory for the Study of Emotion Elicitation and Expression, University of Geneva
Ara Darzi
Division of Surgery, Imperial College London, London
Peter Dayan
Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, UCL, London, UK
Raymond J. Dolan
Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology University College London, London
Chris D. Frith
Center for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University and Wellcome Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London
Paul W. Glimcher
Center for Neural Science, New York University
Lars Hall
Lund University Cognitive Science, Lund University
Petter Johansson
Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London
