title: Is making a risky choice based on a weighting and adding process? An eye-tracking investigation.
abstract: The debate about whether making a risky choice is based on a weighting and adding process has a long history and is still unresolved. To address this long-standing controversy, we developed a comparative paradigm. Participants' eye movements in 2 risky choice tasks that required participants to choose between risky options in single-play and multiple-play conditions were separately compared with those in a baseline task in which participants naturally performed a deliberate calculation following a weighting and adding process. The results showed that, when participants performed the multiple-play risky choice task, their eye movements were similar to those in the baseline task, suggesting that participants may use a weighting and adding process to make risky choices in multiple-play conditions. In contrast, participants' eye movements were different in the single-play risky choice task versus the baseline task, suggesting that participants were not likely to use a weighting and adding process to make risky choices in single-play conditions and were more likely to use a heuristic process. We concluded that an expectation-based index for predicting risk preferences is applicable in multiple-play conditions but not in single-play conditions, implying the need to improve current theories that postulate the use of a heuristic process.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
authors.forename: Yin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Su
authors.forename: Li-Lin
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Rao
authors.forename: Hong-Yue
authors.initials: HY
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Xue-Lei
authors.initials: XL
authors.lastname: Du
authors.forename: Xingshan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Shu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D053483:Eye Movement Measurements / Q000295:instrumentation; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011336:Probability; D012309:Risk-Taking; D055815:Young Adult