title: Interoceptive ability predicts aversion to losses.
abstract: Emotions have been proposed to inform risky decision-making through the influence of affective physiological responses on subjective value. The ability to perceive internal body states, or "interoception" may influence this relationship. Here, we examined whether interoception predicts participants' degree of loss aversion, which has been previously linked to choice-related arousal responses. Participants performed both a heartbeat-detection task indexing interoception and a risky monetary decision-making task, from which loss aversion, risk attitudes and choice consistency were parametrically measured. Interoceptive ability correlated selectively with loss aversion and was unrelated to the other value parameters. This finding suggests that specific and separable component processes underlying valuation are shaped not only by our physiological responses, as shown in previous findings, but also by our interoceptive access to such signals.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , New York University , New York , NY , USA.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sokol-Hessner
authors.forename: Catherine A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Hartley
authors.forename: Jeffrey R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Hamilton
authors.forename: Elizabeth A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Phelps
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006339:Heart Rate / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D065812:Interoception / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D040242:Risk Reduction Behavior; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Decision-making; Emotion; Interoception; Loss aversion