Short- and long-term consequences in decision-making under risk: immediate feedback about long-term prospects benefits people tending to impulsive processing |
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Authors: | Silke M. Mueller Johannes Schiebener Gerrit Stöckigt |
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Affiliation: | Department of General Psychology: Cognition, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany |
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Abstract: | Many decisions in everyday life involve weighing up immediate and expected future outcomes that may be conflictive. Yet, it is still unclear which cognitive functions may affect decision-making in such situations. We examined 150 healthy subjects using a new decision-making task that measures people’s ability at handling short- and long-term consequences under objective risk. Two task versions were developed to investigate the effects of feedback about long-term consequences on decision-making. One version includes feedback about changes in long-term prospects while the other does not. Both groups revealed that advantageous decision-making correlated with reasoning and working-memory abilities, however, no correlations with executive functions were found. The effect of feedback on decision-making performance was moderated by impulsivity and need for cognition. Our findings contribute to recent dual-system approaches for risky decision-making by showing that individuals with predispositions towards impulsive rather than reflective information processing could profit from feedback about long-term prospects. |
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Keywords: | Decision-making feedback processing impulsivity risk behaviour |
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