The Value of Exercising Control Over Monetary Gains and Losses

Abstract

Using functional MRI, we examined how the affective experience of choice, the means by which individuals exercise control, is modulated by the valence of potential outcomes (gains, losses). When trials involved potential gains, participants reported liking cues predicting a choice opportunity better than cues predicting no choice opportunity—an effect that corresponded with blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) increases in ventral striatum (VS) activity. Surprisingly, no differences were observed between choice and no-choice cues when participants anticipated potential losses. Individual differences in subjective choice preference in the loss condition, however, corresponded to choice-related BOLD activity in VS. We conducted a second experiment to examine whether monetary losses were perceived differently in the context of simultaneous gains. When losses occurred in the absence of gains, participants showed an increased affective experience of choice—they reported greater liking of choice than no-choice trials, and VS activity was greater for choice than for no-choice cues. Collectively, the findings suggest that the affective experience of choice involves reward-processing circuitry when people anticipate appetitive and aversive outcomes, but the choice experience may be sensitive to context and individual differences.