People’s perceptual reports are biased toward percepts they are motivated to see. The arousal system coordinates the body’s response to motivationally significant events and is well positioned to regulate motivational effects on perceptual judgments. However, it remains unclear whether arousal would enhance or reduce motivational biases. Here, we measured pupil dilation as a measure of arousal while participants (N = 38) performed a visual categorization task. We used monetary bonuses to motivate participants to perceive one category over another. Even though the reward-maximizing strategy was to perform the task accurately, participants were more likely to report seeing the desirable category. Furthermore, higher arousal levels were associated with making motivationally biased responses. Analyses using computational models suggested that arousal enhanced motivational effects by biasing evidence accumulation in favor of desirable percepts. These results suggest that heightened arousal biases people toward what they want to see and away from an objective representation of the environment.
Aston-JonesG.CohenJ. D. (2005). An integrative theory of locus coeruleus-norepinephrine function: Adaptive gain and optimal performance. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 28(1), 403–450. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.neuro.28.061604.135709
3.
BalcetisE.DunningD. (2006). See what you want to see: Motivational influences on visual perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(4), 612–625. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.4.612
4.
BalcetisE.DunningD.GranotY. (2012). Subjective value determines initial dominance in binocular rivalry. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(1), 122–129. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.08.009
5.
BatesD.MächlerM.BolkerB.WalkerS. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1). https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v067.i01
6.
BettsM. J.KirilinaE.OtaduyM. C. G.IvanovD.Acosta-CabroneroJ.CallaghanM. F.LambertC.Cardenas-BlancoA.PineK.PassamontiL.LoaneC.KeukenM. C.TrujilloP.LüsebrinkF.MatternH.LiuK. Y.PriovoulosN.FliessbachK.DahlM. J.. . . HämmererD. (2019). Locus coeruleus imaging as a biomarker for noradrenergic dysfunction in neurodegenerative diseases. Brain, 142(9), 2558–2571. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awz193
7.
BourgeoisA.ChelazziL.VuilleumierP. (2016). How motivation and reward learning modulate selective attention. In StuderB.KnechtS. (Eds.), Progress in brain research (Vol. 229, pp. 325–342). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.pbr.2016.06.004
8.
BradleyM. M.MiccoliL.EscrigM. A.LangP. J. (2008). The pupil as a measure of emotional arousal and autonomic activation. Psychophysiology, 45(4), 602–607. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.2008.00654.x
CheadleS.WyartV.TsetsosK.MyersN.de GardelleV.Herce CastañónS.SummerfieldC. (2014). Adaptive gain control during human perceptual choice. Neuron, 81(6), 1429–1441. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2014.01.020
11.
de GeeJ. W.ColizoliO.KloostermanN. A.KnapenT.NieuwenhuisS.DonnerT. H. (2017). Dynamic modulation of decision biases by brainstem arousal systems. eLife, 6, Article e23232. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.23232
12.
de GeeJ. W.KnapenT.DonnerT. H. (2014). Decision-related pupil dilation reflects upcoming choice and individual bias. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 111(5), E618–E625. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1317557111
13.
de GeeJ. W.TsetsosK.SchwabeL.UraiA. E.McCormickD.McGinleyM. J.DonnerT. H. (2020). Pupil-linked phasic arousal predicts a reduction of choice bias across species and decision domains. eLife, 9, Article e54014. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.54014
14.
EldarE.NivY.CohenJ. D. (2016). Do you see the forest or the tree? Neural gain and breadth versus focus in perceptual processing. Psychological Science, 27(12), 1632–1643. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616665578
15.
GelmanA.RubinD. B. (1992). Inference from iterative simulation using multiple sequences. Statistical Science, 7(4), 457–472. https://doi.org/10.1214/ss/1177011136
HeekerenH. R.MarrettS.UngerleiderL. G. (2008). The neural systems that mediate human perceptual decision making. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9(6), 467–479. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2374
18.
JoshiS.LiY.KalwaniR. M.GoldJ. I. (2016). Relationships between pupil diameter and neuronal activity in the locus coeruleus, colliculi, and cingulate cortex. Neuron, 89(1), 221–234. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2015.11.028
19.
KensingerE. A.Garoff-EatonR. J.SchacterD. L. (2007). Effects of emotion on memory specificity: Memory trade-offs elicited by negative visually arousing stimuli. Journal of Memory and Language, 56(4), 575–591. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2006.05.004
20.
KeungW.HagenT. A.WilsonR. C. (2019). Regulation of evidence accumulation by pupil-linked arousal processes. Nature Human Behaviour, 3(6), 636–645. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0551-4
21.
KnoblauchK.MaloneyL. T. (2012). Modeling psychophysical data in R. Springer.
22.
KretM. E.Sjak-ShieE. E. (2019). Preprocessing pupil size data: Guidelines and code. Behavior Research Methods, 51(3), 1336–1342. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-018-1075-y
23.
KrishnamurthyK.NassarM. R.SarodeS.GoldJ. I. (2017). Arousal-related adjustments of perceptual biases optimize perception in dynamic environments. Nature Human Behaviour, 1(6), Article 0107. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0107
KuznetsovaA.BrockhoffP. B.ChristensenR. H. B. (2019). lmerTest: Tests in linear mixed effects models (Version 3.1-0) [Computer software]. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lmerTest
LeeT.-H.GreeningS. G.UenoT.ClewettD.PonzioA.SakakiM.MatherM. (2018). Arousal increases neural gain via the locus coeruleus–noradrenaline system in younger adults but not in older adults. Nature Human Behaviour, 2(5), 356–366. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0344-1
28.
LefebvreG.LebretonM.MeynielF.Bourgeois-GirondeS.PalminteriS. (2017). Behavioural and neural characterization of optimistic reinforcement learning. Nature Human Behaviour, 1(4), Article 0067. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0067
LiuK. Y.MarijattaF.HämmererD.Acosta-CabroneroJ.DüzelE.HowardR. J. (2017). Magnetic resonance imaging of the human locus coeruleus: A systematic review. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 83, 325–355. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.10.023
31.
MaD. S.CorrellJ.WittenbrinkB. (2015). The Chicago Face Database: A free stimulus set of faces and norming data. Behavior Research Methods, 47(4), 1122–1135. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-014-0532-5
MarkovicJ.AndersonA. K.ToddR. M. (2014). Tuning to the significant: Neural and genetic processes underlying affective enhancement of visual perception and memory. Behavioural Brain Research, 259, 229–241. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2013.11.018
34.
MatherM.ClewettD.SakakiM.HarleyC. W. (2016). Norepinephrine ignites local hotspots of neuronal excitation: How arousal amplifies selectivity in perception and memory. Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 39, Article e200. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X15000667
35.
MurphyP. R.O’ConnellR. G.O’SullivanM.RobertsonI. H.BalstersJ. H. (2014). Pupil diameter covaries with BOLD activity in human locus coeruleus. Human Brain Mapping, 35(8), 4140–4154. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.22466
RatcliffR.McKoonG. (2007). The diffusion decision model: Theory and data for two-choice decision tasks. Neural Computation, 20(4), 873–922. https://doi.org/10.1162/neco.2008.12-06-420
41.
R Core Team. (2018). R: A language and environment for statistical computing (Version 3.5.1) [Computer software]. Retrieved from http://www.R-project.org
42.
SaraS. J.BouretS. (2012). Orienting and reorienting: The locus coeruleus mediates cognition through arousal. Neuron, 76(1), 130–141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2012.09.011
43.
SharotT.KornC. W.DolanR. J. (2011). How unrealistic optimism is maintained in the face of reality. Nature Neuroscience, 14(11), 1475–1479. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2949
44.
SpiegelhalterD. J.BestN. G.CarlinB. P.Van Der LindeA. (2002). Bayesian measures of model complexity and fit. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society B: Statistical Methodology, 64(4), 583–639. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9868.00353
45.
UraiA. E.BraunA.DonnerT. H. (2017). Pupil-linked arousal is driven by decision uncertainty and alters serial choice bias. Nature Communications, 8(1), Article 14637. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14637
46.
VossA.RothermundK.BrandtstädterJ. (2008). Interpreting ambiguous stimuli: Separating perceptual and judgmental biases. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(4), 1048–1056. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2007.10.009
47.
WhiteC. N.PoldrackR. A. (2014). Decomposing bias in different types of simple decisions. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40(2), 385–398. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034851
48.
WieckiT. V.SoferI.FrankM. J. (2013). HDDM: Hierarchical Bayesian estimation of the drift-diffusion model in Python. Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, 7, Article 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fninf.2013.00014
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
