Neural correlates of dueling affective reactions to win–win choices

Abstract

Win-win choices cause anxiety, often more so than decisions lacking the opportunity for a highly desired outcome. These anxious feelings can paradoxically co-occur with positive feelings, raising important implications for individual decision styles and general well-being. Across three studies, people chose between products that varied in personal value. Participants reported feeling most positive and most anxious when choosing between similarly highvalued products. Behavioral and neural results suggested that this paradoxical experience resulted from parallel evaluations of the expected outcome (inducing positive affect) versus the cost of choosing a response (inducing anxiety). Positive feelings were reduced when there was no high-value option, and anxiety was reduced when only one option was highly valued. Dissociable regions within the striatum and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) tracked these dueling affective reactions during choice. Ventral regions, associated with stimulus valuation, tracked positive feelings and the value of the best item. Dorsal regions, associated with response valuation, tracked anxiety. In addition to tracking anxiety, the dorsal mPFC was associated with conflict during the current choice, and activity levels across individual items predicted whether that choice would later be reversed during an unexpected reevaluation phase. By revealing how win-win decisions elicit responses in dissociable brain systems, these results help resolve the paradox of win-win choices. They also provide insight into behaviors that are associated with these two forms of affect, such as why we are pulled toward good options but may still decide to delay or avoid choosing among them.I n a famous thought experiment, a hungry donkey is placed exactly between two equal bales of hay and, unable to decide which to approach, starves. Human decision makers face problems similar to the metaphorical donkey. Whether deciding between schools to attend or desserts to order, choices involving equally good outcomes ("win-win" choices) can generate anxiety along with the positive feelings one has about the rewarding prospects (1). Although the positive feelings may lead individuals to prefer having more good options, the anxiety can lead them to delay choosing, choose suboptimally, or make no choice at all (2-5). These seemingly contradictory preferences, particularly in situations where a "wrong" choice has negligible costs, represent a paradox for many decision scientists (6). The potential impact of negative choice experiences on important medical and financial decisions (7, 8) and on general well-being (6, 9, 10) gives the paradox far-reaching consequences. However, despite substantial research on the impact of choice conflict on behavior (2,5,7,8) and postchoice feelings (1, 9, 11), little is known about the basis of the dueling affective reactions to the choice itself.One possibility is that positive and anxious feelings to win-win choices are tied to separate components of the neural circuitry for decision maki...

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