Sunk cost sensitivity during change-of-mind decisions is informed by both the spent and remaining costs

Abstract

Sunk cost sensitivity describes escalating decision commitment with increased spent resources. On neuroeconomic foraging tasks, mice, rats, and humans show similar escalations from sunk costs while quitting an ongoing countdown to reward. In a new analysis taken across computationally parallel foraging tasks across species and laboratories, we find that these behaviors primarily occur on choices that are economically inconsistent with the subject’s other choices, and that they reflect not only the time spent, but also the time remaining, suggesting that these are change-of-mind re-evaluation processes. Using a recently proposed change-of-mind drift-diffusion model, we find that the sunk cost sensitivity in this model arises from decision-processes that directly take into account the time spent (costs sunk). Applying these new insights to experimental data, we find that sensitivity to sunk costs during re-evaluation decisions depends on the information provided to the subject about the time spent and the time remaining.

Diabetes alters neuroeconomically dissociable forms of mental accounting

“…Practically, this may help the agent in times of survival. We and others have observed sensitivity to sunk costs only in a reward-scarce environment, suggesting that this within-trial state dependent valuation learning explanation of sunk costs depends on task demand 21,24,34,70,71 . Thus, it appears that diabetic mice tested on the gradual schedule who fail to demonstrate sensitivity to sunk costs may do so in part because of a decreased pressure to seek food secondary to testing history or because of a blunted ability to register internal states with external circumstances.…”

“…However, as we have previously characterized, there is more value structure to these quit decisions that effectively correct offer zone mistakes in an economically advantageous manner (Supplementary Fig. 5k-o) 24,34 . What is more, quit events comprise a unique economic dilemma in which the longer an animal takes to decide to quit, the closer it may be to earning a reward.…”

“…This reflects the well-studied decision-making phenomenon termed the sunk cost fallacy, that according to classic economic theory, should be ignored when making re-evaluative choices 67 . We previously discovered that this valuation algorithm has been conserved across evolution postulated to arise from, among several reasons, state-dependent valuation learning as a key driver of this phenomenon that may be useful from an energetic standpoint 24,34,68,69 . This theory hypothesizes that energy expended in pursuit of a food reward could shift an individual into a poorer energy state 68,69 .…”

“…Conversely, the cognitive processes underlying wait zone behaviors are thought to capture change-of-mind decisions that have far less understood neural mechanisms 60,61 . Continuously re-evaluating an ongoing investment on Restaurant Row encompasses a complex integration of requiring mice to patiently wait in a confined location while counting the passage of time 34 . With this, animals are losing irrecoverable time, have more of a window to reconsider opportunity costs in tandem with growing hunger states, all the while decreasing temporal distance to the goal.…”

Sex differences in change-of-mind neuroeconomic decision-making is modulated by LINC00473 in medial prefrontal cortex

“…This approach has yielded efforts from our team and others developing innovative tasks adapted for use in mice, rats, monkeys, and humans [5,[41][42][43][44]. The use of these translational tasks have led to cross-species discoveries uncovering the behavioral underpinnings of signatures of higher-order cognitive processes, previously thought to be unique to humans, supported by physically separable circuits in the brain [45][46][47][48][49].…”