The assessment of affective decision‐making: Exploring alternative scoring methods for the Balloon Analog Risk Task and Columbia Card Task

Abstract

Affective decision‐making (ADM) is recognized as the ability to effectively reappraise stimuli during these decisions to make choices that maximize long‐term outcomes. Currently, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is the gold‐standard measure of ADM. Previous research has shown that other commonly used decision‐making tasks such as the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART) and Columbia Card Task (CCT) are unrelated to the IGT and may assess distinct decision‐making constructs from ADM. Yet the exact decision‐making constructs that these tasks assess may be dependent on the scoring method utilized. One‐hundred and eight‐four participants (18–58 years; M = 26.29, SD = 7.79) completed the IGT, BART, and CCT. The relationships between these tasks while utilizing both traditional and novel scoring methods for the BART and CCT were investigated. Results showed that whether using the novel or traditional scoring methods, the BART failed to produce any meaningful relationships with the IGT or CCT. The BART may capture unique decision‐making processes involved during conditions of uncertainty, whereas the other tasks involve decision‐making processes under conditions of known risk. Alternatively, the lack of meaningful relationships may be due to the stochastic design of the BART. Conversely, the novel and traditional scoring methods for the CCT, which were not significantly correlated with each other, were both related to the IGT. Ultimately, this study showed that the CCT can capture different decision‐making constructs depending on the scoring methods used. The traditional scoring method, the total number of cards flipped, assesses risk propensity, whereas the newly developed optimal–suboptimal difference score assesses ADM.