The Effects of Incentive Framing on Performance Decrements for Large Monetary Outcomes: Behavioral and Neural Mechanisms

Abstract

There is a nuanced interplay between the provision of monetary incentives and behavioral performance. Individuals' performance typically increases with increasing incentives only up to a point, after which larger incentives may result in decreases in performance, a phenomenon known as "choking." We investigated the influence of incentive framing on choking effects in humans: in one condition, participants performed a skilled motor task to obtain potential monetary gains; in another, participants performed the same task to avoid losing a monetary amount. In both the gain and loss frame, the degree of participants' behavioral loss aversion was correlated with their susceptibility to choking effects. However, the effects were markedly different in the gain and loss frames: individuals with higher loss aversion were susceptible to choking for large prospective gains and not susceptible to choking for large prospective losses, whereas individuals with low loss aversion choked for large prospective losses but not for large prospective gains. Activity in the ventral striatum was predictive of performance decrements in both the gain and loss frames. Moreover, a mediation analysis revealed that behavioral loss aversion hindered performance via the influence of ventral striatal activity on motor performance. Our findings indicate that the framing of an incentive has a profound effect on an individual's susceptibility to choking effects, which is contingent on their loss aversion. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the ventral striatum serves as an interface between incentive-driven motivation and instrumental action, regardless of whether incentives are framed in terms of potential losses or gains.

Catecholaminergic modulation of the avoidance of cognitive control.

“…This evidence concurs with recent expected value accounts of cognitive control (Botvinick & Braver, 2015;Kool, Gershman, & Cushman, 2017;Kurzban, Duckworth, Kable, & Myers, 2013;Shenhav et al, 2017), which propose that the degree (and intensity) of engagement in an upcoming cognitive computation is based on a cost-benefit analysis. In line with this account, it has been shown repeatedly that enhancing motivation, for example by offering reward, affects performance on cognitive control paradigms (Aarts, van Holstein, & Cools, 2011;Botvinick & Braver, 2015;Chib, Shimojo, & O'Doherty, 2014;Chib, De Martino, Shimojo, & O'Doherty, 2012;Manohar et al, 2015;Padmala & Pessoa, 2011). Increasing the value or benefit of a demanding computation, such as task switching, seems to outweigh perceived demand costs.…”

Learning, Reward, and Decision Making

“…Furthermore, under certain circumstances, increased incentives can paradoxically result in less-efficacious instrumental performance, an effect known as choking that has been linked to dopaminergic regions of the midbrain (Chib et al 2014, Mobbs et al 2009, Zedelius et al 2011). For example, Ariely et al (2009) offered participants in rural India the prospect of winning large monetary amounts relative to their average monthly salaries.…”

“…One theory is that choking effects reflect a maladaptive return of behavioral control to the goal-directed system in the face of large potential incentives in a situation in which the habitual system is better placed to reliably execute a skilled behavior. Although some results support this hypothesis (Lee & Grafton 2015), others support an alternative account whereby Pavlovian effects elicited by cues could engage Pavlovian skeletomotor behaviors, such as appetitive approach or aversive withdrawal, that interfere with the performance of the habitual skilled motor behavior (Chib et al 2012, 2014). More than one of these ideas could hold true, as behavioral choking effects may have multiple causes arising from maladaptive interactions between these systems.…”

Luring the Motor System: Impact of Performance-Contingent Incentives on Pre-Movement Beta-Band Activity and Motor Performance

“…An interesting possibility is that the beta modulations stemmed from interactions between these sensorimotor regions and the basal ganglia (Jenkinson and Brown, 2011), which are believed to influence movement vigor through motivation-related dopamine signals that dictate the worth of voluntary actions (Shadmehr and Krakauer, 2008;Turner and Desmurget, 2010;Berke, 2018). For instance, it has been shown that activity in the ventral striatum, which receives dopaminergic inputs from the substantia nigra pars compacta and ventral tegmental area (Tritsch et al, 2012), predicts incentive-driven changes in motor performance (Chib et al, 2012(Chib et al, , 2014 and vigor (Opris et al, 2011). Hence, the positive correlation between pre-movement beta activity and MTs in the present study strongly, though indirectly, suggests a link between beta activity and nigrostriatal activity.…”