Abstract
Recent evidence indicates that reward value encoding in humans is highly context dependent, leading to suboptimal decisions in some cases, but whether this computational constraint on valuation is a shared feature of human cognition remains unknown. Here we studied the behaviour of n = 561 individuals from 11 countries of markedly different socioeconomic and cultural makeup. Our findings show that context sensitivity was present in all 11 countries. Suboptimal decisions generated by context manipulation were not explained by risk aversion, as estimated through a separate description-based choice task (that is, lotteries) consisting of matched decision offers. Conversely, risk aversion significantly differed across countries. Overall, our findings suggest that context-dependent reward value encoding is a feature of human cognition that remains consistently present across different countries, as opposed to description-based decision-making, which is more permeable to cultural factors.
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Data availability
Data for the present study are available for free (for non-commercial use only) from our OSF.io repository (https://osf.io/yebm9/?view_only=). Source data are provided with this paper.
Code availability
Main analysis scripts are available (for non-commercial use only) from the Human Reinforcement Learning Team GitHub repository (https://github.com/hrl-team/WEIRDbandit).
Change history
09 July 2024
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01946-0
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Acknowledgements
We thank a number of colleagues and peers, including the members of the Human Reinforcement Learning laboratory and all of the senior researchers who provided feedback during the multiple conference presentations in which this work was featured. We also thank Waseda University and the École Normale Supérieure Department of Cognitive Studies for aiding us with the many logistical obstacles that we had to overcome in order to kickstart this study during the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic. We especially thank all of the participants who kindly contributed their time to make this study a reality. S.P. is supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (RaReMem: 101043804), the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (CogFinAgent: ANR-21-CE23-0002-02; RELATIVE: ANR-21-CE37-0008-01; RANGE: ANR-21-CE28-0024-01) and the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. O.Z., D.K. and A.S. were supported by the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University). U.H. and M.C. were supported by the Israel Science Foundation (1532/20). K.W. was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (22H00090) and JST Moonshot Research and Development (JPMJMS2012). A.B.K., M.G. and D.B. were supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA053282 and R01DA054201 to A.B.K.). J.N. was supported by the James S. McDonnell Foundation 21st Century Science Initiative in Understanding Human Cognition—Scholar Award (#220020334) and by a Sponsored Research Agreement between Meta and Fundación Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (#INB2376941). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
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H.A. is the lead author and researcher responsible for study design, coordination and management between teams, data management and collection and analysis, visualization and writing of the paper. S.P. was the main senior supervisor, who worked hand in hand with H.A. on every aspect of this work, including collaboration management, design, hypothesis development, supervision of the analysis, interpretation of the results, visualization and writing. S.B. was the main author behind the original design that this study replicated and contributed greatly to ensuring that our design indeed reproduced theirs. F.B., D.B., F.C., M.C., M.G., E.J.G., D.K., M.K., G.L., M.S., J.Y and O.Z. reviewed and supported the design of the experiment and its hypotheses. They also took charge of translation and deployment of the experiment in each of their countries, collected data locally and revised the paper. B.B., J.S.C., U.H., A.B.K., J.L., C.O., J.N., G.R., A.S.-J., A.S., B.S. and K.W. are senior supervisors who monitored the study locally, providing insight on the experimental design and commentary on the final version of the paper. In addition, K.W. provided essential scientific and logistical support in deploying the experiment worldwide.
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Supplementary Figs. 1–13, discussion, analyses and Tables 1–16.
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HDI score, cultural distance from India and cultural distance from the United States (per country). Value-maximizing choice ratio per decision context per country. Mean nu parameter value, per country, for each condition.
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Anlló, H., Bavard, S., Benmarrakchi, F. et al. Comparing experience- and description-based economic preferences across 11 countries. Nat Hum Behav 8, 1554–1567 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01894-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01894-9
