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Encoding context determines risky choice
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Description: Both memory and decision processes are strongly influenced by the context in which they occur. Here we examined how fluid these context effects are and whether transient background contexts can influence risky choice in experience-based decision making. We created two separate background contexts within an experimental session by presenting distinctive visual cues for blocks of trials involving different decision sets. Risky choices were highly context dependent: Choices reflected an overweighting of the most extreme outcomes within each background context, rather than the global session-level context. In particular, given the exact same risky decision, participants chose differently depending on the other possible outcomes in that background context. Furthermore, follow-up memory tests demonstrated that people displayed memory biases that were specific to the distinct contexts and also consistent with their choice patterns. Thus, the decision contexts were discretized in memory, and, for each context-dependent decision set, the outcomes at the extremes of that distribution were overweighted.
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