| Summary: | Decisions often require tradeoffs between costs and benefits, such as effort
and reward. Prior findings show that decision makers discount the subjective value of
a rewarding option as the effort required to obtain it increases. The mechanisms of
discounting when the decision maker is also the recipient of the outcome
(“egocentric” decision making) are known. However, in many cases, the decision
maker decides for someone else, with the decision outcomes delivered entirely to
another person (“allocentric” decision making). Implementing a neuroeconomics
approach, the present thesis examines the mechanisms of allocentric decisions in
the domain of effort discounting across three different levels: behavioral,
computational, and neural descriptions of a single phenomenon. Behavioral results
showed that making allocentric, as compared to egocentric, effort decisions shifts
preferences toward smaller effort, smaller reward options. Computational modeling
revealed that differential weighting of effort discounting parameters adequately
explained choice differences between allocentric and egocentric decisions.
Furthermore, neural activation patterns examined using functional magnetic
resonance imaging in brain regions associated with value and reward (the prefrontal
cortex and striatum) along with regions associated with theory of mind and social
cognition (the temporoparietal junction, posterior cingulate cortex, and angular gyrus)
reflected allocentric option valuation, choices, and estimated computational modeling
parameters. Together, the research presented in this thesis describes allocentric
effort decisions as a discriminant phenomenon, provides computational modeling of
how allocentric decision makers value the tradeoff between effort and compensation,
and offers physiological evidence of the related cognitive processes.
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