Systematic comparison of risky choices in humans and monkeys

Leo Chi U Seak, Simone Ferrari-Toniolo, Ritesh Jain, Kirby Nielsen and Wolfram Schultz

No 202316, Working Papers from University of Liverpool, Department of Economics

Abstract: The past decades have seen tremendous progress in fundamental studies on economic choice in humans. However, elucidation of the underlying neuronal processes requires invasive neurophysiological studies that are met with difficulties in humans. Monkeys as evolutionary closest relatives offer a solution. The animals display sophisticated and well-controllable behavior that allows to implement key constructs of proven economic choice theories. However, the similarity of economic choice between the two species has never been systematically investigated. We investigated compliance with the independence axiom (IA) of expected utility theory as one of the most demanding choice tests and compared IA violations between humans and monkeys. Using generalized linear modeling and cumulative prospect theory (CPT), we found that humans and monkeys made comparable risky choices, although their subjective values (utilities) differed. These results suggest similar fundamental choice mechanism across these primate species and encourage to study their underlying neurophysiological mechanisms.

Keywords: Independence axiom; utility; risk; choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo and nep-upt
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:liv:livedp:202316

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