Implicit Negativity Bias Leads to Greater Loss Aversion and Learning during Decision-Making

Francisco Molins, Celia Martínez-Tomás and Miguel Ángel Serrano ()
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Francisco Molins: Department of Psychobiology, Universitat de València, Av. Blasco Ibáñez, 13, 46010 Valencia, Spain
Celia Martínez-Tomás: Department of Psychobiology, Universitat de València, Av. Blasco Ibáñez, 13, 46010 Valencia, Spain
Miguel Ángel Serrano: Department of Psychobiology, Universitat de València, Av. Blasco Ibáñez, 13, 46010 Valencia, Spain

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 24, 1-11

Abstract: It is widely accepted there is the existence of negativity bias, a greater sensitivity to negative emotional stimuli compared with positive ones, but its effect on decision-making would depend on the context. In risky decisions, negativity bias could lead to non-rational choices by increasing loss aversion; yet in ambiguous decisions, it could favor reinforcement-learning and better decisions by increasing sensitivity to punishments. Nevertheless, these hypotheses have not been tested to date. Our aim was to fill this gap. Sixty-nine participants rated ambiguous emotional faces (from the NimStim set) as positive or negative to assess negativity bias. The implicit level of the bias was also obtained by tracking the mouse’s trajectories when rating faces. Then, they performed both a risky and an ambiguous decision-making task. Participants displayed negativity bias, but only at the implicit level. In addition, this bias was associated with loss aversion in risky decisions, and with greater performance through the ambiguous decisional task. These results highlight the need to contextualize biases, rather than draw general conclusions about whether they are inherently good or bad.

Keywords: negativity bias; loss aversion; reinforcement-learning; decision-making; Iowa Gambling Task (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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