Decisions by description
Risk‐taking behavior from descriptions was probed using the probabilistic task described by Rogers and colleagues (Norbury et al., High‐ and low‐reward trials offered a choice between a certain win or loss (low‐risk option) and a 50:50 chance gamble (high‐risk option) with the Decisions by description. Decisions made from description were probed using 10 unique gambles, divided into two types of gambles: mixed‐context trials and low/high‐reward context trials. Mixed‐context trials consisted of eight different combinations of points to win, points to lose, and the probabilities of winning, with the expected value of the high‐risk option between −30 to 30 (see gambles 1–8 in panel A), while the low‐risk option always had an expected value of 0. In high/low‐reward context, the expected value of the high‐ and low‐risk option was matched (see gambles 9 and 10 in panel A). (B) Graphical representation of the minimum and maximum reward points for each option. The bold black line indicates the expected value of the option, taking into account the probability of winning, and the points to win and lose. The dark gray distributions indicate the high‐risk option. (C) Task structure of decisions made from description. The task consisted of two different trial types: high/low‐reward context trials (one fifth of the trials) and mixed‐context trials (four fifths of the trials). Each trial consisted of a choice between a low‐risk gamble (yellow) and high‐risk gamble (blue). Points to win and lose were presented in green and red, respectively. The probability of winning corresponded to the size of the filled bar. Feedback was given after each choice and the running total was updated.The task had the following structure: On each trial, participants were required to choose between two simultaneously presented gambles (Figure All computerized behavioral paradigms were implemented using Psychophysics Toolbox Version 3 on MATLAB (version 19b; MathWorks, Natick, MA).