Abstract
The asymmetry of autonomic arousal for potential losses and gains was assessed by the galvanic skin response (GSR) of participants playing classic and inverted versions of the Monty Hall problem (MHP). In both versions, the prize remained the same (a pen valued at £10 for the right answer), but in the modified version, prizes were received prior to choosing the door. Both experimental groups showed increased levels of GSR while completing the task, demonstrating increased autonomic arousal during the game. However, a robust difference in GSR was detected between classic and inverted versions of the MHP, thus demonstrating the differing autonomic arousal involved in deciding between the alternatives presented by the game. Participants experienced a stronger autonomic response when they could lose the prize than when they could win the prize. This experiment presents the first demonstration of this effect on the MHP. The stronger autonomic arousal for the inverted task may indicate a stronger emotional reaction and/or greater attentional focus than for the standard version of the task. These data demonstrate that potential losses increase arousal in more complex tasks than is typically shown.
Highlights
A classic finding in psychology is that participants experience asymmetries in the intensity of their good and bad experiences across a wide range of domains, including personal relationships, emotions, rewards and punishments, and electrophysiological reactions [1]
The endowment effect has been typically explained by loss aversion in that sellers anticipate a potential loss of the object they own and compensate by inflating the price of the object due to loss aversion
The results of this study reveal reliably higher levels of galvanic skin response (GSR) for participants playing an inverse version of the Monty Hall problem (MHP) compared with the classic version
Summary
A classic finding in psychology is that participants experience asymmetries in the intensity of their good and bad experiences across a wide range of domains, including personal relationships, emotions, rewards and punishments, and electrophysiological reactions [1]. Increased intensity for negative experiences has been suggested to extend to subjective responses to gains and losses [1, 2].loss aversion is the phenomenon whereby changes that result in losses loom larger psychologically than do those that result in gains [2]. The attentional-based model of losses is an alternative account that proposes that increased attention and potentially improved performance occur when a task involves possible losses [4, 5] Consistent with both loss aversion and the attentional-based model, participants have shown greater physiological arousal when experiencing negative outcomes. This increased arousal is not always accompanied by behavioral loss aversion, a finding that the attentionalbased model is better equipped to explain
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