Submission 693
Goal-Dependent Value Processing: The Role of Overall Magnitude in Decision Making
SymposiumTalk-04
Presented by: Chih-Chung Ting
The speed of decision-making is a key metric for inferring cognitive mechanisms across various contexts. Traditionally, factors such as task difficulty—including perceptual discriminability or value differences—have been central to understanding response times (RTs). However, a growing body of research demonstrates that the overall magnitude of options is also robustly associated with RTs: individuals tend to make faster decisions when choosing between highly intense or attractive options. This negative association between magnitude and RTs is also known as the "magnitude effect." In this talk, I will present evidence that overall magnitude not only affects RTs, but also influences other aspects of decision-making, such as how attention impacts choice, across both perceptual and preferential tasks. Furthermore, I will demonstrate that the magnitude effect on RTs is modulated by decision goals. Specifically, when participants are instructed to choose their least preferred option, RTs increase with greater overall magnitude (i.e., higher-value options are further from the decision goal). Conversely, when participants are asked to select the most mediocre option, RTs are fastest at intermediate levels of overall magnitude. These findings suggest that decision makers transform from preference-based to goal-dependent value representations, adapting their decision strategies according to the task goal.