Overview of our Research on Decision-Making

The decisions we make have tremendous consequences on our own lives, the lives of others around us, and subsequently on society as a whole. It can also be said that “We are our decisions”. Thus, at the heart of understanding the human brain and mind is to study how our neural connections give rise to the decisions we observe in people’s behaviors. Moreover, an important question for our lab is whether these decision processes change with age. Whereas some studies suggest that older adults tend to be more conservative than younger adults in their decisions and take less risks, some other studies find that older adults are in fact more risk-seeking than younger adults. This is a nascent area of research, and we hope to make contributions to the field by conducting studies utilizing psychological testing and neuroimaging methodologies.

 

Associated Publications

Goh, J. O.* (2013). Aging of neural circuits underlying decision-making behavior. Journal of Neuroscience and Neuroengineering, 2(1), 3-13.

Farrell, A. M., Goh, J. O., White, B. J.* (2012). The effect of performance-based incentive contracts on system 1 and system 2 processing in affective decision contexts: fMRI and behavioral evidence. AAA 2013 Management Accounting Section (MAS) Meeting Paper. Available at SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2111452