Researcher ORCID Identifier

0009-0006-3954-738X

Graduation Year

2024

Date of Submission

4-2024

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

W.M. Keck Science Department

Second Department

Neuroscience

Reader 1

Alison Harris

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2024 Daniel E Kroshchuk

Abstract

Defined as the experience of sensory information without the presence of external stimuli, mental imagery is thought to play a role in memory, emotional regulation, and decision-making. Recent studies suggest that mental imagery varies widely across the general population, with approximately 2-4% of individuals having a reduction or complete absence of visual imagination, a phenomenon known as aphantasia. Individuals with aphantasia show reduced emotional arousal to fear-inducing imagery, raising the question of how variation in imagery affects cognitive processes that are influenced by emotion. Specifically, in economic decision-making it has been shown that the prospect of loss triggers negative emotions, leading to a tendency to avoid risky gambles with high potential losses, a concept defined as loss aversion. Although loss aversion varies across individuals, the effects of mental imagery ability on this behavior are unknown. Here we propose an experiment to address this question by measuring loss aversion in individuals as a function of mental imagery ability, as assessed by independent measures of imagery strength. Physiological arousal, an index of emotional response, will be measured using skin conductance response (SCR) while individuals decide whether to take risky gambles with varying magnitudes of gain and loss. We expect that participants with lower levels of mental imagery will have a reduced physiological arousal to loss magnitude, as measured through SCR, leading to higher tolerance for losses. If confirmed, these results would suggest that the amplification of emotional responses by mental imagery contributes to the avoidance of losses, providing new evidence for the role of mental imagery in decision-making and highlighting the complex relationship between neuroscience and economics.

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