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Gaze bias differences capture individual choice behaviour

Nature Human Behaviour volume 3, pages 625–635 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

How do we make simple choices such as deciding between an apple and an orange? Recent empirical evidence suggests that choice behaviour and gaze allocation are closely linked at the group level, whereby items looked at longer during the decision-making process are more likely to be chosen. However, it is unclear how variable this gaze bias effect is between individuals. Here we investigate this question across four different simple choice experiments and using a computational model that can be easily applied to individuals. We show that an association between gaze and choice is present for most individuals, but differs considerably in strength. Generally, individuals with a strong association between gaze and choice behaviour are worse at choosing the best item from a choice set compared with individuals with a weak association. Accounting for individuals’ variability in gaze bias in the model can explain and accurately predict individual differences in choice behaviour.

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Fig. 1: Experimental paradigms.
Fig. 2: Individual differences in the three studied behavioural metrics and their associations.
Fig. 3: The GLAM.
Fig. 4: Individual relative model comparison between the full GLAM and a restricted no-gaze-bias GLAM variant.
Fig. 5: Individual out-of-sample predictions of behavioural metrics for all odd-numbered trials.
Fig. 6: Associations between individuals’ response behaviour in the odd-numbered trials and the model parameters estimated from the even-numbered trials.

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Data availability

All datasets are available at http://www.github.com/glamlab/gaze-bias-differences. The Folke 2016 dataset59 is originally available at figshare: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3756144.v2.

Code availability

All analyses and figures can be reproduced using the datasets, scripts and GLAM resources that are available at http://www.github.com/glamlab/gaze-bias-differences.

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Acknowledgements

The Junior Professorship of P.N.C.M. as well as the associated Dahlem International Network Junior Research Group Neuroeconomics is supported by Freie Universität Berlin within the Excellence Initiative of the German Research Foundation (DFG). Further support for P.N.C.M. is provided by the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. F.M. is supported by the International Max Planck Research School on the Life Course (LIFE). I.K. is funded by the National Science Foundation Career Award 1554837. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Armin W. Thomas, Felix Molter.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Armin W. Thomas

  2. Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Armin W. Thomas, Felix Molter, Hauke R. Heekeren & Peter N. C. Mohr

  3. Center for Cognitive Neuroscience Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Armin W. Thomas, Felix Molter, Hauke R. Heekeren & Peter N. C. Mohr

  4. School of Business and Economics, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Felix Molter & Peter N. C. Mohr

  5. WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Berlin, Germany

    Felix Molter & Peter N. C. Mohr

  6. Department of Psychology and Department of Economics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Ian Krajbich

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Contributions

A.W.T. and F.M. contributed equally to the manuscript and share first authorship. A.W.T. and F.M. conceived of the GLAM, implemented all visualizations of the experimental procedures and performed all formal data analyses. A.W.T. and F.M. also co-wrote all software that was used in the data analyses that underlies the GLAM. A.W.T. and F.M. wrote the original draft of the manuscript, and I.K., H.R.H. and P.N.C.M. reviewed and edited the manuscript. Funding for this work was acquired by P.N.C.M. The work was supervised by H.R.H. and P.N.C.M.

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Correspondence to Peter N. C. Mohr.

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Supplementary Methods 1–3, Supplementary Figures 1–7, Supplementary Table 1, and Supplementary References.

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Thomas, A.W., Molter, F., Krajbich, I. et al. Gaze bias differences capture individual choice behaviour. Nat Hum Behav 3, 625–635 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0584-8

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