Decisions related to money are more deliberate than those regarding food, which are more impulsive.
- Researchers have studied the brain mechanisms involved in making decisions between primary rewards, like food, and secondary rewards, like money.
- They show that food decisions are often impulsive and financial choices are more considered.
- These discoveries could make it possible to develop new treatments for people with addictive behaviors.
What to eat for lunch? What meal to prepare for the evening? Spending on an outing, vacation, etc. Food and money are among the subjects that lead us to make decisions every day. To better understand how the brain acts when it has to make these decisions, researchers at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, studied the mechanisms that operate. Their work was published in the journal in Euro.
“Food decisions are made more impulsively”
In their work, the scientists asked 28 participants to have an MRI scan at the same time as they had to make decisions: strawberry cake or chocolate bar, schnitzel or fries, lots of money/food later or less right away. In the experiment, the proposed waiting times were two days, two weeks, one, three and six months, as well as one year.
“We were able to show that food decisions are made more impulsively, explains Marius Markmann, first author of the study, in a communicated. In other words, immediately available foods are chosen more often than a larger quantity of the same food available later. It’s different with money. People prefer to wait for the largest amount of money. This is because the value of money is stable for longer, while the value of food is linked to the perishability of food.”
Thanks to MRIs, researchers were able to observe the brain areas activated at the time of decision-making. “When choosing an amount of money, the human brain appears to involve regions responsible for controlling actionssays Burkhard Pleger, who led the research. On the other hand, in the case of food, regions of the brain [impliquées dans] decisions in the social environment become active.”
Better understand decision-making processes to treat addictions
When making the decision, the researchers distinguished between so-called “primary” rewards, such as food, and “secondary” rewards, when it comes to money. During the study, they observed that the participants took more impulsive decisions when it came to primary reward. “Impulsive people showed lower self-control, greater calorie intake, and higher eating frequency, assures Marius Markmann. They were also more likely to be addicted to the Internet, social media, smartphones, gaming and betting.” This study could, ultimately, provide a better understanding of the decision-making processes in people with addictive behaviors in order to develop new treatments.
