Imagine you are standing at a street with heavy traffic watching someone on the other side of the road. Do you think your brain is implicitly registering your willingness to buy any of the cars passing by outside your focus of attention? To address this question, we measured brain responses to consumer products (cars) in two experimental groups using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Parti...

In two parallel studies, we examined the effect of social influence and palatability on amount consumed and on food choice. In Experiment 1, which looked at amount consumed, participants were provided with either palatable or unpalatable food; they were also given information about how much previous participants had eaten (large or small amounts) or were given no information. In the case of pal...

We explore individuals’ preferences over limiting the choice sets of themselves and others. Specifically, we conduct public goods games in which participants can mandate the contributions of others or restrict choices to a subset of feasible contributions levels. We find that, relative to a baseline treatment in which individuals make choices from the set of all contribution alternatives, allow...

A choice positively contributes to a player’s sense of agency when it leads to meaningfully different content. We shed light on what a player may consider meaningfully different by developing a formalism for interactive stories in terms of the change in situational content across choices. We hypothesized that a player will feel a higher sense of agency when making a choice if they foresee the a...

STUDY OBJECTIVE To investigate cultural identity as a risk factor for mental health problems among adolescents. DESIGN A cross sectional school based population survey. Mental health problems were measured using the strengths and difficulties questionnaire. Pupils were classified into one of four cultural identity types on the basis of friendship and clothing choices. SETTING East London. ...

Typical research on intertemporal choice utilizes a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) paradigm requiring participants to choose between a smaller sooner and larger later payoff. In the adjusting-amount procedure (AAP) one of the alternatives is fixed and the other is adjusted according to particular choices made by the participant. Such a method makes the alternatives unequal in status and i...

Weight loss results from an energy deficit, although the quality of food choices making up the diet may also be important. The aim of the present study was to develop and validate a diet quality tool based on food categories to monitor dietary change in clinical weight-loss settings. The Food Choices Score (FCS) was based on seventeen food categories, each scoring up to five points, totalling 8...

background: inadequate attention to management and institutional reforms is an important barrier to achieving universal health coverage. skilled and motivated public health managers in adequate numbers are an important requirement to overcome this hurdle. however, what are the career choices of medical students? are they interested in community medicine and public health? to document the career...

Do people know when, or whether, they have made a conscious choice? Here, we explore the possibility that choices can seem to occur before they are actually made. In two studies, participants were asked to quickly choose from a set of options before a randomly selected option was made salient. Even when they believed that they had made their decision prior to this event, participants were signi...