Table 2.
Investment decision-making studies included in the meta-analysis.
| References | Stimuli | Brain and Behavioral Results | Cluster # |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kuhnen et al., 2005 | Two stocks (one good and the other bad) and a bond | Anticipatory nucleus accumbens activity preceded risky choices, and excessive levels of activation led to risk-seeking mistakes. Anticipatory anterior insula activity preceded riskless choices, and excessive levels of activation led to risk-aversion mistakes. |
1 2 |
| Lohrenz et al., 2007 | Market information in live and not live conditions, gains and losses, portfolio value and percentage already invested | Higher levels of ventral caudate activity correlated with fictive error signals, driving investment behavior. | 1 2 3 |
| Mohr et al., 2009 | Streams of 10 past returns from an investment | Risk and value are represented in the brain during investment decisions in discrete (simple gambles) and continuous distributions (stocks). Risk–return models support the correlation between risk and anterior insula activation. |
1 4 |
| Bruguier et al., 2010 | Replay of market experiment sessions (order and trade flow) with and without insiders | Theory of mind is involved in forecasting price changes in markets with insiders and related to increased activation in the paracingulate cortex. | |
| Burke et al., 2010 | Stock information and social information (four human faces or four chimpanzee faces) | Higher levels of ventral striatum activity correlated with the participants´ likelihood to follow herd behavior, especially in the number of buying decisions. Going against the group involves activity in the anterior cingulate cortex to resolve the conflict. |
1 2 |
| Brooks et al., 2012 | Purchase prices and asset prices (random walk) | The irrational belief in mean reversion better explains the disposition effect. Participants with a large disposition effect exhibited lower levels of ventral striatum activity in response to upticks in value when the asset price was below the purchase price. |
1 2 3 |
| De Martino et al., 2013 | Portfolio value and trading prices (asks and bids) in bubble and non-bubble markets | The evaluation of social signals in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex activity affects value representations in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Higher levels of ventromedial prefrontal cortex activity predict an investor’s propensity to ride bubbles and, therefore, lose money. |
|
| Zeng et al., 2013 | Amounts already invested in a company´s project where sunk costs and incremental costs are manipulated | Higher levels of lateral frontal and parietal cortex activity are related to higher sunk costs and more risk-taking behavior. Higher levels of striatum and medial prefrontal cortex activity are linked to smaller incremental costs and continued investing. |
|
| Lohrenz et al., 2013 | Market data and social information (other players´ bets) | Interpersonal fictive errors guide behavior and highly correlate with striatum activity. | 1 2 |
| Ogawa et al., 2014 | Stock and asset information in a virtual stock exchange with two non-bubble stocks and one bubble stock | In market bubbles, brain networks switch toward dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and inferior parietal lobule connectivity, in which buying decisions are made in the former based on the information gathered by the latter region. Cash holdings were positively correlated with activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, while trading during large price fluctuations were associated with superior parietal lobule activity. | |
| Smith et al., 2014 | Trading prices of risk-free and risky assets (stocks) in markets where endogenous bubbles are formed and crash | Higher levels of nucleus accumbens activity are associated with buying decisions, lower earnings, and increased likelihood of a crash. Higher levels of anterior insula activity are correlated with selling decisions before the price peak and higher earnings. |
1 2 |
| Haller et al., 2014 | Project costs and success probabilities | Higher levels of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and lower levels of ventromedial prefrontal cortex activity are related to higher sunk costs and being prone to continue investing in previous investments. | 1 2 |
| Gu et al., 2014 | Market prices where choices are made under two conditions: regulate and attend | Only fictive errors are susceptible to reappraisal strategies by changes in activation in anterior insula and anterior insula–amygdala connectivity, modulating subjective feelings that affect behavior directly. | 1 3 |
| Huber et al., 2015 | Two stocks with social (decisions made by two fictitious traders) and private information (personal recommendation from a rating agency) | Higher levels of inferior frontal gyrus/anterior insula activity and lower levels of parietal-temporal cortex activity are correlated with overweighting private information, which can influence the probability in the formation of informational cascades. | 2 |
| Majer et al., 2016 | Past returns of investments and investment choices with fixed or risky returns | Higher levels of anterior insula and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex activity correlated with risk and decision-making. | |
| Häusler et al., 2018 | Stocks (risky option) and bonds (non-risky option) in gain and loss domains | Lower levels of anterior insula activity are connected to risky decisions in real-life stock traders. These choices are based on personal beliefs about risky choices and the willingness to bear risk. | 1 3 |