Modeling Cognitive Biases in Experience-Dependent Decision Making Under Uncertainty: The Florida-And-Georgia (FLAG) Gambling Task

Humans frequently make decisions under uncertain conditions in everyday life. A constellation of cognitive biases may drive such decisions. To further our understanding of how these biases influence decision making, we developed a novel paradigm—the Florida-And-Georgia (FLAG) gambling task. In the FLAG task, 170 young adult participants chose between a deck, which yields variable outcomes, and a sure-thing offer. This approach allows us to model experience-dependent decision making as influenced by both learning processes (e.g., primacy-recency bias) and key factors drawn from Prospect Theory, including sensitivity to outliers and loss aversion. Our findings reveal that individuals in their decision making underweight outliers for both gains and losses and are biased by recent outcomes, but we found no evidence of loss aversion. The FLAG task strikes a balance between ecological validity and experimental control, providing insights into the cognitive processes involved in decision making. In closing, we discuss future directions for the FLAG task and its potential societal and clinical applications.