Frequently it is discussed which stimuli work better to learn: if those positive ones that represent a reward or those of negative character that represent a punishment.
Different investigations have proven that, when it comes to the learning process, people respond differently depending on the context in which the decisions are presented and whether as a consequence of the decisions we have positive or negative responses, such as reward or punishment stimuli.
When it comes to decisions that involve the loss or gain of money, the results can affect the confidence that people have in their own decision processes.
In the research Contextual influence on confidence judgments in human reinforcement learning, by Lebreton, Bacily and others, it was found that people become more confident in their decisions, including financial ones, when the learning process is associated with rewards, compared to those in which learning generates penalties or monetary losses.
In the study, people were subjected to different tests, which showed that the ability to learn is statistically the same when participants learn to seek profit, as when they learn to avoid losses. However, participants end up being more confident of their decisions, when they involve the potential monetary reward, than when their decisions are associated with avoiding losses.
This at first would seem favorable, but causes that, in some cases, this increase in confidence causes people to overestimate their ability to make appropriate decisions. On the contrary, when the experiment was focused on avoiding losses, people tend to doubt their own decisions more, but simultaneously they tend to better evaluate their decision processes.
In a second phase of the experiment, those participants who had learned in the first phase in an environment of economic reward and who now face decisions with potential loss, showed greater difficulty in adapting to this change of environment and adjusting their decision process to avoid losses.
On the contrary, those who in the first part of the experiment had faced decisions with negative consequences of loss, more quickly identified the change of environment and were more flexible in the process of new decisions; in this case, reward-oriented.
According to the researchers, one of the reasons for this behavior is associated with an evolutionary phenomenon, which makes people who have faced a danger more likely to have to adapt faster to changes in the environment, adjusting the way they the one they decide; whereas, people who have learned in strictly rewarding environments take longer to recognize that the environment is negative.
This research that we could think of is absolutely conceptual and has little to do with our daily decisions, it largely reflects the way in which we face economic decisions in volatile and complex environments such as the ones we live in our country today.
Today, we face an environment of growing inflation, the limits of which are not yet clear, of volatility and even depreciation of the exchange rate, of uncertainty regarding the capacity and speed of economic recovery; people (in homes and companies), we must react faster, if we want to avoid making decisions that cause negative effects in the longer term.
CEO of Fibra Educa and President of the Council for the Promotion of Educational Savings
Behavioral Economy
The author is a political scientist, marketer, financier, specialist in behavioral economics and professor at the UNAM Faculty of Economics. CEO of Fibra Educa and President of the Council for the Promotion of Educational Savings.
Follow him on Twitter: @martinezsolares
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx