Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Research Highlight
  • Published:

Cognitive neuroscience

Prior learning governs human experience-based risk-taking

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 26, page 519 (2025)Cite this article

Subjects

Variability in human risk-taking in decisions involving potential gains or losses can be explained by the relative subjective value (or weight) assigned to each outcome. In a new study, Erdman et al. reveal that prior experience, rather than decision-making processes, primarily shapes those weightings in experience-based human risk-taking.

The authors set two groups of 50 participants a 28-day longitudinal learning task. The participants had to choose between images associated with different unknown probabilities of gaining or losing a coin (of real-world value). Through trial and error, the participants successfully learned to favour images with high probabilities of gains and low probabilities of losses accordingly.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

Original article

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nature Reviews Neuroscience http://www.nature.com/nrn/

    Jake Rogers

Authors
  1. Jake Rogers
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jake Rogers.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Rogers, J. Prior learning governs human experience-based risk-taking. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 26, 519 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-025-00953-y

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Version of record:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-025-00953-y

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing