Gain and loss learning differentially contribute to life financial outcomes

Abstract

Emerging findings imply that distinct neurobehavioral systems process gains and losses. This study investigated whether individual differences in gain learning and loss learning might contribute to different life financial outcomes (i.e., assets versus debt). In a community sample of healthy adults (n = 75), rapid learners had smaller debt-to-asset ratios overall. More specific analyses, however, revealed that those who learned rapidly about gains had more assets, while those who learned rapidly about losses had less debt. These distinct associations remained strong even after controlling for potential cognitive (e.g., intelligence, memory, and risk preferences) and socioeconomic (e.g., age, sex, ethnicity, income, education) confounds. Self-reported measures of assets and debt were additionally validated with credit report data in a subset of subjects. These findings support the notion that different gain and loss learning systems may exert a cumulative influence on distinct life financial outcomes.

Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1. Trial structure for Monetary Incentive Learning task gain (top) and loss (bottom) conditions.

Figure 2. Individual differences in gain learning account for assets (A) and in loss learning account for debt (B).

Panels A–B depict plots in which trendlines indicate the correlation between residuals (y-axis values represent rescaled residuals after controlling for the covariates listed in Table 3).