SENSITIVITY TO VARYING GAINS AND LOSSES - THE ROLE OF SELF-DISCREPANCIES AND EVENT FRAMING

Three studies psychophysically measured people's discrimination among different sizes of monetary net gains or net losses. Participants imag ined either gains or nonlosses (i.e., net gains) or losses or nongains (i.e., net losses). Participants discriminated more when the identica l event was framed as the presence (gains and losses) versus the absen ce (nonlosses and nongains) of an outcome, presumably because the latt er is harder to represent. Discrimination was enhanced when the motiva tional features of the imagined event were either both the same as or both different from a person's self-discrepancy. Discrimination was re duced when only one of the motivational features was different. A mode l of excitations, inhibitions, and disinhibitions between mental repre sentation is suggested to account for these findings.