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Optimistic Risk Perception during Learning Explains Risk-taking, Pathological Gambling, Sensation-seeking and Low Fear

Sensation-seeking, risk-taking behaviour, pathological gambling, and (perception of) control over event outcomes positively correlate with each other. Explanations for this co-occurrence include impulsiveness of the individual, perceived self-efficacy, and optimistic risk perception. Optimistic risk perception results from event outcome probability bias characterized by higher regard for positive outcome probabilities compared to negative ones. However, the mechanistic details of this relation, in particular in the context of task-adaptive behaviour, remain unknown. Here we show that intensity of sensations, risk-taking, pathological gambling, and lower levels of fear co-occur when optimistic risk perception underlies the temporal difference (TD) signal used in learning to adapt to a risky task. We found in agent-based, in computo trials that optimistic calculation of the TD signal, compared to different forms of realistic calculation, results in risk taking and in persistent gambling behaviour. We also found that an optimistic TD signal results in less fear and more intense joy. We found these results to be consistent for a variety of risky tasks. Our work computationally replicates the finding that effects of perception of control on risk-taking are mediated by optimistic risk perceptions and replicates the positive correlation between sensation intensity and pathological gambling. Our work underlines the importance of the relation between the prefrontal cortex (as a locus of control and outcome value representation), the amygdala (as a locus of gated value recalculation and fear processing), and the ventral striatum (as a locus of error signal processing and hedonic euphoria) and gives further evidence for Reinforcement Learning being a computational model for reward processing, emotion and taskadaptive behaviour.