Is loss aversion a domain general bias? On its extendibility in the food domain

Loss aversion is a cognitive bias influencing decision making, according to which potential losses have a larger psychological impact than potential gains of equal magnitude. This phenomenon has been extensively studied in the monetary domain. However, it is still unclear whether aversion towards losses can be considered as a more general bias which applies to other incentive domains. In this study we therefore empirically tested whether monetary loss aversion could be extended to another domain, namely the food domain. We recruited a group of 56 female participants, who played two comparable gambling tasks in which they had to accept or reject mixed gambles involving either monetary or food outcomes. Through computational modelling we estimated loss aversion parameters in both the monetary and the food tasks. We found that participants showed loss aversion in the food domain, which was even greater than in the monetary domain. Importantly, loss aversion in the monetary and food domain was positively correlated across participants (Spearman’s rho=0.49, [95%CI 0.22 – 0.70], p<0.001). Hence, these results suggest that loss aversion is a fundamental and deeply-rooted cognitive bias which extends to at least the food domain and may therefore be considered as a generalizable bias.