THE INFLUENCE OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES ON THE IOWA GAMBLING TASK AND REAL-WORLD DECISION MAKING

Abstract

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) was created to assess real world decision making deficits in patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and has become a clinical diagnostic measure of real world decision-making for vulnerable populations (i.e., substance abusers, gambling addicts, depressives). To date, the research linking the IGT to real world decision making has been inferred from the poor performance of vulnerable groups in comparison to the performance of healthy controls. The current study was designed to fill a gap in the research literature by directly testing the extent to which the IGT assesses real world decision-making success, as measured by the Decision Outcome Inventory (DOI), in cognitively healthy young adults, and how the relationship between the IGT and real world decision-making may be impacted by individual differences in personality traits and decision-making styles. The results showed a weak correspondence between IGT performance and real world decision-making (DOI). In addition, better scores on the IGT and DOI were associated with rational, non-impulsive decision-making while reward sensitivity accounted for lower scores on the two measures. Negatively valenced emotions predicted poor decision outcomes on the DOI but were not associated with IGT performance. Implications of the results are discussed in regards to the use of the IGT as a measure of real world decision-making and the debate about the extent to which the task measures emotional vs. rational decision making.