Shenhav Lab
@shenhavlab.bsky.social
Neuroscience of motivation, decision making, and cognitive control shenhavlab.org
Check out our newest preprint, led by @sheensu.bsky.social and with @jasonleng.bsky.social, on when and why people choose to put off choosing! ⚖️🗓️ osf.io/preprints/ps... Sheen summarizes the excellent work in the 🧵 below:
@sheensu.bsky.social · 2d agoNew Preprint Alert! With @jasonleng.bsky.social @ashenhav.bsky.social @shenhavlab.bsky.social “Characterizing the causes, dynamics, and consequences of choice deferral” osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧵🧵🧵
Today's SJDM Featured Paper is: Su, Y.-H., & Shenhav, A. (2026). Rejection-based choices discourage people from opting out of voting. Nature Communications, 17(1), 1768. doi.org/10.1038/s414...
Rejection-based choices discourage people from opting out of voting - Nature Communications
When people dislike their options for candidates, they tend to refrain from voting rather than voting for the candidate they like best. Here, the authors show that this tendency to opt out of lose-los...
doi.org
Come see our work @affectscience.bsky.social! 😁 P2.S.207: “How Anticipated Feelings Guide Goal Prioritization Insights from an Inventory of Daily Goals” by Skylar Brooks 😁 P3.A.243: “Decision Goals Shape the Integration of Affective and Perceptual Information about our Options” by Ana Hernandez
Check out Sheen's brilliant work!! Born out of the 2024 election season, this is a rare example of a paper that takes you from new insight about mechanisms (how we decide) to meaningful real-world applications (voter turnout & polling). 🗳️ I sing its praises here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeHg...
How to make a choice when the options suck | Amitai Shenhav | TEDxNewEngland
YouTube video by TEDx Talks
youtube.com
@sheensu.bsky.social · 6mo agoExcited to share my first PhD paper with @ashenhav.bsky.social @shenhavlab.bsky.social “Rejection-based choices discourage people from opting out of voting.” www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Led by @sheensu.bsky.social, our newest paper helps explain why people choose not to vote when they don't like any of the candidates, and how to undo this: rdcu.be/e4z4O Sheen explains in the 🧵 below:
Rejection-based choices discourage people from opting out of voting
Nature Communications - When people dislike their options for candidates, they tend to refrain from voting rather than voting for the candidate they like best. Here, the authors show that this...
rdcu.be
@sheensu.bsky.social · 6mo agoExcited to share my first PhD paper with @ashenhav.bsky.social @shenhavlab.bsky.social “Rejection-based choices discourage people from opting out of voting.” www.nature.com/articles/s41...
If you’ve been taught to think of decisions as a tug-of-war 🪢 (e.g., DDM), our new chapter will try to convince you otherwise! We show that these models miss key aspects of traditional choices, & prevent us from understanding non-traditional ones (e.g., whether/when/how many to choose). 🔗 below:
Jason Leng@jasonleng.bsky.social · 6mo agoExcited to share our chapter "Breaking the Tug-of-War: What Neuroeconomics Can Gain by Moving Past Competition-Only Models" with Yi-Hsin Su, Romy Frömer, and @ashenhav.bsky.social, now out in the new volume, "Neuroeconomics: Core Topics and Current Directions"! doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-02925-6_10
Our latest paper, spearheaded by @hritz.bsky.social and Romy Frömer, is now out in Communications Psychology!! 🎉🎉 www.nature.com/articles/s44... See Harrison's excellent 🧵 below to learn more about what we found:
Misspecified models create the appearance of adaptive control during value-based choice - Communications Psychology
In a new computational analysis of previous work, this study shows that a control-free mechanism better accounts for value-based decisions than an account that assumes top-down control invigorating th...
nature.com
Harrison Ritz@hritz.bsky.social · 6mo agoFinal paper of my PhD 🤗 www.nature.com/articles/s44... There is growing interest in how cognitive control may improve value-based decision making. However, we find that a recent paper overestimated the role of control in their task, leading to erroneous interpretations of dACC recordings.
I’m now a proud alum of Lewis-Peacock lab🦚. I’ll be joining the @shenhavlab.bsky.social at UCB in January to study adaptive behaviors and dynamic cognitive control. So grateful for the great journey and excited for what’s next!
Come see our lab’s presentations at #SFN2025! 🧠 1️⃣ NANO018.12: “Neural dynamics underlying divergent influences of reward and punishment on control allocation” (11/16, 3:45 PM) by @jasonleng.bsky.social
Check out our new preprint, led by Romy Froemer and in collaboration with Chih-Chung Ting and Sebastian Gluth: “Goals shape dynamics of attention and selection for value-based decision-making”. 🔗 osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
New preprint led by @debyee.bsky.social: "Neurocomputational mechanisms underlying the distinct motivational influences of reward and punishment on cognitive control". 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Neurocomputational mechanisms underlying the distinct motivational influences of reward and punishment on cognitive control
Human motivation is fundamentally shaped by one's expectations of the reward they could earn for good performance or the punishment they would avoid for poor performance. However, the extent to which ...
biorxiv.org
Debbie Yee@debyee.bsky.social · 10mo agoThrilled to share our new preprint highlighting distinct neurocomputational mechanisms underlying how reward and punishment determine adaptive cognitive control - a massive fMRI study and collaborative team effort with the @shenhavlab.bsky.social 🧠 Link here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
At #SNE2025? Check out our lab's presentations! ➡️O.03.02: "Competitors or Opportunities? Mutual exclusivity alters neural and attentional processing of choice alternatives" by @jasonleng.bsky.social at 9:00 on 10/4. (1/2)
New preprint led by Ivan Grahek! Shifting demands of daily life require constant adjustments in how we allocate cognitive resources. Here we show that slower transitions between different cognitive strategies limit cognitive flexibility across the lifespan: biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 A thread:
Slower transitions between control states lead to reductions in cognitive flexibility over the lifespan
Declines in cognitive flexibility are a hallmark of cognitive aging, but their causes remain elusive. Here, we examine a previously untested source of aging-related cognitive inflexibility, building o...
biorxiv.org
In a TEDx talk just out, @ashenhav.bsky.social discusses what research from our lab teaches us about “How to choose when choosing is hardest” (the talk’s original title 😆): ➡️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeHg...
How to make a choice when the options suck | Amitai Shenhav | TEDxNewEngland
YouTube video by TEDx Talks
youtube.com
Amitai Shenhav@ashenhav.bsky.social · 11mo agoI'm happy to now be able to share a talk I gave at TEDx New England last Fall! The talk is about our lab's work on what makes decisions costly, and how to make them less so. I discuss lessons for all kinds of decisions, including getting people to vote. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeHg...
After scrolling Twitter, it will take you a while to get back into “work mode”. Why is this the case? Our new work (out now in Psych Review), led by Ivan Grahek and Xiamin Leng, explores the costs of adjusting cognitive control to meet different goals: psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-... 🧵 A thread:
APA PsycNet
psycnet.apa.org
Shameless advertising here, but if you have been asking yourself this question and are attending @cogscisociety.bsky.social come check out Ziwei’s talk tomorrow on her paper that received Cog Sci’s Computational Modeling Prize for Higher-Level Cognition!! 🎉🎉 bsky.app/profile/shen...
Hannah R Snyder@hannahrsnyder.bsky.social · last yr.Why do measures of putatively the same construct so often fail to correlate strongly across units of analysis (self/informant report, behavioral, physiological/neural): measurement problems or truly actually capturing different constructs (or some of both)?
Come and see our work at #cogsci2025! Ziwei Cheng will be presenting a talk “Incentive Effects Capture Variability in Task-General Control Allocation” on Fri 8/1 (4-5:30 pm, Cognition 7) 🔗Paper link: escholarship.org/content/qt7b...
escholarship.org
Our newest preprint “A novel approach-avoidance task to study decision making under outcome uncertainty” investigates the dynamics of approach-avoid decisions! Check out www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/..., led by Ziwei Cheng and @nadjagingjehli.bsky.social
A Novel Approach-Avoidance Task to Study Decision Making Under Outcome Uncertainty
To behave adaptively, people need to integrate information about probabilistic outcomes and balance drives to approach positive outcomes and avoid negative outcomes. However, questions remain about ho...
biorxiv.org
Our newest paper, led by Romy Froemer and @fredcallaway.bsky.social, is now out in Open Mind: “Considering What We Know and What We Don’t Know: Expectations and Confidence Guide Value Integration in Value-Based Decision-Making” direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...
Considering What We Know and What We Don’t Know: Expectations and Confidence Guide Value Integration in Value-Based Decision-Making
Abstract. When making decisions, we often have more information about some options than others. Previous work has shown that people are more likely to choose options that they look at more and those t...
direct.mit.edu
👉“Leveraging Continuous Psychophysics to Study Cognitive Control Allocation in Dynamic Environments” by Yihuan Dong (A117) 👉“The effect of acute stress on mental effort allocation across motivational contexts” by Tony El Nemer (A115) [2/2]
Attending #CNS2025? Check out the following posters! (A98, A115, A117) 👉“Decoding Cognitive Control Dynamics: Neural Evidence of Inertia in Cognitive Control Adjustments Following Goal Changes” by Ivan Grahek (A98) [1/2]
Also at #AffectScience2025, 📣 Ivan Grahek will give the talk “Towards Emotion Regulation Dynamics: A View from Cognitive Control Optimization” for the New Perspectives on Effort in Emotion Regulation Symposium. See you there! 📅: Friday March 21st at 6pm
Currently at #AffectScience2025? 😁 👉Come visit Ziwei Cheng's poster “Dissociable Influences Of Positive And Negative Incentives On Challenge And Threat States During Mental Effort Allocation“ in Poster Session P1 (P1.T.141)
Neuroscientist Sarah Heilbronner is a proud product of Martin County schools in Florida 🌴. However, federal budget cuts threaten important work she's doing in brain research. 🧪🏠 @srheilbronner.bsky.social www.tcpalm.com/story/opinio...
Federal budget cuts threaten the work of neuroscientist with Martin County roots | Opinion
Sarah Heilbronner is a proud product of Martin County schools. However, federal budget cuts threaten important work she's doing in brain research.
tcpalm.com
By @katherinejwu.com "The NIH... supported 99 percent of the drugs approved in the U.S. from 2010 to 2019. The agency has had a hand in “nearly all of our major medical breakthroughs over the past several decades,” The NIH is in a struggle for its (and our) lives. This is existential to America:
Inside the Collapse at NIH
Administration officials pressured NIH to avoid clear advice from the agency’s own lawyers to restart grant funding now.
theatlantic.com
Coming to a Zoom near you! The affective gradient hypothesis: An affect-centered account of motivated behavior - Dr. Amitai Shenhav
Freezing out the NIH's funding means freezing out American innovation. Research into curing cancer, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's all delayed. And ultimately it won't just cost us advancements in life-saving research, it will cost us lives.
NIH funding cuts could have ‘devastating impact’ on medical advancements, Chicago researchers say
The National Institutes of Health under President Donald Trump announced this month that it was cutting payments covering overhead costs for research institutions that receive its grants.
wbez.org
Want to tell the public what US government workers actually do, vs. the propaganda spewed by DOGE? This incredible website, "We the Builders," is asking for first-person testimonials from government workers about their actual jobs, and how they make the government work. www.wethebuilders.org
We are the builders
We find the truth and tell the truth
wethebuilders.org
Our newest chapter, “Breaking the tug-of-war,” reviews the lab’s latest NIH and NSF-funded research that has changed the way we think about decision-making (and we hope how you do also): osf.io/preprints/ps... Led by @jasonleng.bsky.social along with @sheensu.bsky.social and Romy Froemer.
OSF
osf.io
