Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Food choices, as a type of value-based decision, are affected by environmental cues. We conducted three studies to investigate the computational mechanisms through which background music influences the food choice-making process. Hierarchical drift-diffusion modeling revealed that nature-related music led to higher drift rates than urban-related music, indicating faster evidence accumulation toward certain choices. Specifically, participants processed the value of vegetable-forward meals more efficiently when exposed to nature-related music compared to urban-related music. Moreover, the effect of music on the drift rate varied with the vividness of music-induced mental imagery and the perceived identity of performers (human or robot). Collectively, these findings reveal the computational mechanisms underlying the influence of environmental cues on value-based decision-making.