Differences in Behavior and Brain Activity during Hypothetical and Real Choices

Real behaviors are binding consequential commitments to a course of action, such as harming another person, buying an Apple watch, or fleeing from danger. Cognitive scientists are generally interested in the psychological and neural processes that cause such real behavior. However, for practical reasons, many scientific studies measure behavior using only hypothetical or imagined stimuli. Generalizing from such studies to real behavior implicitly assumes that the processes underlying the two types of behavior are similar. We review evidence of similarity and differences in hypothetical and real mental processes. In many cases, hypothetical choice tasks give an incomplete picture of brain circuitry that is active during real choice.