Goal congruency dominates reward value in accounting for behavioral and neural correlates of value-based decision-making

When choosing between options, whether menu items or career paths, we can evaluate how rewarding each one will be, or how congruent each option is with our current choice goal (e.g., identifying the best or worst ones). Past decision-making research has interpreted findings through the former lens, but in these experiments the most rewarding option has always been most congruent with one’s goal (choosing the best option). It is therefore unclear to what extent expected reward versus goal congruency can account for a wide body of behavioral and neuroscientific research on choice value. Here, we deconfound these two variables. Contrary to prevailing accounts, we find that goal congruency dominates choice behavior and neural activity. We separately identify dissociable signals of expected reward. Our findings disentangle the roles of rewards and goals in how people consider their options, and call for a reinterpretation of previous research on value-based choice. Significance Statement Whether it is between restaurants or career paths, to make adaptive decisions we must evaluate our options and identify those that are most conducive to our current goal. Dysfunctional decision-making can therefore result from aberrant reward processing (e.g., impulse disorders) or from aberrant goal processing (e.g., OCD, ADHD). By focusing only on how people choose their favorite option in a choice set (when rewards and goals are aligned), past research has been unable to distinguish the degree to which behavior and neural activity are determined by reward versus goal processing. We disentangle these processes and show that behavior and fMRI activity are differentially influenced by the promised rewards versus the degree to which those rewards align with one’s current goal.