Both memory and choice are influenced by context: Memory is enhanced when encoding and retrieval contexts match, and choice is swayed by available options. Here, we assessed how context influences risky choice in an experience-based task in two main experiments (119 and 98 participants retained, respectively) and two additional experiments reported in the Supplemental Material available online (152 and 106 participants retained, respectively). Within a single session, we created two separate contexts by presenting blocks of trials in distinct backgrounds. Risky choices were context dependent; given the same choice, people chose differently depending on other outcomes experienced in that context. Choices reflected an overweighting of the most extreme outcomes within each local context rather than the global context of all outcomes. When tested in the nontrained context, people chose according to the context at encoding and not retrieval. In subsequent memory tests, people displayed biases specific to distinct contexts: Extreme outcomes from each context were more accessible and judged as more frequent. These results pose a challenge for theories of choice that rely on retrieval as guiding choice.

记忆和选择都受上下文影响：当编码和检索上下文匹配时，记忆会增强，选择会受到可用选项的影响。在这里，我们在两个主要实验（分别保留了 119 和 98 名参与者）和在线提供的补充材料中报告的另外两个实验（分别保留了 152 和 106 名参与者）中评估了背景如何影响基于经验的任务中的风险选择。在单个会话中，我们通过在不同背景中呈现试验块来创建两个单独的上下文。风险选择取决于上下文；给定相同的选择，人们会根据在这种情况下经历的其他结果做出不同的选择。选择反映了对每个地方背景下最极端结果的过度重视，而不是所有结果的全球背景。在未经训练的上下文中进行测试时，人们根据编码而不是检索的上下文进行选择。在随后的记忆测试中，人们表现出特定于不同情境的偏见：来自每种情境的极端结果更容易获得并被判断为更频繁。这些结果对依赖检索作为指导选择的选择理论提出了挑战。