Abstract

While Conviction Narrative Theory correctly criticizes utility-based accounts of decision-making, it unfairly reduces probabilistic models to point estimates and treats affect and narrative as mechanistically opaque yet explanatorily sufficient modules. Hierarchically nested Bayesian accounts offer a mechanistically explicit and parsimonious alternative incorporating affect into a single biologically plausible precision-weighted mechanism that tunes decision-making toward narrative versus sensory dependence under varying uncertainty levels.