Effects of Emotion on Decision-making

rage

• Risk taking: Financial gambles (the example of gambling on slide)
• Risk estimation: Terrorism
• Social judgments: Morality

• Integral:
• Emotion is elicited, it is apart of the situation
• related to the current decision

• Incidental:
• emotion is unrelated to the current decision
• carryover effects

emotion experience in one situation can influence another situation that is entirely unrelated (logically speaking this should not happen)

See the bear- what are you going to do?

see the bear and then asked to do an unrelated task and see if you will be more likely to gamble

• investigated the effects of general positive and negative affect
• think mood

• the influence of general positive and negative moods on judgement
• subjects: 84 participants
• IV: weather (rainy vs sunny day)
• saliency of weather (mood)
• did not mention the weather
• passing small talk (hi blah blah, how is the weather there?)
• primary focus of experiment (saying: doing an experiment on how weather influences their mood)
• DV: Perceived quality of life

• incidental example
• sunny day ppl rated their life consistently better
• for bad mood ppl there was an effect
• ppl were less happy and satisfying when the weather was not mentioned
• when the weather was mentioned that bad mood went away

• theory: we try to find a reason to why we are in a bad mood/unsatisfying life
• use momentary affective states as information in making judgments
• people in unpleasant states search for and use information to explain their state

• people consult momentary moods to make judgments
• even if mood is irrelevant to judgment (misattribution)
• effect disappears when given a reason for negative mood

• emotions are lenses, how we see the world is going to be different depending on our emotional state
• interpretation corresponds to particular emotional states
• influence subsequent decisions
• choose to see what you wanted to see and interpret it the way you wanted to see

• Explanatory models
• functional accounts
• appraisal theory

• emotions prepare to achieved-emotion specific goal
• focus on goals

• NOT an opposition to functional approach
• each emotion has different sets of appraisals

• embarrassment:
• appeasement
• desire to move toward

• disgust:
• refection system
• moving away

• embarrassment:
• less harsh moral judgments
• wanting to stay part of the group
• decreases risk taking

• disgust:
• harsher moral judgments

• The influence of disgust and sadness on economic decisions
• subjects – 199 ppts
• iv – emotion (fear vs anger vs neutral)
• dv – buying and selling prices

• disgust: decrease in buying and lower selling prices
• sadness: think of buying and selling prices as willingness to buy or sell
• think of buying and selling prices as willingness to buy or sell

things that you possess are more valuable to you

• the effect of fear and anger on risk perception
• subjects – 97 ppts
• IV – emotion (fear vs. risk)
• DV – risk perception (how many ppl would die from a car accident, lighting, etc)

• fear = pessimistic risk estimates (high risk perception)
• anger = optimistic risk estimates (low risk perception)

• specific emotions approach
• emotions act as perceptual lenses: emotion congruent perception, perception infuences judgment and decision
• specific emotions have distinct effects on decision-making

• conclusion and future directions in this area of study
• compare different emotions on same dependent measures
• robust model
• cross-cultural studies

• compare different emotions on same dependent measures
• robust model
• cross-cultural studies