An Analysis of Thoughts, Behaviours, and Emotions in Daily Decision-Making (original) (raw)
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International Journal of Cognitive Therapy
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All Negative Moods Are Not Equal: Motivational Influences of Anxiety and Sadness on Decision Making
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 1999
Affective states of the same valence may have distinct, yet predictable, influences on decision processes. Results from three experiments show that, in gambling decisions, as well as in jobselection decisions, sad individuals are biased in favor of highrisk/high-reward options, whereas anxious individuals are biased in favor of low-risk/low-reward options. We argue that these biases occur because anxiety and sadness convey distinct types of information to the decision-maker and prime different goals. While anxiety primes an implicit goal of uncertainty reduction, sadness primes an implicit goal of reward replacement. We offer that these motivational influences operate through an active process of feeling monitoring, whereby anxious or sad individuals think about the options and ask themselves, "What would I feel better about . . .?" ᭧ 1999 Academic Press
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The difficulty in deciding and facing up to uncertainty is not only linked to the inadequacy of the architecture of our minds but also to an ‘external’ model of uncertainty which does not correspond to the way in which our mind naturally functions. New conceptual paradigms and new programmes for experimental research are called for in order to redefine the role of internal and external restric- tions on human action (resources and available information, limitations on calcula- tion ability, on the capacity of memory, cognitive styles, gender differences and so on). All this should be contemplated in a more general theoretical framework – natural logic – based not on metaphysical assumptions but on the concrete evi- dence provided by cognitive neurosciences.
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Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1998
Choice conflicts between one's important values may cause negative emotion. This article extends the standard effort-accuracy approach to explaining task influences on decision processing by arguing that coping goals will interact with effort minimization and accuracy maximization goals for negatively emotion-laden decision tasks. These coping goals may involve both a desire to process in a thorough, accurate manner and a desire to avoid particularly distressing aspects of processing. On the basis of this extended framework, the authors hypothesized and found in 3 experiments that decision processing under increasing negative emotion both becomes more extensive and proceeds more by focusing on one attribute at a time. In particular, increased negative emotion leads to more attribute-based processing at the beginning of the decision process. The results are inconsistent with views that negative emotion acts only as an incentive or only as a source of decision complexity.
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Decisions vary. They vary in both content and complexity. People also vary. An important way that people vary is how much they think about a decision. Some prior research investigating thinking and decision making largely conflicts with most traditional decision theories. For example, if considering an array of products to choose from, thinking more about the different alternative's attributes should lead to a better decision. However, some research indicates that it may also lead to more focus on irrelevant aspects of the decision situation. We propose that this conflict exists because of a failure to consider the interaction between the individual and the decision task. To test this, we used separate methodologies that enhance or attenuate a person's thinking. In Study 1 we selected people who were especially high or low in need for cognition (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982) and had them complete a robust decision-making inventory, which included both complex and simple tasks. In Study 2 we manipulated participant's level of glucose, which acts as the brain's fuel to enhance or attenuate thinking ability. Both studies support the view that more thought leads to better decisions in complex tasks but does not influence simple decisions, including those that are valence based. These findings show how the individual's thinking interacts with the constructive elements of the task to shape decision choice.
Individual Differences in Emotion and Decision- Making
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Table of contents Chapter 1 Interaction of emotional processes with decision-making in economic psychology 4 1.1. Theories of the effects of emotions and emotion regulation on decisional processes 5 1.1.1. The theory of the dual processes of thinking 8 1.1.2. The model of anticipated and incidental emotions in decision-making 1.1.2.1. Theories of anticipated emotions in risky decisions 1.1.2.2. Theories of anticipated emotions in intertemporal decisions 1.1.2.3. Theories of incidental emotions 1.1.3. The affect heuristic 1.1.4. The model of risk as feeling 1.1.5. The somatic marker hypothesis 1.2. Controlling emotions through emotion regulation 1.3. Cognitive and behavioural effects of emotion regulation 1.4. Emotion regulations and the emotion-decision interaction 40 1.5. The neurobiology of decision-making and emotion regulation 41 1.6. Concluding theoretical comments on the emotion-emotion regulation and economic decision making interaction 48 Chapter 2 Psychometric properties of the instruments used on Romanian samples 51 Study 1.1. Psychometric properties of ERQ Study 1.2. Psychometric properties of CERQ Study 1.3. Psychometric properties of DOSPERT Chapter 3 Emotion regulation and risk taking Study 2 Impact of emotion regulation strategies on negative emotions Study 3 Impact of emotion regulation strategies on natural positive and negative emotions Study 4 The role of emotion regulation strategies and declarative knowledge Chapter 4 Emotion regulation and the framing effect 111 Study 5 Emotion regulation strategies and susceptibility to framing Chapter 5 Emotion regulation and fairness Study 6 Emotion regulations and fairness in sharing financial resources Chapter 6 Emotion regulation and decisional processes: Final conclusions References
Role of affect in decision making 3
Emotion plays a major role in influencing our everyday cognitive and behavioral functions, including decision making. We introduce different ways in which emotions are characterized in terms of the way they influence or elicited by decision making. This chapter discusses different theories that have been proposed to explain the role of emotions in judgment and decision making. We also discuss incidental emotional influences, both long-duration influences like mood and short-duration influences by emotional context present prior to or during decision making. We present and discuss results from a study with emotional pictures presented prior to decision making and how that influences both decision processes and postdecision experience as a function of uncertainty. We conclude with a summary of the work on emotions and decision making in the context of decision-making theories and our work on incidental emotions.
Emotion and Knowledge in Decision Making under Uncertainty
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This paper presents four incentivised experiments analysing jointly the separate role of immediate integral emotions and knowledge in individual decision making under ambiguity. Reactions to a natural source of uncertainty (i.e., forthcoming real-world election results) were measured using both computed decision weights derived from individual choices and judgmental probabilities determined from the subjects’ estimated likelihood of election outcomes. This study used self-reports to measure emotions aroused by the prospective election victory of a party/coalition of parties, and both self-assessed and actual competence to measure knowledge of politics. This paper found evidence of both preference for ambiguity in the gain domain and of likelihood insensitivity, namely the tendency to overweight unlikely events and to underweight likely events. This paper also shows that a superior knowledge of politics was associated with a preference for ambiguity (i.e., the elevation of the decisi...
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2009
It has long been assumed that people experience evaluative conflict or ambivalence as unpleasant. In three studies we provide direct evidence for the assumption that ambivalence is unpleasant, but only when one has to commit to one side of the issue. In those situations ambivalence will be related to outcome uncertainty and feelings of discomfort. We examined this prediction using both self-reports and physiological measures. In a first study we manipulated ambivalence and whether or not participants had to take a clear stand vis-a vis the attitudinal issue and choose a position for or against it. Results indicate ambivalence was only related to physiological arousal when a choice had to be made. Feeling ambivalent about an issue without the necessity to choose did not result in higher levels of arousal. A second study replicated and extended these findings by including a measure of subjective uncertainty about the decision. Results showed the same pattern as in Study 1, and indicate that the relation between ambivalence and arousal is mediated by uncertainty about decisional outcomes. In the third and final study these findings are corroborated using self-report measures; these indicated that ambivalence-induced discomfort is related to specific (negative) emotions.