Effects of approach and withdrawal motivation on interactive economic decisions

Although recent economic models of human decision making have recognised the role of emotion as an important biasing factor, the impact of incidental emotion on decisions has remained poorly explored. To address this question, we jointly explored the role of emotional valence (i.e., positive vs. negative) and motivational direction (i.e., approach vs. avoidance) on performance in a well-known economic task, the Ultimatum Game. Participants had to either accept or reject monetary offers from other players, offers that vary in their degree of unfairness. A main effect of motivational direction, but not valence, was observed, with withdrawal-based emotion (disgust and serenity) prompting more rejections relative to approach-based emotion (anger and amusement) and a neutral state. These results further confirm that subtle incidental moods can bias decision making, and suggest that motivational state may be a useful framework to study such decisions. Implications with regard to emotion, cognitive neuroscience, and clinical psychology are discussed.     

情绪和任务框架对自我和预期他人决策时风险偏好的影响

两个实验考察了情绪和任务框架对自我和预期他人决策时风险偏好的影响。结果表明:(1)获益框架下,悲伤情绪比愉悦情绪诱发更强的风险偏好,自我决策比预期他人决策表现出更强的风险偏好;(2)损失框架下,愉悦情绪比悲伤情绪诱发更强的风险偏好,预期他人决策比自我决策表现出更强的风险偏好;(3)在自我决策时,愉悦情绪在损失框架下比在获益框架下诱发了更强的风险偏好,悲伤情绪在获益框架下比在损失框架下诱发了更强的风险偏好;在预期他人决策时,无论是愉悦情绪还是悲伤情绪,损失框架均比获益框架诱发了更强的风险偏好。     

Emotional Policy: Personal Sadness and Anger Shape Judgments about a Welfare Case

When making decisions about a welfare case, it is reasonable for one's thoughts and feelings about the potential welfare recipient to influence the decision. It is less reasonable for one's "incidental" feelings (e.g., sadness or anger arising from an event in one's personal life) to influence such decisions. In two studies, however, data reveal that incidental anger and sadness do in fact carry over, shaping welfare policy preferences. Study 1 found that incidental anger decreased the amount of welfare assistance participants recommended providing relative to neutral emotion, whereas sadness increased the amount recommended. Study 2 replicated the results and found that limiting participants' cognitive resources eliminated the difference between sadness and anger, thus implying that differences in depth-of-thought drove the effects. In sum, the results reveal ways in which: (a) personal emotions carry over to shape preferences for public policies, (b) emotions of the same valence have opposing effects, and (c) differential depth-of-cognitive-processing contributes to such effects.     

Anxious ultimatums: How anxiety disorders affect socioeconomic behaviour

Although the role of emotion in socioeconomic decision making is increasingly recognised, the impact of specific emotional disorders, such as anxiety disorders, on these decisions has been surprisingly neglected. Twenty anxious patients and twenty matched controls completed a commonly used socioeconomic task (the Ultimatum Game), in which they had to accept or reject monetary offers from other players. Anxious patients accepted significantly more unfair offers than controls. We discuss the implications of these findings in light of recent models of anxiety, in particular the importance of interpersonal factors and assertiveness in an integrated model of decision making. Finally, we were able to show that pharmacological serotonin used to treat anxious symptomatology tended to normalise decision making, further confirming and extending the role of serotonin in co-operation, prosocial behaviour, and social decision making. These results show, for the first time, a different pattern of socioeconomic behaviour in anxiety disordered patients, in addition to the known memory, attentional and emotional biases that are part of this pathological condition.     

The enduring impact of transient emotions on decision making

People often do not realize they are being influenced by an incidental emotional state. As a result, decisions based on a fleeting incidental emotion can become the basis for future decisions and hence outlive the original cause for the behavior (i.e., the emotion itself). Using a sequence of ultimatum and dictator games, we provide empirical evidence for the enduring impact of transient emotions on economic decision making. Behavioral consistency and false consensus are presented as potential underlying processes.     

Can the uncertainty appraisal associated with emotion cancel the effect of the hunch period in the Iowa Gambling Task?

Research has given little attention to the influence of incidental emotions on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), in which processing of the emotional cues associated with each decision is necessary to make advantageous decisions. Drawing on cognitive theories of emotions, we tested whether uncertainty-associated emotion can cancel the positive effect of the hunch period, by preventing participants from developing a tendency towards advantageous decisions. Our explanation is that uncertainty appraisals initiate deliberative processing that is irrelevant to process emotional cues, contrary to intuitive processing (Kahneman, 2003; Tiedens & Linton, 2001). As expected, uncertainty-associated emotion cancelled the positive effect of the hunch period in the IGT compared to certainty-associated emotion: disgusted participants (certainty-associated emotion) and sad participants induced to feel certainty developed a stronger tendency towards advantageous decisions than sad participants induced to feel uncertainty. We discuss the importance of the core components that trigger incidental emotions to predict decision making.     

儿童完全信息最后通牒博弈决策的发展

考查了200名4-12岁儿童及40名成人完全信息最后通牒博弈决策的发展趋势与特点,并对情绪在最后通牒博弈决策中的作用做了初步探索。结果表明：（1）完全信息最后通牒任务中,作为分配者时4-6岁儿童更多提出小于半数的要约,而9-12岁儿童和成人则更多地提出平等分配的要约。作为应答者时儿童和成人均接受大部分要约。（2）公平策略和权宜策略是儿童与成人分配者采取的主要策略,而儿童与成人应答者则主要采用权宜策略。（3）基于满意与否的情绪体验是儿童应答者是否行使否决权的直接动力。     

Affect in Ethical Decision Making: Mood Matters

Ethical decision-making research has centered on Rest’s (1986) framework that represents a rational, nonaffective model for ethical decision making. However, research in human cognition suggesting a “dual-processing” framework, composed of both rational and affective components, has been relatively ignored in the ethical decision-making literature. Examining dual-processing literature, it seems affect might be an important factor in decision making when a person’s mood is congruent with the task or situational context frame. Given that ethical decisions are serious and complex tasks, it is proposed here that inducing a negative affective state might produce mood congruence, reinforce the salience of emotion for ethical decision makers, and lead to differences in decision processing. Evidence is presented documenting differences in the decisions made by ethical decision makers in a negative affective state as compared to those in either a positive or neutral affective state.     

愤怒和悲伤情绪对助人决策的影响:人际责任归因的作用

基于具体情绪理论——评价倾向框架理论(ATF),采用两项研究考察负性情绪愤怒和悲伤对助人决策的影响,并探究人际责任归因在这一关系中的作用。两项研究均采用自传体情绪记忆任务诱发情绪,研究一中自变量情绪为组间变量,包括愤怒、悲伤和中性三个水平,因变量助人决策操作为为他人花费时间;研究二中自变量1为组间变量情绪,包括愤怒和悲伤,自变量2为组内变量人际责任归因,操作为模糊归因、不可控的情景归因、可控的自我归因三种情境,因变量助人决策操作为为他人花费金钱。结果发现:(1)与愤怒情绪相比,悲伤情绪下个体为他人花费的时间和捐助的金钱更多;(2)在模糊的人际责任归因条件下,悲伤个体会比愤怒个体捐助更多的钱。研究表明:同为负性情绪的愤怒和悲伤在助人决策上的作用不同,悲伤个体比愤怒个体做出更多的助人决策;人际责任性归因会影响附带情绪和助人决策的关系。研究结论有助于理解附带情绪对助人决策的影响,进一步丰富并延伸ATF理论的证据和领域,对发挥情境中人际责任归因在助人决策中的作用具有一定的现实意义。     

负性情绪抑制对社会决策行为的影响

利用心理生理实验法, 通过将情绪抑制操作引入最后通牒博弈实验范式, 探讨负性情绪抑制的主观情绪体验、生理反应及其对社会决策行为的影响。以40名大学生为被试, 采用MP150型16导生理记录仪记录皮肤电反应和心率。实验为2 (组别：情绪抑制组、自然观看组) × 2 (性别：男、女) × 2 (博弈对手：人、计算机) × 4 (分配方案：￥5：￥5、￥7：￥3、￥8：￥2、￥9：￥1)的混合设计, 其中组别和性别为被试间因素, 博弈对手和分配方案为被试内因素。结果发现：(1)对负性情绪进行抑制没有减少被试相应的主观体验, 情绪抑制使皮肤电反应性增强; (2)负性情绪抑制的主观体验和生理反应不存在性别差异; (3)在面对不公平的分配方案时, 情绪抑制组被试比自然观看组更倾向于拒绝接受。结果表明在最后通牒博弈中,情绪抑制影响回应者的行为反应,使他们更倾向于做出不理智的决策。     

The Effect of Emotion on Visual Attention to Information and Decision Making in the Context of Informed Consent Process for Clinical Trials

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of emotion on visual information processing and decision making in the context of informed consent. Researchers are ethically obligated to ensure informed consent in clinical trials; however, many volunteers have unrealistic expectations about the value of an experimental therapy. Moreover, suboptimal participation rates for clinical trials may be partially attributable to perceptions that ethical obligations to volunteers are not met. This study examines whether discrete negative emotions (fear, anger, and sadness) differentially influence information processing, visual attention, and decisions in the context of clinical trial informed consent. Community participants completed a standard emotion induction (or control) and then read an actual consent form from a clinical trial while eye movements were tracked. Fear and anger produced the most prominently different patterns of systematic processing and visual attention, such that fear induced longer fixations to information presented, whereas anger induced shorter fixations. Moreover, among women only, fear increased decisions to participate, compared with anger and neutral emotion. Examinations of associations between eye‐tracking variables and self‐reported outcomes indicated that for angry participants only, less systematic processing was associated with greater decisions to participate. Negative emotions of any kind decreased accurate perceptions of trial benefit. These patterns suggest a complex interplay among emotion, processing style, and decision making. Future research is necessary to further probe these effects among potential clinical trial volunteers. Published 2016. This article is a U.S Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.     

决策者角色及相关变量对风险偏好的影响

采用IAT技术测查被试的内隐自尊, 并引入收益和损失两种任务框架, 综合探讨了内隐自尊水平、任务得失框架对自我决策和为他人决策时风险偏好的影响。结果发现：(1)在收益框架下, 被试为他人决策时更冒险, 而在损失框架下, 为自我和他人决策的风险偏好无显著差异; (2)与为自我决策相比, 低内隐自尊者为他人决策时更冒险, 而高内隐自尊者为自我和他人决策的风险偏好无显著差异; (3)内隐自尊水平与任务框架的交互作用及内隐自尊水平、任务框架和决策者角色之间的三级交互作用均不显著。依据相关的理论和发现对这种结果进行了分析和讨论。     

Feeling and believing: the influence of emotion on trust

The authors report results from 5 experiments that describe the influence of emotional states on trust. They found that incidental emotions significantly influence trust in unrelated settings. Happiness and gratitude--emotions with positive valence--increase trust, and anger--an emotion with negative valence--decreases trust. Specifically, they found that emotions characterized by other-person control (anger and gratitude) and weak control appraisals (happiness) influence trust significantly more than emotions characterized by personal control (pride and guilt) or situational control (sadness). These findings suggest that emotions are more likely to be misattributed when the appraisals of the emotion are consistent with the judgment task than when the appraisals of the emotion are inconsistent with the judgment task. Emotions do not influence trust when individuals are aware of the source of their emotions or when individuals are very familiar with the trustee.     

Authenticity affects the recognition of emotions in speech: behavioral and fMRI evidence

The aim of the present study was to determine how authenticity of emotion expression in speech modulates activity in the neuronal substrates involved in emotion recognition. Within an fMRI paradigm, participants judged either the authenticity (authentic or play acted) or emotional content (anger, fear, joy, or sadness) of recordings of spontaneous emotions and reenactments by professional actors. When contrasting between task types, active judgment of authenticity, more than active judgment of emotion, indicated potential involvement of the theory of mind (ToM) network (medial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal cortex, retrosplenium) as well as areas involved in working memory and decision making (BA 47). Subsequently, trials with authentic recordings were contrasted with those of reenactments to determine the modulatory effects of authenticity. Authentic recordings were found to enhance activity in part of the ToM network (medial prefrontal cortex). This effect of authenticity suggests that individuals integrate recollections of their own experiences more for judgments involving authentic stimuli than for those involving play-acted stimuli. The behavioral and functional results show that authenticity of emotional prosody is an important property influencing human responses to such stimuli, with implications for studies using play-acted emotions.     

Being Happy and Seeing 'Happy' ': Emotional State Mediates Visual Word Recognition

Lexical decision and word-naming experiments were conducted to examine influences of emotions in visual word recognition. Emotional states of happiness and sadness were induced with classical music. In the first two experiments, happy and sad participants (and neutral-emotion participants in Experiment 2) made lexical decisions about letter-strings, some of which were words with meanings strongly associated with the emotions happiness, love, sadness, and anger. Emotional state of the perceiver was associated with facilitation of response to words categorically related to that emotion (i.e. happy and sad words). However, such facilitation was not observed for words that were related by valence, but not category, to the induced emotions (i.e. love and anger words). Evidence for categorical influences of emotional state in word recognition was also observed in a third experiment that employed a word-naming task. Together the results support a categorical emotions model of the influences of emotion in information processing (Niedenthal, Setterlund, & Jones, 1994). Moreover, the result of the wordnaming experiment suggests that the effects of emotion are evident at very early stages in cognitive processing.     

Incidental emotions associated with uncertainty appraisals impair decisions in the Iowa Gambling Task

With the Appraisal Tendency Framework, it has been established that (un)certainty appraisals associated with incidental emotions trigger the kind of information processing to cope with situation. We tested the impact of (un)certainty-associated emotions on a sequential task, the Iowa Gambling Task. In this task, intuitive processing is necessary to lead participants to rely on emotional cues arising from previous decisions and to making advantageous decisions. We predicted that certainty-associated emotions would engage participants in intuitive processing, whereas uncertainty-associated emotions would engage them in deliberative processing and lead them to make disadvantageous decisions. As expected, we observed in two distinct experiments, that participants induced to feel uncertainty (fear, sadness) were found to decide less advantageously than participants induced to feel certainty (anger, happiness, disgust).     

案件无关情绪和案件相关情绪对法官量刑决策影响的实验研究

本研究通过两个模拟量刑实验,具体考察了案件无关情绪和案件相关情绪对法官量刑决策的影响。结果发现案件无关情绪显著影响法官量刑。法官在悲伤情绪下所判刑期短于中性情绪,愉悦和愤怒情绪与中性情绪下刑期无显著差异。案件相关情绪显著影响法官量刑,法官同情情绪下刑期更短,厌恶和愤怒情绪下刑期更长。性别对法官量刑无显著影响,从业时间对法官量刑无显著影响。性别和从业时间对案件无关情绪和相关情绪诱发均无显著影响。     

Neural correlates of adaptive decision making for risky gains and losses

Do decisions about potential gains and potential losses require different neural structures for advantageous choices? In a lesion study, we used a new measure of adaptive decision making under risk to examine whether damage to neural structures subserving emotion affects an individual's ability to make adaptive decisions differentially for gains and losses. We found that individuals with lesions to the amygdala, an area responsible for processing emotional responses, displayed impaired decision making when considering potential gains, but not when considering potential losses. In contrast, patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area responsible for integrating cognitive and emotional information, showed deficits in both domains. We argue that this dissociation provides evidence that adaptive decision making for risks involving potential losses may be more difficult to disrupt than adaptive decision making for risks involving potential gains. This research further demonstrates the role of emotion in decision competence.     

Mood effects on emotion recognition

Mood affects memory and social judgments. However, findings are inconsistent with regard to how mood affects emotion recognition: For sad moods, general performance decrements in emotion recognition have been reported, as well as an emotion specific bias, such as better recognition of sad facial expressions compared to happy expressions (negative bias). Far less research has been conducted on the influence of happy moods on emotion recognition. We primed 93 participants with happy, sad, or neutral moods and had them perform an emotion recognition task. Results showed a negative bias for participants in sad moods and a positive bias for participants in happy moods. Sad and happy moods hampered the recognition of mood-incongruent expressions; the recognition of mood-congruent expressions was not affected by moods.