emotion and decision making

Question 1

injuries to the vmPFC

Answer 1

integrates emotion and cognition - injury will reduce ability to feel emotion and the quality of their decisions

when we consult how we feel about a decision, it is not as effective = emotions and decisions are interlinked - feelings can bias and influence.

Question 2

emotional carryover effect

Johnson & Tversky 1983

Answer 2

ppts read newspaper stories to induce positive/negative mood then estimated fatality frequencies for various potential causes of death.

those who read negative stories = more pessimistic estimates.

it was the mood iteself that generally affected all judgements - risk perception can be impacted by mood.

Question 3

availability heuristic

Answer 3

overestimate the likelihood of things happen = poor risk assessment

Solvic et al (1978) asked lay people to estimate the number of deaths per year due to different hazards = tendency to overestimate infrequent causes of death while underestimating more frequent causes. information read recently more likely to come to mind

Question 4

weather, mood and happiness Schwarz & Clore 1983

Answer 4

interviewed 84ppts on sunny/rainy days about happiness and satisfaction - judgments were influenced by current mood which was influence by the ambient weather.

negative impacts of bad moods was eliminated when ppts were induced to attribute their present feelings to transient external resources (e.g. made aware of the influence of the weather on mood and that mood is temporary).

Question 5

Jonauskaite et al 2019

colours and emotions - the association of yellow with joy

Answer 5

55 countries
to what extent does correlation between yellow and joy vary across the world.

ppts shown the word ‘yellow’

correlation moderated by annual rainfall and proximity to the equator - yellow is most joyful for those who often see grey skies/rain
e.g. hardly existent in Egypt but v. strong in finland and moderate in UK/US

Question 6

Good Day Sunshine (Hirshleifer & Shumway, 2003) - relationship between morning sun and stock exchange

Answer 6

sun was strongly correlated with stock returns in key cities, after controlling for sun, rain and snow are unrelated.

Question 7

capturing the mood of the public (Bollen, Mao & Pepe, 2011)

Answer 7

analysed all tweens in the second half of 2008 - banking crisis, obama first black president = lots of change, good and bad.

looked at mood states and what was happening = immediate and specific effect on emotions of tweets

Question 8

risk and affect

2 types of risk

Answer 8

• risk as feeling = fast, instinctive and intuitive reactions to danger, hardwired within us
• risk as analysis = logic, reason and deliberation, careful assessment

need both to prevent chaos

Question 9

affect heuristics

Answer 9

gut feeling. may develop influenced by knowledge.

affect influences decisions - subconscious process while judging the risks and benefits of something depending on positive and negative feelings associated with a stimulus

Question 10

the gut feeling

Zajonc 1980

Answer 10

affective reactions are often the first - automatic and guide information processing and judgement = make decisions quickly and efficiently

happens alongside rationality

Question 11

affect heuristics

when emotions matter

Answer 11

• in a positive state = likely to perceive high benefits, low risks and prepared to try new things
• negative state = see the activity as being low in benefits and high in risk = conservative choices

Question 12

Hsee 1998 - looked at how we see things can be used to influence choices - ice-cream

Answer 12

overfilled 7oz ice-cream was valued as more than undefiled container with 8oz
- this was reversed when options were judged together –> % of the cup that was filled influence how valuable it was seen to be

presenting volume in different ways impacts judgement

Question 13

risk and benefit judgement

Answer 13

people base judgements of an activity or technology on how they feel and what they think

if feelings are favourable = judge risks as low and benefits as high.

this can be manipulated to prove information just about risks/benefits

Question 14

Finucane et al., (2000)

affect heuristic in judgement of risks and benefits

Answer 14

ppts given stories about whether nuclear power plans were good –> either presenting high benefit or low benefit

view was influenced bu what they read (high/low risk or benefit) - would also infer about whether other part of the equation was high/low without being told anything about it. e.g. high benefit has no mention of risk but this would be inferred to be low.

manipulating information presented changed judgements and perception

Question 15

dual process theory to assess risk affectively and rationally

Dener-Raj and Epstein 1994

Answer 15

ppts offered $1 if they picked a red jellybean from an urn without looking.
wither 7 in 100 or 1in 10 chance - ppts reported that although they knew probability was against them they thought they had a better chance with more red beans

Question 16

why some people are reluctant to trust experts - dual process their

Answer 16

differ in the extent to which deliberative/affective thinking influences risk perception - people are reluctant to trust experts as feel confused and uncomfortable

Question 17

communicating risk as absolute and relative

Answer 17

medical findings are often reported in a way that causes panic - we respond differently to direct numbers than frequency

Question 18

Evans and Horton 2009 - statistical illiteracy dangers

Answer 18

patients need to have dialogue for treatment/risks/benefits but many cannot make informed choices unless they understand the information, much of which involves stats/graphs

• decision making will only work if both the doctor and patient are clear about what the numbers actually mean

Question 19

Solvic et al 2000

study using % and numbers in decision making

Answer 19

experienced forensic psychologist and psychiatrists asked to judge the likelihood of a patient committing an act of violence within 6 months of being discharged

wording has a big impact - presented as total numbers = more conservative decision making whereas % made them a more abstract concept

Question 20

Suppression of emotion

Answer 20

bad idea and often counterproductive - may reduce expressive behaviour but have very little effect on subjective experience.

suppression is cognitively costly, would be more useful to devote this to reappraisal –> impairs memory for details of what triggered the emotion

Question 21

white bear experiment

Answer 21

think of anything apart from the white bear = more likely to think of the white bear

Question 22

reappraisal

Answer 22

reframe the meaning of stimuli that led to an emotional response. dissipates the emotional response = mitigates the physiological and neural responses to events as well as self-reported negative feelings

Question 23

effect of time to reduce the effect of emotion

Answer 23

let time pass before making a decision as acute emotion is short lived and the strength will fade

Question 24

reducing the effect of emotion on decision making

Answer 24

suppression, reappraisal, time

Question 25

affective forecasting

Answer 25

insight into how future events will make us feel, predicting how we will feel - linked to the outcomes of specific events/situations.

Question 26

affective forecasting as a process

Answer 26

influences preferences, decisions and behaviour - we know what will make us happy/unhappy but don’t know how much for how long.

Question 27

predicting future feelings

Answer 27

• can tell valence but not necessarily intensity or duration
  don’t see the complexity of emotion in the future - similar to FAB, future is viewed in a simple way to focus on what motivates us

Question 28

impact bias

Answer 28

overestimation the intensity and duration of our emotional reaction - we often overestimate length and amount – revert back to normal very quickly

Question 29

Gilbert et al 1998 immune neglect - psychological immune system

Answer 29

the system of cognitive mechanisms that ameiorate our experience of negative affect - we bounce back quickly by rallying around affective and cognitive mechanisms to rationalise and reappraise the situation
= tend to overestimate the duration of affective reactions to negative events - upset originally

6 studies of scenarios and in all cases, affective state after the event was a lot better that participants

Question 30

Wilson and Gilbert 2005 affective forecasting

Answer 30

easier to recover from negative events when we can rationalise and explain them

minor issues can sometimes cause disproportionately negative emotion as people are less motivated to make sense of them whereas a big issue = mobilise all resources to deal with it

Question 31

Gilbert and Ebert 2002 decisions and revisions - photo study

Answer 31

underestimate psychological immune system = take actions that undermine its effectiveness.

knowing what you want is difficult, want to keep changing outcomes until we get what we think is best for us - changing the outcome doesnt always make us happier but we usually find ways to accept what we cannot change

told students they were taking part in a photography class - 2 will be printed bu t can only keep one. half told they have a 5 day window to change their mind and half told they have to pick straight away and cannot change.

asked how much they like their photo - those allowed to change their mind meant that over time they started to like their photo less even if they didn’t change.

overabundance of choice and chasing the fear of missing out prevents engagement of whats infant of us

Question 32

iyengar and pepper 2000 - when choice is demotivating - jam

Answer 32

choice overload - exensive choices although initially seen as desirable often proves demotivating in the end = cognitive overload

field study - customers encountered a tasting booth of 6 or 24 flavours of jam. motivation was initial attraction to the booth and purchasing behaviour. More stopped for larger selection but purchasing was greater in the smaller selection