Emotions in Decision-making - Positive and Negative Emotions

Positive and Negative Emotions

Research done by Isen and Patrick put forth the theory of “mood maintenance” which states that happy decision-makers are reluctant to gamble. In other words, happy people decide against gambling, since they would not want to undermine the happy feeling.

Alternately, the influence of negative feelings at the time of decision-making was studied by Raghunathan and Tuan Pham (1999). They conducted three experiments in gambling decisions and job selection decisions, where unhappy subjects were found to prefer high-risk/high-reward options unlike anxious subjects who preferred low-risk/low-reward options. They stated that “anxiety and sadness convey distinct types of information to the decision-maker and prime different goals.” It was found that “while anxiety primes an implicit goal of uncertainty reduction, sadness primes an implicit goal of reward replacement”. Thus emotions cannot simply be classified as positive or negative as we need to consider the consequences of the emotions in ultimate decision-making. Emotions rule our decision making process.