The Influence Of Emotion On Intertemporal Decision-making

Intertemporal decision-making refers to people weighing and selecting results at different points in time.In recent years,the influence of emotion on intertemporal decision-making has been favored by many researchers,but most of them have only stayed at the stage of revealing phenomena,and few studies have directly verified the mechanism of influence.Existing related theoretical explanations only emphasize the evaluation of the impact of emotions on intertemporal decision-making from the aspect of one or some evaluations of emotions through the fitting of behavior results.This article attempts to focus on the trade-off theory of inter-period decision-making,and uses the "intuitive simulation of balance" task to directly test the inter-period decision-making process to verify whether there is a process of comparing differences between dimensions based on the trade-off theory between emotions and inter-period decision-making.This study designed three experiments to explore the impact of emotion on intertemporal decision-making and its information processing mechanism.As a preliminary exploratory study,Experiment 1 mainly explores the behavioral effects of intertemporal decision-making under different emotional states;Experiment 2explores the effect of emotions on the comparison of interdimensionality differences and intertemporal preference selection by measuring interdimensionality differences,and examines interdimensionality The intermediary role of difference comparison;Experiment 3 further controls the intermediary role of difference comparison in the relationship between emotion and intertemporal preference selection by controlling the size of the difference in time and money dimension after emotion activation.The main results of the study are as follows:(1)Emotion has a significant influence on intertemporal decision-making.Compared with neutral emotions,negative emotions increase the delayed discount rate and tend to be instant rewards in intertemporal decision-making;positive emotions reduce the delayed discount rate and tend to delay rewards in intertemporaldecision-making.(2)Differences between dimensions mediate the impact of emotions on intertemporal decision-making.Under positive emotions,individuals believe that the difference in money dimension is greater than that in time dimension,so they tend to choose delay options with large results;in negative emotions,subjects believe that the difference in time dimension is greater than the difference in money dimension,so they tend to To choose the near-term option that is close in time.(3)Using time or money activation strategies to control the difference between the dimensions of the subjects after emotion activation,it was found that the effect of emotion on intertemporal decision-making disappeared.After time activation,the subjects tended to judge that the difference in time dimension was greater than the difference in money dimension.Preference choices tend to be immediate choices,and they are more pronounced in positive emotional states;after money is activated,subjects tend to judge that the difference in money dimension is greater than the difference in time dimension,and preference choices tend to delay choices and perform in negative emotional states Is more obvious.