Study On The Role Of Emotion In Individual Decision-making

The relationship between emotions and decision-making has been an important area in modern decision-making study. This paper firstly took brief review of the history of decision-making study, also it analyzed the role of decision-making in human history. The scientific study of decision-making arose from the development of math, Von Neumann and Morgenstern proposed EU(Expected Utility)theory, it was the first paradigm in decision-making study, also called standard paradigm. Then it came to descriptive paradigm and evolutionary paradigm. As the development of cognitive neuroscience, a new discipline—neuroeconomic comes out, it may help us know more detailed relation between emotions and decision-making at the neural level.The emotions in decision-making study was divided into two types: positive and negative. These two kinds of emotions have different effects on decision-making. This research contains two experiments, and there are two tasks conducted here, risk task and probability task. Each task was finished by the subjects under happiness and anger.Experiment 1 aims to see the impact of induced happiness and anger on risk decision. The results showed that different emotions had different impact on risk decision, the subjects in happiness tended to risk-taking while the subjects in anger were risk- aversion. Gender took no difference in the individual decision, and there is no difference between male and female in the feeling of emotion.Experiment 2 aims to see the impact of induced happiness and anger on probability decision. The results showed that different emotions had different impact on probability decision, subjects in happiness tended to take probability decision while the subjects in anger took non-probability decision. It also found that there was no difference movie induced method and semantic induced method.Above all, the current research further proved that specific emotions have different impact on individual decision-making. The future researches are expected to take the variable of individual difference into consideration and should adopt the perspective of cognitive neuroscience focus on the real process of decision making in natural situations.