The Experimental Research On The Impact Of Specific Emotions On Decision Making

In recent years, the impact of emotion on decision making has become research focus. For the study on the effect of emotion on decision making, two research paradigms have emerged at home and abroad: based-valence approach and based specific emotions approach. The former regarded the valence as the most important factor to influence decision making, but the latter thought that valence could not be enough to explain the impact of emotion on the choice. It overlooked appraisal dimensions which could influence decision making much. This study based specific emotions approach, preliminary explored the different impact of three specific emotions: happy, sad and fear on the multiattribute choice and risk decision.This study included two experiment, both of them use the videos to excitate happy, sad and fear. Experiment 1 explored the impact of specific moods on the processing of multiattribute choice, using information display board technology to simulate the actual job choice, studied the different processing time and processing depth of different specific moods on the multiattrubute choice. The result basically confirmed the effect of emotion on the processing of multiattribute choice: positive moods leading automatic processing, negative moods leading controlled processing.Experiment 2 explored the impact of specific emotions on the risk decision. On the seven risk choices, it explored the different risk preference of different moods on the risk choices. The result showed that the impact of valence on the risk was not clear. Two same negative moods fear and sad had significantly different risk preferences. Sad Ss inclined to show risk aversion, but fear Ss inclined to show risk-seeking. The result also shows that the Certainty and Self-control dimensions aren't the central dimensions influencing risk decision much.This study enriches the study of emotion and processing and basically authenticates that the impact of emotions on the processing found in previous study is also in the more complicated tasks such as multiattribute choice. This experimental study based specific emotions approach provides research support to the discussion based Appraisal Tendency Framework on the impact of emotions on the decision making.