The Effect And The Mechanism Of Emotion On Choice Deferral In Decision-Making

Currently, the effect of emotion on decision-making was attracting more and more attention. The main purpose of this research was to discuss and analyses the effect of ambient moods on choice deferral. Based on related researches, this study had two experiments, imitating the course selection in real life as decision-making task. Before subjects completed the task, they would be induced relevant emotions by some techniques (pictures-induced and video clips-induced), then would be asked to finish specific task. This study was from the outcome-oriented and the process-oriented perspective, expecting to discuss how the individual make deferral choice in the effect of ambient moods.Study1took the valence-based approach, using the technique of pictures-induced to trigger target moods: positive, neutral and negative, to explore the impact of emotion-valence and conflict on choice deferral. The result demonstrated that conflict would affect choice deferral, high level of conflict leads to more often choice deferral. And the interactive effects were significant, under high level of conflict, participants who were induced to feel negative emotion would choose the choice deferral options more often, compared with participants who were induced to feel positive or neutral emotion. Study2took the specific-emotional approach, using the technique of video clips-induced to trigger target moods:happy, sad and anger. In order to further explore the impact of the three specific emotions on decision-making and to study the process of choice deferral, this study taking Mouselab Procedure of the Information Board technique to detect decision-making process. The results showed that, individuals with negative emotions (sad and anger) would choose choice deferral more often than positive individuals (happy), but there is no difference between sad and anger conditions. There was a significant effect of different emotions on the information processing. In other words, under the negative condition, the latency of search was longer, the depth of information search increased. Mediation analyses found that the decision-making strategies at least partially mediated the effect of ambient moods on choice deferral.On the basis of comprehensive analysis, this paper suggested that individuals under negative emotions would choose the choice deferral options more often, compared with individuals under positive emotion. Simultaneously, the decision-making strategies played an important role in the effect of emotion on choice deferral.