The Different Effect Of Fear And Sadness On Decision Making And The Mediating Effect Of Inhibitory Control

Previous studies have suggested that individual's decision making is affected by emotion,and they proposed a set of emotion hypotheses such as affective generation hypothesis,mood maintenance hypothesis and so on.However,most of them focused on the different effects of positive and negative emotion,and lack of discussion on specific emotions.This study discussed decision making within two aspects:cross term and uncertainty.Two kind of specific negative emotion,fear and sadness,were aroused by video clips.And how these two negative emotion affect intertemporal choice and risky decision making was explored.In order to find the cognitive mechanism of this emotional effect,the role of inhibitory control was also discussed.Experiment 1 explored the emotional effect on decision making in the aspect of inter term.Subjects are asked to finish delay discounting task,stop-signal task and time reproduction task under the aroused emotions.The result suggested that different emotions have a significant effect on individuals' delay discounting rate and inhibitory control,but not on time perception.The mediating effect analysis of emotion,delay discounting rate and inhibitory control showed that the effect of emotion on delay discounting was completely mediated by the inhibitory control.Fear harmed inhibitory control,so that individuals preferred smaller but sooner income,however,sadness enhanced inhibitory control,thus,individuals were more willing to wait for the larger but latter income.Experiment 2 discussed the emotional effect on decision making in the aspect of uncertainty.In this part,subjects are asked to finish Iowa gambling task and stop-signal task after watching video clips.The results showed that individuals who feeling fear chose more high risk and high earning decks,which are disadvantage,while,individuals who feeling sadness preferred low risk and low earning decks,which are advantage.Also,the effect of emotion on risky decision making was completely mediated by inhibitory control.In conclusion,the results of present study indicated that fear and sadness have different effects on individuals' decision-making.These effects were entirely mediated by inhibitory control.Fear damages individuals' inhibitory control,causing individuals' myopia in intertemporal choice,and risk seeking in the risky decision making.Sadness enhances individual inhibitory control,which makes individuals be more patient in intertemporal choice,and more risk aversion in risky decision making.