The Effects Of Tolerance Of Uncertainty On College Students' Affective Decision Making

Affective decision making refers to the ability of individuals to make choices conducive to the future,aiming at two or more different value types and values,and taking the future interests as the orientation,when the individual is faced with the choice of value contradiction and leads to emotional conflict.As an important social adaptive capacity,affective decision making has a high degree of emotional involvement,and its poor functional development or damage will often bring serious consequences to individuals or society.Affective decision making was a kind of uncertain decision,which requires individuals to evaluate the reward and punishment for each response under the condition of uncertain response results.However,different individuals have different behavioral responses when facing the same uncertain situations or events.Some individuals tend to feel anxious and stressed,and often try to escape or prevent.While some individuals can respond positively and adapt well.Therefore,in the present study,we start with the "uncertainty" of affective decision making,used the Iowa gambling task and delayed decision task to investigate the influence of individuals tolerance of uncertainty on affective decision making,and explore whether the influence is stable when the objective reward and punishment conditions and subjective decision roles change.The study consists of one pre-experiment and four formal experiments.The pre-experiment is used to explore the relationship between the level of individual's tolerance of uncertainty and affective decision making.Experiment 1 and experiment 2 investigated whether the influence of individual's tolerance of uncertainty on affective decision was different when the objective reward and punishment conditions changed by highlighting the gambling tasks of reward and punishment respectively.Experiment 3 and experiment 4 examined whether the influence of tolerance of uncertainty on affective decision making was different when the subjective role of self-general others and self-specific others changed respectively.The results showed as following:(1)When the objective reward and punishment conditions changed,the number of favorable cards selected by the subjects with high and low tolerance of uncertainty showed a trend of reversal.When the reward is highlighted,the low tolerance level subjects choose the number of favorable cards less than the high tolerance level subjects;when the prominent punishment,the low tolerance level subjects choose the number of favorable cards more than the high tolerance level subjects.(2)When the role of subjective decision making changes,the subjects with low tolerance of uncertainty were more willing to wait for a delay option with low risk and high value than those with high tolerance of uncertainty;Whether the subjects with high tolerance of uncertainty or the subjects with low tolerance of uncertainty,when making decisions for intimate others,the delayed decision-making performance and the proportion of voluntary waiting are higher than those made the decision for themselves and strangers,while the decision for themselves was slightly higher than that for strangers.(3)Trait tolerance of uncertainty had a direct impact on individual's affective decision-making.but this impact was not stable and may be changed by experimental paradigm and decision-making role.(4)The performance of state tolerance of uncertainty on individual's affective decision-making was inverted u-shaped pattern.that was,increased the endurance ability of subjects with high tolerance level and reduced the endurance ability of subjects with low tolerance level,it will lead to adverse decision-making consequences.In conclusion,the findings suggest that tolerance of uncertainty has a direct impact on College Students' affective decision-making,but the impact was not stable and was easily regulated by factors such as conditions of reward and punishment and decision-making role.Subjects with low tolerance of uncertainty were more likely to be tempted by higher immediate benefits,and might be more sensitive to rewards.High and low tolerance of uncertainty level subjects tend to choose conservative options with higher value when making decisions for objects with close psychological distance,while those with long psychological distance tend to choose risky options with lower value when making decisions.