Emotion and decision making.

A revolution in the science of emotion has emerged in recent decades, with the potential to create a paradigm shift in decision theories. The research reveals that emotions constitute potent, pervasive, predictable, sometimes harmful and sometimes beneficial drivers of decision making. Across different domains, important regularities appear in the mechanisms through which emotions influence judgments and choices. We organize and analyze what has been learned from the past 35 years of work on emotion and decision making. In so doing, we propose the emotion-imbued choice model, which accounts for inputs from traditional rational choice theory and from newer emotion research, synthesizing scientific models.

Early onset of neural synchronization in the contextual associations network.

Objects are more easily recognized in their typical context. However, is contextual information activated early enough to facilitate the perception of individual objects, or is contextual facilitation caused by postperceptual mechanisms? To elucidate this issue, we first need to study the temporal dynamics and neural interactions associated with contextual processing. Studies have shown that the contextual network consists of the parahippocampal, retrosplenial, and medial prefrontal cortices. We used functional MRI, magnetoencephalography, and phase synchrony analyses to compare the neural response to stimuli with strong or weak contextual associations. The context network was activated in functional MRI and preferentially synchronized in magnetoencephalography (MEG) for stimuli with strong contextual associations. Phase synchrony increased early (150-250 ms) only when it involved the parahippocampal cortex, whereas retrosplenial-medial prefrontal cortices synchrony was enhanced later (300-400 ms). These results describe the neural dynamics of context processing and suggest that context is activated early during object perception.

Winners love winning and losers love money.

Salience and satisfaction are important factors in determining the comparisons that people make. We hypothesized that people make salient comparisons first, and then make satisfying comparisons only if salient comparisons leave them unsatisfied. This hypothesis suggests an asymmetry between winning and losing. For winners, comparison with a salient alternative (i.e., losing) brings satisfaction. Therefore, winners should be sensitive only to the relative value of their outcomes. For losers, comparison with a salient alternative (i.e., winning) brings little satisfaction. Therefore, losers should be drawn to compare outcomes with additional standards, which should make them sensitive to both relative and absolute values of their outcomes. In Experiment 1, participants won one of two cash prizes on a scratch-off ticket. Winners were sensitive to the relative value of their prizes, whereas losers were sensitive to both the relative and the absolute values of their prizes. In Experiment 2, losers were sensitive to the absolute value of their prize only when they had sufficient cognitive resources to engage in effortful comparison.

Duration sensitivity depends on stimulus familiarity.

When people are asked to assess or compare the value of experienced or hypothetical events, one of the most intriguing observations is their apparent insensitivity to event duration. The authors propose that duration insensitivity occurs when stimuli are evaluated in isolation because they typically lack comparison information. People should be able to evaluate the duration of stimuli in isolation, however, when stimuli are familiar and evoke comparison information. The results of 3 experiments support the hypothesis. Participants were insensitive to the duration of hypothetical (Experiment 1) and real (Experiment 2) unfamiliar experiences but sensitive to the duration of familiar experiences. In Experiment 3, participants were insensitive to the duration of an unfamiliar noise when it was unlabeled but sensitive to its duration when it was given a familiar label (i.e., a telephone ring). Rather than being a unique phenomenon, duration neglect (and perhaps other forms of scope insensitivity) appears to be a particular case of insensitivity to unfamiliar attributes.

Decisions under distress: stress profiles influence anchoring and adjustment.

People frequently make decisions under stress. Understanding how stress affects decision making is complicated by the fact that not all stress responses are created equal. Challenge states, for example, occur when individuals appraise a stressful situation as demanding, but believe they have the personal resources to cope, and are characterized by efficient cardiovascular reactivity and approach motivation. Threat states, in contrast, occur when situational demands are perceived to outweigh resources and are characterized by less efficient cardiovascular reactivity and withdrawal motivation. We randomly assigned participants to social-feedback conditions (i.e., positive or negative feedback) designed to engender challenge or threat, or a no-stress condition. Participants then completed an anchoring-and-adjustment questionnaire. Those assigned to the challenge condition adjusted more from self-generated anchors than those assigned to the threat condition. Cardiovascular responses mediated the relationship between condition and adjustment. This study demonstrates the importance of considering profiles of cardiovascular reactivity when examining the influence of stress on decision making.

Bored in the USA: Experience sampling and boredom in everyday life.

We report new evidence on the emotional, demographic, and situational correlates of boredom from a rich experience sample capturing 1.1 million emotional and time-use reports from 3,867 U.S. adults. Subjects report boredom in 2.8% of the 30-min sampling periods, and 63% of participants report experiencing boredom at least once across the 10-day sampling period. We find that boredom is more likely to co-occur with negative, rather than positive, emotions, and is particularly predictive of loneliness, anger, sadness, and worry. Boredom is more prevalent among men, youths, the unmarried, and those of lower income. We find that differences in how such demographic groups spend their time account for up to one third of the observed differences in overall boredom. The importance of situations in predicting boredom is additionally underscored by the high prevalence of boredom in specific situations involving monotonous or difficult tasks (e.g., working, studying) or contexts where one's autonomy might be constrained (e.g., time with coworkers, afternoons, at school). Overall, our findings are consistent with cognitive accounts that cast boredom as emerging from situations in which engagement is difficult, and are less consistent with accounts that exclusively associate boredom with low arousal or with situations lacking in meaning. (PsycINFO Database Record

The science of style: in fashion, colors should match only moderately.

Fashion is an essential part of human experience and an industry worth over $1.7 trillion. Important choices such as hiring or dating someone are often based on the clothing people wear, and yet we understand almost nothing about the objective features that make an outfit fashionable. In this study, we provide an empirical approach to this key aesthetic domain, examining the link between color coordination and fashionableness. Studies reveal a robust quadratic effect, such that that maximum fashionableness is attained when outfits are neither too coordinated nor too different. In other words, fashionable outfits are those that are moderately matched, not those that are ultra-matched ("matchy-matchy") or zero-matched ("clashing"). This balance of extremes supports a broader hypothesis regarding aesthetic preferences-the Goldilocks principle--that seeks to balance simplicity and complexity.

The effects of measuring emotion: physiological reactions to emotional situations depend on whether someone is asking.

Measurement effects exist throughout the sciences-the act of measuring often changes the properties of the observed. We suggest emotion research is no exception. The awareness and conscious assessment required by self-report of emotion may significantly alter emotional processes. In this study, participants engaged in a difficult math task designed to induce anger or shame while their cardiovascular responses were measured. Half of the participants were asked to report on their emotional states and appraise their feelings throughout the experiment, whereas the other half completed a control questionnaire. Among those in the anger condition, participants assigned to report on their emotions exhibited qualitatively different physiological responses from those who did not report. For participants in the shame condition, there were no significant differences in physiology based on the self-report manipulation. The study demonstrates that the simple act of reporting on an emotional state may have a substantial impact on the body's reaction to an emotional situation.

Identifying Emotions on the Basis of Neural Activation.

We attempt to determine the discriminability and organization of neural activation corresponding to the experience of specific emotions. Method actors were asked to self-induce nine emotional states (anger, disgust, envy, fear, happiness, lust, pride, sadness, and shame) while in an fMRI scanner. Using a Gaussian Naïve Bayes pooled variance classifier, we demonstrate the ability to identify specific emotions experienced by an individual at well over chance accuracy on the basis of: 1) neural activation of the same individual in other trials, 2) neural activation of other individuals who experienced similar trials, and 3) neural activation of the same individual to a qualitatively different type of emotion induction. Factor analysis identified valence, arousal, sociality, and lust as dimensions underlying the activation patterns. These results suggest a structure for neural representations of emotion and inform theories of emotional processing.