Pleasure in decision‐making situations: politics and gambling

Abstract

This work investigates whether pleasure influences political and gambling decisions. Participants received two questionnaires. On Questionnaire 1, they rated the pleasure/displeasure of a series of items: social and political issues in Experiment 1, winning bets in Experiment 2, and losing bets in Experiment 3. On Questionnaire 2, they indicated the items that they would actually choose in real life. Their choices were then compared with their hedonic ratings on Questionnaire 1. Results showed that participants tended to choose those items they had most highly rated for pleasure on Questionnaire 1. In all cases, the selected outcomes were higher than chance, and thus tended to maximize pleasure, but were significantly lower than the maximum possible, indicating the presence of non‐hedonic criteria. The tendency to maximize pleasure was independent of age, gender, political opinions, and gambling propensity in real life. The results of all three experiments support the hypothesis that decisions are made predominantly, though not exclusively, in the hedonic dimension of conscious experience. A fourth experiment was set to answer a methodological question: a delay of 77 ± 3 days was placed between Questionnaires 1 and 2. The results were similar to those of Experiments 1–3, thus answering the concern.

Keywords:

• money
• decision making
• pleasure
• optimization
• politics
• gambling
• framing
• motivation
• microeconomics

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada, and by the Fondation de l’université Laval, Québec, Canada.

Notes

1. In this article, rational means ‘based on reason, or reasoning’ (Oxford English Dictionary).

2. Here, the connotation of affect is the same as what we call hedonic.