Do (un)certainty appraisal tendencies reverse the influence of emotions on risk taking in sequential tasks?

Abstract

According to the Appraisal-Tendency Framework (Han, Lerner, & Keltner, 2007), certainty-associated emotions increase risk taking compared with uncertainty-associated emotions. To date, this general effect has only been shown in static judgement and decision-making paradigms; therefore, the present study tested the effect of certainty on risk taking in a sequential decision-making task. We hypothesised that the effect would be reversed due to the kind of processing involved, as certainty is considered to encourage heuristic processing that takes into account the emotional cues arising from previous decisions, whereas uncertainty leads to more systematic processing. One hundred and one female participants were induced to feel one of three emotions (film clips) before performing a decision-making task involving risk (Game of Dice Task; Brand et al., 2005). As expected, the angry and happy participants (certainty-associated emotions) were more likely than the fearful participants (uncertainty-associated emotion) to make safe decisions (vs. risky decisions).

Keywords:

• Emotion
• Certainty–uncertainty appraisal
• Appraisal tendency
• Decision making
• Game of Dice Task
• Information processing

Notes

¹The word “dégouté” (disgusted) means in French “an offence to oneself or those one identifies with” and refers to anger (Smith & Lazarus, 1990, p. 617).

²As expected, all the comparisons between emotion conditions concerning the target emotion ratings were significant, except for the comparison between fear ratings for the anger and fear conditions, t(63) = 1.5, ns.

³Happy participants made safe decisions more often than fearful participants in the last three blocks taken together, F(1, 98)=4.11, p<.05. The effect in block 3 is not significant (p=.11). To obtain a significant distinction from the fearful participants, more trials were needed for the happy participants than for the angry participants (block 4: p<.05; block 5: p=.06).