Selecting decision strategies: The differential role of affect

Abstract

Many theories on cognition assume that people adapt their decision strategies depending on the situation they face. To test if and how affect guides the selection of decision strategies, we conducted an online study (N = 166), where different mood states were induced through video clips. Results indicate that mood influenced the use of decision strategies. Negative mood, in particular anger, facilitated the use of non-compensatory strategies, whereas positive mood promoted compensatory decision rules. These results are in line with the idea that positive mood broadens the focus of attention and thus increases the use of compensatory decision strategies that take many pieces of information into account, whereas negative mood narrows the focus of attention and thus fosters non-compensatory strategies that rely on a selective use of information. The results further indicate that gaining a deeper theoretical understanding of the cognitive mechanisms that govern decision processes requires taking emotions into account.

Keywords:

• Affect
• Decision-making
• Strategy selection
• Online study
• Bayesian statistics

We thank Oliver Schürmann for his help with the online study and Laura Wiles for her help with editing the manuscript.

This work was supported by SNF Research Grant no. [100014_130149] to Benjamin Scheibehenne and SNF research Grant no. [100014_130192] to Bettina von Helversen.

We thank Oliver Schürmann for his help with the online study and Laura Wiles for her help with editing the manuscript.

This work was supported by SNF Research Grant no. [100014_130149] to Benjamin Scheibehenne and SNF research Grant no. [100014_130192] to Bettina von Helversen.

Notes

¹ A screenshot and a table of all choice pairs can be downloaded from http://scheibehenne.de/onlineSupplementScheibehenneVonHelversen2014.zip.

² See supplementary online material for a table with the means and standard deviations of all video ratings.

³ The degrees of freedom of the t-test were adjusted to account for the inequality of the variances between the two groups.

⁴ A detailed description of the Bayesian model can be downloaded from http://scheibehenne.de/onlineSupplementScheibehenneVonHelversen2014.zip.