The interplay between the importance of a decision and emotion in decision-making

ABSTRACT

Decision-making literature has demonstrated that individuals’ preferences are strongly affected by the way in which choices are presented. This cognitive bias, termed the framing effect, is influenced by the importance of the possible outcomes that a decision can have. However, the direction of this influence remains poorly understood. The aim of this paper was to examine the role of the importance of a decision in framing susceptibility and to explore a potential mechanism underlying this influence. Our first study revealed that participants display a framing effect when their decision implies a high importance outcome, but resist framing manipulation when their decision implies a low importance outcome. Our second study confirmed that an increase in the importance of a decision is associated with increasing framing susceptibility. Moreover, a moderated mediation analysis revealed that the more a decision was important, the more the gain and loss frames aroused opposite emotions, and this accounted for the increase in framing susceptibility. The results of these two studies confirmed that an increase in the importance of a decision is associated with increasing framing susceptibility and suggest that this influence on framing susceptibility is underpinned by emotion. Implications and direction for future studies are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Decision-making
• framing effect
• cognitive bias
• emotion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Note that this difference was not significant (χ² = 1.52, p > .20, Cramer's V < .10).