Risk and emotion: measuring the effect of emotions and other visceral factors on decision making under risk

The science of modelling choice preferences has evolved into an interdisciplinary field contributing to several branches of microeconomics and mathematical psychology. As theories in decision science and related fields mature, descriptive theories have emerged to explain systematic violations of rationality through cognitive mechanisms underlying the thought processes that guide human behaviour. Cognitive limitations are not, however, solely responsible for systematic deviations from rationality and there is a growing body of literature exploring the effect of visceral factors as the more dominant drivers. This study builds on the existing literature by investigating the impact of anger, sadness, happiness, anxiety, hunger, energy, tiredness and stress on three distinct elements that define risk preference: utility, decision weights and loss aversion. By decomposing the impact of visceral factors on risk preference, I am able to provide evidence supporting the proposition that a portion of the variability in individual choice preferences can be explained by interacting visceral states. My findings suggest that visceral factors have the strongest effect on loss aversion, which is a major factor in how people code and evaluate financial outcomes. Anger, sadness, happiness, anxiety, energy and tiredness each affect five or more of the model parameters, while hunger and stress are significant only in their interaction with other visceral factors. I also provide evidence to show that the generalized approaches to characterizing visceral factors and risk preference are too broad to be descriptively meaningful. The results of this study show that emotions and other drive states effect the way people process and interpret information, which is crucial in informing decision-makers of the sources and consequences of irrational behaviour. These findings will be of immediate interest to wealth management specialists, public relations advisers as well as to engineers in designing socially intelligent machines capable of interacting more effectively with humans.

Risk and emotion: measuring the effect of emotions and other visceral factors on decision making under risk

The science of modelling choice preferences has evolved into an interdisciplinary field contributing to several branches of microeconomics and mathematical psychology. As theories in decision science and related fields mature, descriptive theories have emerged to explain systematic violations of rationality through cognitive mechanisms underlying the thought processes that guide human behaviour. Cognitive limitations are not, however, solely responsible for systematic deviations from rationality and there is a growing body of literature exploring the effect of visceral factors as the more dominant drivers. This study builds on the existing literature by investigating the impact of anger, sadness, happiness, anxiety, hunger, energy, tiredness and stress on three distinct elements that define risk preference: utility, decision weights and loss aversion. By decomposing the impact of visceral factors on risk preference, I am able to provide evidence supporting the proposition that a portion of the variability in individual choice preferences can be explained by interacting visceral states. My findings suggest that visceral factors have the strongest effect on loss aversion, which is a major factor in how people code and evaluate financial outcomes. Anger, sadness, happiness, anxiety, energy and tiredness each affect five or more of the model parameters, while hunger and stress are significant only in their interaction with other visceral factors. I also provide evidence to show that the generalized approaches to characterizing visceral factors and risk preference are too broad to be descriptively meaningful. The results of this study show that emotions and other drive states effect the way people process and interpret information, which is crucial in informing decision-makers of the sources and consequences of irrational behaviour. These findings will be of immediate interest to wealth management specialists, public relations advisers as well as to engineers in designing socially intelligent machines capable of interacting more effectively with humans.

Trust trumps comprehension, visceral factors trump all: A psychological cascade constraining informed consent to clinical trials: A qualitative study with stable patients

This paper addresses psychological factors that might interfere with informed consent on the part of stable patients as potential early-phase clinical trial participants. Thirty-six semistructured interviews with patients who had either diabetes or gout were conducted. We investigated stable patients’ attitudes towards participating in a fictitious first-in-human trial of a novel intervention. We focused on an in-depth analysis of those statements and explanations that indicated the existence of psychological factors impairing decision-making capacity. Three main themes emerged: insufficient comprehension of the inherent logic of clinical trials (actual comprehension), the recourse to trust over comprehension (prioritization of trust), and visceral factors that override deliberative process (visceral factors). Overall, our results indicate a limited psychological capacity on the part of stable patients to meet the requirements of informed consent as set by Declaration of Helsinki. A redesigned informed consent procedure should take account of these psychological realities.

Experiments on the value of vascular and visceral factors for the genesis of emotion

That marked reactions of those portions of the nervous system which regulate the activity of the thoracic and abdominal organs and the skin do contribute characteristically to the phenomena of emotion has long been common knowledge. In descriptions of emotion furnished in recent years by certain leading psychologists these purely physiological processes have been given a place more important than was attributed to them formerly.