How Do Financial Actors Decide Under Conditions of Fundamental Uncertainty?—The Role of Emotions as a Social Mechanism to Overcome Fundamental Uncertainty

Abstract

The article discusses the role of emotions in investment decision-making processes on the financial markets. It will be shown that emotions, in conditions of fundamental uncertainty, may be a supplement to cognitive knowledge. More specifically, it will be shown that under conditions of fundamental uncertainty, emotions of confidence or "good feeling" about anticipated future states will be achieved to serve as a bridge to overcome uncertainty. The findings presented in this article also show that financial investors legitimate their decisions by referring to their emotions. Financial investors claim that emotions direct decisions when the decision-making processes cannot be apprehended by cognition alone. The article also shows that in decisions of fundamental uncertainty cognitive and emotional decision logic complement each other. In order to come to these conclusions data were taken from 17 qualitative in-depth interviews with professional investors from major German banks.