Music-evoked incidental happiness modulates probability weighting during risky lottery choices

Abstract

We often make decisions with uncertain consequences. The outcomes of the choices we make are usually not perfectly predictable but probabilistic, and the probabilities can be known or unknown. Probability judgments, i.e., the assessment of unknown probabilities, can be influenced by evoked emotional states. This suggests that also the weighting of known probabilities in decision making under risk might be influenced by incidental emotions, i.e., emotions unrelated to the judgments and decisions at issue. Probability weighting describes the transformation of probabilities into subjective decision weights for outcomes and is one of the central components of cumulative prospect theory (CPT) that determine risk attitudes. We hypothesized that music-evoked emotions would modulate risk attitudes in the gain domain and in particular probability weighting. Our experiment featured a within-subject design consisting of four conditions in separate sessions. In each condition, the 41 participants listened to a different kind of music—happy, sad, or no music, or sequences of random tones—and performed a repeated pairwise lottery choice task. We found that participants chose the riskier lotteries significantly more often in the “happy” than in the “sad” and “random tones” conditions. Via structural regressions based on CPT, we found that the observed changes in participants' choices can be attributed to changes in the elevation parameter of the probability weighting function: in the “happy” condition, participants showed significantly higher decision weights associated with the larger payoffs than in the “sad” and “random tones” conditions. Moreover, elevation correlated positively with self-reported music-evoked happiness. Thus, our experimental results provide evidence in favor of a causal effect of incidental happiness on risk attitudes that can be explained by changes in probability weighting.

Incidental emotions influence risk preference and outcome evaluation

“…However, negative emotions did not influence risk preference compared with the neutral condition in the present study. The result that risk preference is selectively affected by positive incidental emotions was consistent with previous findings that music-evoked positive emotions promoted risk preference, but music-evoked negative emotions did not (Halko, M€ akel€ a, Nummenmaa, Hlushchuk, & Sch€ urmann, 2015;Schulreich et al, 2013). We suggest that the variation of risk preference is a carryover effect of the neural activation pattern, which is incurred by the preceding incidental emotion and leaves its mark on the following decision-making process.…”

Determinants of Probability Neglect and Risk Attitudes for Disaster Risk: An Online Experimental Study of Flood Insurance Demand among Homeowners

“…Immediate emotion can be subcategorized into incidental emotions induced by factors unrelated to the decision, and anticipatory emotions arising from consequences of the decision itself. A number of studies have explored incidental emotion and probability weighting (Fehr-Duda, Epper, Bruhin, & Schubert, 2011;Schulreich et al, 2014;Traczyk & Fulawka, 2016). These studies find that a better mood increases risk-seeking behavior.…”

The neural circuitry of emotion-induced distortions of trust

“…Prominent theoretical accounts [12][13][14] distinguish such incidental affect from anticipatory emotions that reflect how decisionmakers expect to feel about the outcomes of their decisions. While recent research has made much progress in outlining the neural underpinnings of emotional processes on the one hand 15,16 and of decision-making on the other 17,18 , the neural interactions between emotional and cognitive processes that support choice have largely been explored from theoretical perspectives [19][20][21] . It is therefore important to directly examine the behavioral and neural mechanisms by which incidental emotions distort decisions to trust.…”