The affect gap in risky choice: Affect-rich outcomes attenuate attention to probability information.

Abstract

It has been suggested that people decide differently when faced with affect-rich prospects (e.g., medical side effects) than with prospects triggering more moderate amounts of affect (e.g., monetary losses). Does this potential impact of affect on risky decision making even result in preference reversals? And if so, how do the cognitive processes underlying the respective decisions differ? Using a within-subjects design, the current research contrasted choices between prospects with relatively affect-rich outcomes and choices between prospects with relatively affect-poor but monetarily equivalent outcomes. Across three studies, findings consistently showed a substantial divergence in participants' affect-rich and affectpoor choices, resulting in systematic within-subject preference reversals. This "affect gap" held for outcomes associated both with negative affect (Studies 1 and 3) and with positive affect (Study 2). Furthermore, computational modeling suggested that in affect-poor choice people commonly rely on a compensatory process that trades off outcome and probability, whereas in affect-rich choice (in particular between outcomes invoking negative affect) people more often rely on a noncompensatory, heuristic process that compares outcomes between options while disregarding probabilities. This interpretation is also supported by process data (Study 3) showing that people pay less attention to probability information and conduct more intradimensional comparisons in affect-rich choices than in affect-poor choices.

Spontaneous mental associations with the words “side effect”: Implications for informed and shared decision making

“…(18–20) Emotional responses to side effects, in turn, have been shown to decrease people’s use of information about the probability of occurrence of the side effects. (21) Patients’ evaluations of treatment options may thus be based less on a deliberative calculation of risks and benefits and more on a spontaneous and affectively-based judgment about the medication quality. These spontaneous reactions, in turn, could act as a frame through which subsequent beliefs about the medication are formed and decisions made.…”

Using Bayesian hierarchical parameter estimation to assess the generalizability of cognitive models of choice

“…According to CPT, responses to risky alternatives (which lead to different outcomes with some probability) are a function of several factors, including a person's sensitivity to outcome and probability information and his or her relative weighting of losses and gains ("loss aversion"). In the model, the degrees of outcome and probability sensitivity and the amount of loss aversion can be quantified by free parameters, and several studies have fitted CPT parameters to investigate how differences in age (Harbaugh, Krause, & Vesterlund, 2002), gender (e.g., Fehr-Duda, De Gennaro, & Schubert, 2006, delinquency (Pachur, Hanoch, & Gummerum, 2010), or affect (Pachur, Hertwig, & Wolkewitz, 2014) influence risky decision making. For such applications of computational modeling, it is often essential to obtain a set of parameter estimates for each individual.…”

Understanding clinical and non-clinical decisions under uncertainty: a scenario-based survey

“…However, when faced with emotion or affect-charged decisions, evidence suggests that people systematically choose the optimal option less often [28]. And others have suggested that the impact of probability information may be attenuated in affect-rich choices [34]. Though this was not explicitly studied in this set of tasks, the affect involved in choices made by physicians in health-care decisions may be different than that of non-clinicians, and may impact the measured risk preferences in these situations.…”