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.

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