The function of concrete emotions in rational decision making

Abstract The present study investigates the role of anticipated concrete emotions in preferential decision making. Concrete emotions are conceptualized as a special set of attributes in a multi-attribute utility framework. It is argued that emotions cannot be reduced to patterns of objective attribute values. It is hypothesized that decisions are determined by both concrete emotions and objective attributes. Furthermore, the relative impact of emotions is hypothesized to vary with characteristics of the decision task, namely, the decision domain (persons vs. cities), the similarity of the decision options (similar vs. dissimilar), and the response mode (rating vs. ranking). Four sets of decision options were presented to subjects on a questionnaire. For each option, subjects indicated a preference rating, a ranking of the option within its set, the intensity of four concrete emotions, and the degree to which the option is characterized by four objective attributes. Regression analyses show that including emotions as predictors significantly increases the portion of explained variance of preferences. The relative impact of emotions is moderated by the response mode. Factor analyses yield two independent factors of positive and negative emotions. Surprisingly, only positive emotions are significantly correlated with preferences. We conclude that concrete emotions are a necessary and non-redundant part of the decision process.