Affective Processes in Judgment and Decision Making

本提案中的研究试图阐明情感在指导判断和决策中的作用。在这里，“影响”是指“好”或“坏”的特定品质(i)作为一种感觉状态（有或没有意识）和（ii）区分刺激的积极或消极品质。情感反应迅速而自动地发生——注意一个人与刺激词“珍惜”或“憎恨”相关的感觉有多快。我们把在做出判断或决定时对这种感觉的依赖称为“情感启发式”。这个项目背后的理论框架来自认知和社会心理学以及认知神经科学的研究，它告诉我们两种基本的思维模式，经验和分析。体验系统是直观的、自动的、基于图像的、快速的，并且与情感感受密切相关。分析系统是深思熟虑的、基于推理的、缓慢的。这两种体系都有很强的合理性。正是这种经验系统使人类在漫长的进化过程中得以生存。早在概率论、风险评估和决策分析出现之前，直觉、本能和直觉就能告诉我们接近一只动物是否安全，或者水是否可以安全饮用。随着生活变得越来越复杂，人类对环境有了更多的控制，分析工具被发明出来，以“增强”我们经验思维的合理性。我们现在认识到，经验思维模式和分析思维模式是持续活跃的，在我们所描述的“情感与理性之舞”中相互作用。虽然我们可能能够在没有分析的情况下“做正确的事情”（例如，躲避下落的物体），但如果没有情感的指导，我们不太可能理性地运用分析思维。因此，情感对于理性行为是必不可少的。基于这一理论框架和支持性研究，我们计划在本项目中进行一系列实验，以更好地理解情感在决策中的作用，以及体验性的、基于情感的思维模式与更多的分析和审议过程之间的相互作用。我们还将试图证明，这项研究的结果如何为改善涉及金融、医疗、吸烟、保险和风险感知等问题的一系列重要实际决策提供了见解。

The research in this proposal attempts to articulate the role of affect in guiding judgments and decisions. As used here, "affect" means the specific quality of "goodness" or "badness" (i) experienced as a feeling state (with or without awareness) and (ii) demarcating a positive or negative quality of a stimulus. Affective reactions occur rapidly and automatically - note how quickly one senses the feelings associated with the stimulus word "treasure" or the word "hate." We have characterized reliance on such feelings when making judgments or decisions as "the affect heuristic."The theoretical framework underlying this project comes from research in cognitive and social psychology and cognitive neuroscience that informs us about two basic modes of thinking, experiential and analytic. The experiential system is intuitive, automatic, image-based, fast, and intimately associated with affective feelings. The analytic system is deliberative, reason-based, and slow. There are strong elements of rationality in both systems. It was the experiential system that enabled human beings to survive during their long period of evolution. Long before there was probability theory, risk assessment, and decision analysis, there were intuition, instinct, and gut feelings to tell us whether an animal was safe to approach or the water was safe to drink. As life became more complex and humans gained more control over their environment, analytic tools were invented to "boost" the rationality of our experiential thinking.We now recognize that the experiential mode of thinking and the analytic mode of thinking are continually active, interacting in what we have characterized as "the dance of affect and reason". While we may be able to "do the right thing" without analysis (e.g., dodge a falling object), it is unlikely that we can employ analytic thinking rationally without guidance from affect. Affect is thus essential to rational action.Based upon this theoretical framework and supporting research, we plan in this project to conduct a series of experiments to better understand the role of affect in decision making and the interaction between the experiential, affect-based mode of thinking and more analytic and deliberative processes. We shall also attempt to demonstrate how the findings from this research provide insight into ways to improve a wide-range of important practical decisions about matters involving finance, medical treatments, cigarette smoking, insurance, and risk perception.