Affective Processes in Judgment and Decision Making

一个多世纪以来，心理学一直在积极研究情感和情绪，但情感过程在判断和决策中的作用在很大程度上仍未被探索。基于最近在认知心理学、社会心理学和神经学方面的研究，本文提出的研究发展并测试了一种基于情感的判断和决策理论。在这一理论中，新概念如可评估性、比例优势、心理物理麻木和影响启发式被描述并用于解释异常现象，如劣质赌博的吸引力增加，以及我们无法正确理解人类生命损失的数字表示的重要性。我们认为，如果没有来自经验或问题背景的情感指导，我们可能无法把握冰淇淋等普通事物的意义或价值，也无法把握金钱和生命等更深刻的事物。在此理论框架和相关研究的基础上，提出了五种研究类型：情感启发式的研究验证了情感作为风险和概率判断线索的假设。2. 对可评估性的研究验证了一个假设，即刺激的意义反映在一个人对该刺激的情感感受的准确性上。更精确的情感印象反映出更精确的含义，它们在判断和决策中更有分量。3. 对情感整合的研究调查了多种情感感受整合到一个印象、判断或决定中的方式。4. 对个体差异的研究试图找到一些方法来区分直觉型、经验型和情感型思考者，以及那些思维较少受情感引导的人。5. 规定性研究试图证明对情感过程的理解如何能够提高人们的判断和决策质量。

Affect and emotion have been actively studied in psychology for more than a century, yet the role of affective processes in judgment and decision making remains largely unexplored. Building upon recent work in cognitive and social psychology, and in neurology, the research proposed here develops and tests an affect-based theory of judgment and decision making. Within this theory, new concepts such as evaluability, proportion dominance, psychophysical numbing, and the affect heuristic are described and used to explain anomalies such as the increased attractiveness of inferior gambles and our inability to properly appreciate the significance of numerical representations of losses of human lives. We argue that, without affective guidance derived from experience or problem context, we may fail to grasp the meaning or value of commonplace things such as ice cream or more profound things such as money and human lives. Building upon this theoretical framework and supporting research, five types of studies are proposed: 1. Research on the affect heuristic tests the hypothesis that affect serves as a cue for judgments of risk and probability. 2. Research on evaluability tests the hypothesis that the meaning of a stimulus is reflected in the precision of a person's affective feelings toward that stimulus. More precise affective impressions reflect more precise meanings, and they carry more weight in judgment and decision making. 3. Research on affect integration investigates the manner in which multiple affective feelings are integrated into an impression, judgment, or decision. 4. Studies of individual differences seek to develop measures to differentiate intuitive, experiential, and affective thinkers from persons whose thinking is less guided by affect. 5. Prescriptive research attempts to demonstrate how an understanding of affective processes can lead to improvements in the quality of people's judgments and decisions.