The Emotional Influence on Human Decision-making : On Damasio's Somatic Marker Hypothesis

According to Damasio, emotions are essential for the decision-making process in the personal and social domain. This idea supports Damasio's ?somatic marker hypothesis?. The hypothesis is about how emotions function to guide human decision-making processes. According to Damasio the action of emotions may be an indispensable foundation for rationality and decision-making is rational

Can we use emotions as an indicator for public decision-making?

Linnéa Sandström, an MSc student at LSE’s gender institute, discusses the emotional and the rational in public decision-making and asks if there is any room for emotions in public decision-making

A New Concept of Marketing: The Emotional Marketing

Nowadays, in the marketing area, a new concept of marketing is emerging: the emotional marketing. The emotional marketing studies how to arouse emotions in people to induce them to buy that particular produc/service. Recent studies shown how purchasing choices and decisions are the result of a careful analysis of rational and emotional aspects. Psychological literature recognizes that the emotional conditions influence every stage of decision-making in purchasing process. Emotions play a key role in any kind of social or business decision. The emotions are manifested in verbal, facial and textual expressions. People when speak, interact and write, convey emotions.emotions, emotional marketing, emotional brand, emotional intelligence,emotions measurement.

Emotional Carry-over in Ethical Decision Making: The Impact of Self-Control and Moral Potentcy

Recent theories have posited that emotions play a central role in ethical decision making. However, most research has focused on and suggested that consumers follow cognitive, rational processes in decision making. While this is a well-established approach, research regarding the role of emotions in ethical decision making has gained considerable theoretical attention in recent years. Although various factors have been investigated for the influence on ethical judgments, the role of task related, and incidental emotions have received less attention. Theoretical models that examine ethical decision-making conflict at times and are historically divided into either a rational-based approach or a non-rationalist-based (reason or emotive) approaches. More recent models posit an integrated or a dual-process approach to ethical decision-making, focusing more on the inter-related impact of intuition-emotion combined with reason-rationalization aspect of ethical decision-making. This research serves to examine the relationship of emotions in ethical decision making and behavioral intentions by investigating the effects of positive (happiness) and negative (anger) emotions in both a task related and incidental context. The scenario is presented in a consumer context of ethical judgments using a passive unethical behavior scenario. Research has focused on the effect of specific incidental emotions on ethical decision-making. This research focuses on the differing effects of specific incidental and task emotions in a service-based encounter. Self-control is utilized as a moderator of these emotions in ethical decision-making, and moral potency is further examined for inclusion into marketing literature. Based on a sample of 251 responses to an experimental scenario-based survey, this study found that the interaction between the task and incidental emotions does significantly impact ethical judgments and there is a moderating effect of self-control and moral potency. Consumers do not always behave in an ethical manner and will frequently accept an unethically obtained passive benefit. The results will facilitate an improved consideration of the role of the interaction of emotions on consumer ethics, an improved understanding of how to mitigate those emotions, and provide some understanding of how emotions impact unrelated judgments and decision-making

Negative emotions and rationality of decision-making

The paper provides an analysis of the impact of negative emotions on decision-making processes. It questions the common-sense view that negative emotions diminish rationality of decisions, i.e., increase the probability of making suboptimal choices. It is argued in the paper that this view is untenable on the grounds of neuroscience, cognitive science and evolutionary theory: the results provided by these sciences support the view that negative emotions in most instances of their occurrence, i.e. types of negative emotions, not only fail to undermine rationality of decision-making but substantially contribute to it. This does mean saying that token-negative emotions never undermine rationality of decision-making. But, as is argued in the paper, the fact that token-negative emotions may have sometimes this kind of negative effect is fully consistent with the claim that, as a rule, the effect is positive, so that one can speak about the causal connection between types of negative emotion and rational decision-making

Effect of Emotion and Personality on Deviation from Purely Rational Decision-Making

Human decision-making has consistently demonstrated deviation from "pure" rationality. Emotions are a primary driver of human actions and the current study investigates how perceived emotions and personality traits may affect decision-making during the Ultimatum Game (UG). We manipulated emotions by showing images with emotional connotation while participants decided how to split money with a second player. Event-related potentials (ERPs) from scalp electrodes were recorded during the whole decision-making process. We observed significant differences in the activity of central and frontal areas when participants offered money with respect to when they accepted or rejected an offer. We found that participants were more likely to offer a higher amount of money when making their decision in association with negative emotions. Furthermore, participants were more likely to accept offers when making their decision in association with positive emotions. Honest, conscientious, and introverted participants were more likely to accept offers. Our results suggest that factors others than a rational strategy may predict economic decision-making in the UG

The effect of partner-directed emotion in social exchange decision-making

Despite the prevalence of studies examining economic decision-making as a purely rational phenomenon, common sense suggests that emotions affect our decision-making particularly in a social context. To explore the influence of emotions on economic decision-making, we manipulated opponent-directed emotions prior to engaging participants in two social exchange decision-making games (the Trust Game and the Prisoner's Dilemma). Participants played both games with three different (fictional) partners and their tendency to defect was measured. Prior to playing each game, participants exchanged handwritten “essays” with their partners, and subsequently exchanged evaluations of each essay. The essays and evaluations, read by the participant, were designed to induce either anger, sympathy, or a neutral emotional response toward the confederate with whom they would then play the social exchange games. Galvanic skin conductance level (SCL) showed enhanced physiological arousal during anger induction compared to both the neutral and sympathy conditions. In both social exchange games, participants were most likely to defect against their partner after anger induction and least likely to defect after sympathy induction, with the neutral condition eliciting intermediate defection rates. This pattern was found to be strongest in participants exhibiting low cognitive control (as measured by a Go/no-Go task). The findings indicate that emotions felt toward another individual alter how one chooses to interact with them, and that this influence depends both on the specific emotion induced and the cognitive control of the individual

Rationality and Emotions in Decision Making

Decision making is traditionally viewed as a rational process where reason calculates the best way to achieve the goal. Investigations from different areas of cognitive science have shown that human decisions and actions are much more influenced by intuition and emotional responses then it was previously thought. In this paper I examine the role of emotion in decision making, particularly Damasio's hypothesis of somatic markers and Green's dual process theory of moral judgment. I conclude the paper with the discussion of the threat that deliberation and conscious rationality is an illusion.philosophy of cognitive science, decision making, emotions, the problem of free will, ethics

THE IMPORTANCE OF CORPORATE BRANDS FOR DECISION MAKING IN THE BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS CONTEXT

The purpose of this paper is to provide a deeper understanding of the importance of the corporate brand for the business-to-business (B2B) context, specifically concerning the buyer and supplier decision-making processes. The paper provides a literature review on tangible and intangible brand attributes, as well as their influence on perceived risks and emotions in decision making. The findings imply that business decision making is not solely rational, and that emotions matter a great deal. The conceptual framework thus presents the process of business decision making in which brand attributes play a focal role for both the buyer and supplier. Research implications include three aspects: the importance of corporate brands and their attributes for reducing a buyer´s perceived risks when choosing a new supplier, the role of corporate brands for strategies that suppliers are using when attracting potential buyers, and the effect of emotions on the mentioned processes. The paper offers a new comprehensive framework for studying decision-making in the B2B context and contributes to corporate branding and decision-making theory development

Dynamics of Business Decision Making: Understanding the Role of Emotions

In recent years, there has been a need for deeper understanding of the cumulating knowledge in different science disciplines about human emotions in decision making. Indeed, many traditional economic theories operate with the preconception of utility maximization, which partly contradicts with the recent findings in behavioral economics and neurosciences. In other words, science has shown that we can make suboptimal business decisions under the influence of changing emotional states. Moreover, traditional economic literature has often highlighted the strict division between rational decision making and the effective dimensions of the human mind. This conceptual article therefore challenges these conceptions by exploring the dynamic interconnected nature of business decision making and emotions. As a result, we present step-to-step instructions on practical means how to cope with emotions in a turbulent business environment