xDelia final report: emotion-centred financial decision making and learning

xDelia is a 3-year pan-European project building on the knowledge, skills, and competences of seven partner organisations from a variety of research disciplines and from business. The principal objective of xDelia is to develop technology-enhanced learning approaches that help improve the financial decision making of investors who trade frequently using an electronic trading platform. We focus on emotions, and how they affect maladaptive decision biases and trading performance. Our earlier field work with traders has shown that the development of emotion regulation skills is a key facet of trader expertise. For that reason we consider expert traders our benchmark for adaptive behaviour rather than normative rationality. Our goal is to provide investors with the tools and techniques to develop greater self-awareness of internal states, increase their ability to reflect critically on emotion-informed choices, develop emotion management skills, and support the transfer of these skills to the real-world practice setting of financial trading. This report provides a comprehensive overview of what xDelia is about and what we have achieved over the life of the project. In the sections that follow, we explain the decision problems investors are faced with in a fast paced environment and the limitations of traditional approaches to reduce cognitive errors; introduce an alternative, technology-enhanced learning approach of diagnosis and feedback, skill development, and transfer; describe the learning intervention comprising twelve autonomous learning elements that we have developed; and present evidence from thirty-five studies we have conducted on learning effects and stakeholder acceptance

A game based approach to improve traders' decision-making

Purpose: The development of a game based approach to improving the decision-making capabilities of financial traders through attention to improving the regulation of emotions during trading. Design/methodology/approach: The project used a design-based research approach to integrate the contributions of a highly inter-disciplinary team. The approach was underpinned by considerable stakeholder engagement to understand the ‘ecology of practices’ in which this learning approach should be embedded. Findings: Taken together, our 35 laboratory, field and evaluation studies provide much support for the validity of our game based learning approach, the learning elements which make it up, and the value of designing game-based learning to fit within an ecology of existing practices. Originality/value: The novelty of the work described in the paper comes from the focus in this research project of combining knowledge and skills from multiple disciplines informed by a deep understanding of the context of application to achieve the successful development of a Learning Pathway, which addresses the transfer of learning to the practice environment Key words: Design-based research, emotion-regulation, disposition–effect, financial traders, serious games, sensor-based game

The Influence of Emotion Regulation on the Emotional Well-Being among Diverse College Students

Emotion regulation is essential as it may help to enhance long-term well-being, improve work performance, enrich personal relationships, and lead to better overall health. The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlation between emotion regulation and emotional well-being among diverse university students when moderated by perceived discrimination. A similar study was conducted by Lavanya and Manjula (2017), with an Indian student population divided into two groups. The study\u27s findings showed a significant correlation between emotion regulation strategies and psychological problems among the two groups. Results indicated negative emotion regulation strategies were associated with psychological issues among group two participants. This current study aimed to explore the correlation between emotion regulation and emotional well-being among diverse college students when moderated by perceived discrimination. This study hoped to see whether the original research conducted by Lavanya and Manjula (2017) holds on a broader, more ethnically diverse community. However, this current study looked at emotional problems and did not wholly replicate the study of Lavanya and Manjula (2017).Measurement tools consisted of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), which captures cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression and has excellent internal consistency and convergent validity. The Warwick-Edinburg Mental Well-Being Scale (WEMWBS) has effective reliability and validity and measures hedonic (happiness) and eudemonic elements (emotional functioning). Finally, The Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS) measures the participant\u27s levels of perceived discrimination in everyday life. For this quantitative study, a convenience sample of 79 college students was drawn from Liberty University psychology department in Lynchburg, Virginia, who identified as male, female, or other aged 19-28 years old. ERQ was used as the independent variable and WEMWBS as the dependent moderated by4 the Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS) and categorized by gender, race/ethnicity, and age.The study used a Multiple-Regression Moderation Model 1 test and a Moderated-Regression analysis on ERQ and WEMWBS scores

Emotional Regulation and Judicial Behavior

Judges are human and experience emotion when hearing cases, though the standard account of judging long has denied that fact. In the post-Realist era it is possible to acknowledge that judges have emotional reactions to their work, yet our legal culture continues to insist that a good judge firmly puts those reactions aside. Thus, we expect judges to regulate their emotions, either by preventing emotion’s emergence or by walling off its influence. But judges are given precisely no direction as to how to engage in emotional regulation. This Article proposes a model for judicial emotion regulation that goes beyond a blanket admonition to “put emotion aside.” While legal discourse on judicial emotion has been stunted, scientific study of the processes of emotion regulation has been robust. By bringing these literatures together for the first time, the Article reveals that our legal culture does nothing to promote intelligent judicial emotion regulation and much to discourage it. An engagement model for managing judicial emotion promises to reverse this maladaptive pattern. It provides concrete tools with which judges may prepare realistically for emotional situations they necessarily will encounter, respond thoughtfully to emotions they cannot help but feel, and integrate lessons from such emotions into their behavior. Importantly, the medical community has begun to pursue just such a program to promote competent emotion regulation by doctors. The engagement model is far superior to all its alternatives. Other regulation strategies, such as avoidance, are fundamentally incompatible with judges’ professional responsibilities. Suppressing the expression and experience of emotion—encouraged by the status quo—is costly and normatively undesirable. Suppression is unrealistic, exacerbates cognitive load, impairs memory, and can paradoxically increase emotion’s influence while rendering that influence less transparent. The judicial-engagement model, in contrast, leverages the best of what the psychology of emotion regulation has to offer. It puts a name to what extraordinary judges already are doing well and makes it available to all judges. By setting aside not judicial emotion but, rather, the crude manner in which we have asked judges to manage it, we stand materially to improve the quality of judging

The role of pre-performance and in-game emotions on cognitive interference during sport performance: The moderating role of self-confidence and reappraisal

In this research we examined whether prevalent pre-performance (Study 1) and in-game (Study 2) emotions were associated with cognitive interference (i.e., thoughts of escape, task irrelevant thoughts and performance worries), and whether any effects were moderated by reappraisal and self-confidence. In Study 1, we found team sport players’ pre-performance anxiety positively, and excitement negatively, predicted cognitive interference during a competitive match. However, no moderating effects for reappraisal or confidence were revealed. In Study 2, we found that badminton players’ in-game anxiety, dejection and happiness positively predicted, whereas excitement negatively predicted, cognitive interference during a competitive match. Moreover, reappraisal and confidence moderated the relationships for excitement and happiness with task irrelevant thoughts. Our findings underscore the role that pre-performance and in-game emotions can play on athletes thought processing during sport performance, as well as highlight the importance of considering self-confidence and reappraisal on the role of in-game emotions on cognitive interference

Turning stress into success: changing beliefs about stress using neuroscience-informed stress education during adolescence

Riana Marie investigated beliefs about stress using a neuroscience-informed stress education program designed to help adolescents learn to cope with stressors, such as school. She found that teaching adolescents about the positive effects of stress physiology promoted more "stress-is-enhancing" mindsets in a sample of Australian adolescents, which may have benefits in educational settings