In normal populations, males typically perform better than
females on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). Previous studies have
shown that deliberation of moral dilemmas during the IGT
significantly improves the performance of females to the level
of males and that smelling aromas during the IGT significantly
reduces the performance of males to the level of females.
Nevertheless, both moral dilemmas and aromas have an affective
quality. In the present study, to test whether affect influenced
IGT performance, participants viewed positive, negative, or
neutral pictures during the IGT task. The results of this study
showed the affective pictures had no effect on IGT performance.
Males outperformed females and females chose one particular card
type, as is typically the case. Thus, previous effects of
dilemmas or aromas are not likely due to emotional factors
