Cataldo at Psychonomics

The   Influence   of   Emotion   and   Framing   on   Preferential Choice.
ANDREA  M.  CATALDO, ANDREW  L.  COHEN, LINDA  M.  ISBELL  and  JEFFREY  J.  STARNS

Emotion  can  affect  preferential choice.  This  study  uses  modeling  to  examine  the  effects  of particular  emotional  states  on  the  underlying  mechanisms  of  referential  choice.  Specifically,  we  used  the  MDFT  and  the  MLBA  to investigate  whether  angry  or  fearful  participants would exhibit differences in attention or accumulation threshold compared to controls in a task designed to elicit the similarity effect.  Attention  to  stimulus  features  was  examined  using  a  novel  manipulation  in  which  features  were  framed  positively  or negatively by comparison to a “currently-owned” alternative.  Angry  and  fearful  participants  were  expected  to  attend  more  to negatively framed features. Further, angry participants were expected to have the lowest information threshold, and fearful participants  the  highest.  Emotion  had  equivocal  effects  on  choices. However, both models correctly predicted a large effect of  emotion  on  RT:  angry  participants  were  fastest  and  fearful  participants were slowest. There was also a large and surprising effect of framing in all conditions: the similarity effect reversed when all features were framed negatively. A simple modification of  the  MDFT  accounts  for  this  reversal,  but  a  corresponding  modification to the MLBA does not.