Emotion Flashcards
Are emotions long-lasting or short-lived?
Emotions are transient and more short-lived than people expect.
What does adaptation have to do with emotion?
When people get used to something, their emotions level off.
What’s the problem with planning while in a cold state for how you would behave in a hot state?
People tend to make inaccurate predictions about how hot states will influence their behavior, if they predict their behavior when they are in a cold state.
Why might it be better to ask people for donations to charities that fight global hunger before they eat a meal, when they’re hungry, rather than after they have eaten?
When hungry, people will feel more empathy for others in a similar state and may be more likely to donate.
What is the Identifiable Victim Effect?
The fact that we are more likely to take action when we see a single person in need than when we read about the scale of the need.
When is it preferable to base purchasing decisions on emotion rather than on cognitive analysis?
When greater empathy leads to pro-social behavior — for example, with helping others in need
How do emotions affect risk assessments?
People overestimate the risk of events that they feel to be out of their control.
What is the differences between the two scenarios in the Trolley Problem?
The first scenario triggers a cognitive response (saving four people is better than saving one), but the second scenario triggers an emotional response (actively killing one person will feel worse than passively letting four people die).
What is one explanation for people’s underwhelming response to mass abuses and other tragedies?
The innate psychophysical function whereby we exhibit diminishing sensitivity to absolute increases as relative increases shrink. For example, 50 deaths seems much more significant in a population of 100 than in a population of 10,000
Slovic, P., Zionts, D., Woods, A., Goodman, R., & Jinks, D. (2011). Psychic numbing and mass atrocity. In Shafir, E. (ed.), The Behavioral Foundations Of Policy
What’s a dread risk?
A low-probability, high-consequence event like a shark attack.
What is one consequence of the fear of dread risk?
Making risky and irrational decisions out of fear. Traffic fatalities rose suddenly in the months after September 11, 2001, indicating that people had chosen a riskier but less emotion-evoking alternative to air travel.
Dread Risk, September 11, and Fatal Traffic Accidents. Psychological Science
What demonstrates the “longevity of things not so bad” versus the short-lived effects of “things so bad”?
Participants ended up disliking an insulting partner more when they were bystanders to the offense than when they were victims.
Gilbert, D. T., Lieberman, M. D., Morewedge, C. K., & Wilson, T. D. (2004). The peculiar longevity of things not so bad. Psychological Science
How do visceral emotions relate to preferences?
They seem to undermine normal decision-making processes, so that choices don’t necessarily express stable preferences.
Loewenstein, G. (2000). Emotions in economic theory and economic behavior. The American Economic Review
What are visceral factors?
Passions, hunger and emotional states.
How do visceral factors have economic effects?
They affect how a person behaves, despite that person’s long-term preferences.
