How feelings influence decision making

Surely it doesn’t sound new to you that feelings influence decision-making. How many times have you regretted making a decision in a certain emotional state? You’ve probably noticed that you’re more likely to take risks when you’re happy, while sadness has the opposite effect on you.

Making decisions when we are angry does not usually give good results, nor if the decision is made in a state of euphoria. But, Do you really know how your feelings influence your decisions? Have you ever let yourself be carried away by first impressions when deciding? Are you aware of the extent to which your emotions can be manipulated to “help” you make decisions?

Heuristic affect and decision making

The affect heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows people to make decisions and solve problems quickly and efficiently. This process is influenced by emotion (fear, pleasure, surprise, etc.), that is, the emotional response affects the decision, playing a main role in decision-making.

It is a process that works below consciousness and shortens the decision-making time, allowing people to function without having to conduct an exhaustive search for information. This way of acting occurs quickly and involuntarily in response to a stimulus, so the process affects the mood for a short period of time.

Heuristic affect typically arises while we judge the risks and benefits of something., depending on the positive or negative feelings that we associate with a stimulus. It is the equivalent of acting according to your heart.

Researchers have found that if your feelings about something are positive, then you are more likely to undervalue the risks and overestimate the benefits. On the other side of the coin, if your feelings about an activity are negative, you will be more likely to overestimate the risks as high and undervalue the benefits.

Some examples of heuristic affect

To see how the affect heuristic works, let’s look at some practical examples. The first example is so obvious that it seems very simple. The second, perhaps not so much.

For a start, Imagine a scene in which two children go to play in a park.. One of the children has been playing on the swings at his grandparents’ house for a long time and, since he loves them very much and has had fun with them, he has positive feelings towards the swings in the park. When he sees them, he immediately makes the decision to go to the swings because he believes that he will have fun despite the risks of falling off the swing (high benefit, low risk) and runs towards them.

However, the other child recently fell off a swing while playing elsewhere and hurt himself badly. This child, upon seeing the swings, considers them to be a bad choice (little benefit, great risk). Both children have taken a mental shortcut to decide on the pros and cons of riding the swings. Neither of them has stopped to try to realistically assess all the benefits and risks, but rather they have made their decision based on a memory.

What seems so simple and so obvious in a child, we adults also do in a multitude of situations in which, if we thought reflectively and spent a little time, we would make another type of decision with which we would be more satisfied later.

In these decisions, heuristics will affect the determination of what are considered advantages and disadvantages. While such mental shortcuts allow people to quickly and frequently make reasonably accurate decisions, they can also lead to poor decision making.

Heuristics in marketing

As an example, think about advertising. In the marketing techniques used in commercial establishments or by sales representatives, as well as In advertising, strategies are used that make you feel good, that awaken your positive emotions, that allude to your passions or present you with a way of life that you identify with or that you would like to follow.

This makes you much more receptive when it comes to buying or paying more for the products and services they offer you. In fact, it works to such an extent that we can feel inclined to buy products believing that they cover a need that we really do not have. Even not being able to access the object that covers the supposed need can cause us anxiety.

Some scientific observations

Research has shown that risks and benefits have a negative correlation in people’s minds. Results have revealed that people make their judgments about an activity or technology not only by what they think about it, but also by how they feel about it.

A study done in 1978 by Liechtenstein and collaborators shed much light on the important role that heuristic affect plays in decision making. The researchers found that judgments of benefits and risks were negatively correlated.

That is, they found that people underestimate the risk as we have a more optimistic view of the benefits. The same thing happens the other way around, the greater we think the risks are, the worse we value the possible benefits.

It was observed that certain behaviors, such as alcohol consumption and smoking, were valued as high risk and low benefit, while others, such as the consumption of antibiotics or vaccines, were considered high benefit and low risk.

Other studies

A little later, in 1980, Robert B. Zajonc argued that affective reactions to stimuli are often the first reaction that occurs automatically. and, subsequently, that influences the way information is processed and judged.

In the year 2000, Finucane and others theorized that a positive feeling toward a situation (i.e., positive affect) would lead to lower risk perception. and a perception of greater benefit, even when this is not logically justified for that situation.

Be that as it may, Human beings are far from being the rational machine that some aspire to be.. Whether we like it or not, our mind is prepared and predisposed to make decisions quickly and using only part of the information. In fact, many times we make decisions before we realize that we have made them and we continue turning over and over something that already has a destiny for us: the one we have chosen.

Better tomorrow: the value of emotional intelligence

When we are arguing with someone and we have to make a decision or make some sensitive comment, say “better tomorrow.” If our boss has made our day miserable and we are about to burst out and say we want to leave the company, say “better tomorrow.” Many poor decisions have been made in the midst of an emotional outburst..

Anger clouds reason and reason leads us to make hasty and wrong decisions.. That’s why it’s better to wait until the next day. We will have calmed down and we will see it calmly and from another perspective. It is equivalent to the famous counting to ten to relax, but taken to a higher level. How many times the next day have we thought about the previous day’s problem and realized that it was stupid?

Feelings and emotions influence our decisions much more than we believe. This is why it is so important to calmly reflect on things before acting or saying something that could upset or affect us.

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