Decision Making: Choosing Among Alternatives • 377Unfortunately, contestant X didn’t take the deal, and the next briefcase opened con-
tained $300,000, taking it out of play. Contestant X then accepted the bank’s new offer
of $21,000, ending the game.
Thierry Post and coworkers (2008) analyzed contestants’ responses in hundreds
of games and concluded that the contestants’ choices are determined not just by the
amounts of money left in the briefcases, but by what has happened leading up to their
decision. Post found that if things are going well for the contestant (they have opened
a number of small money briefcases) and the bank begins offering more and more, the
contestant is likely to be cautious and accept a deal early. In contrast, when contestants
are doing poorly (having opened a number of large denomination briefcases) and the
banks offers go down, they are likely to take more risks and keep playing. Post suggests
that one reason for this behavior on the part of contestants who are doing poorly is that
they want to avoid the negative feeling of being a loser. They therefore take more risks,
in the hope of “beating the odds” and coming out ahead in the end. This is probably
what happened to contestant X, with unfortunate results. What seems to be happening
here is that contestants’ decisions are swayed by their emotions. We will now describe
a number of examples, many of which involve emotions and other factors that are not
considered by utility theory.HOW EMOTIONS AFFECT DECISIONS
Emotions can affect decisions in a number of different ways (Han & Lerner, 2009).
Expected emotions are emotions that people predict they will feel for a particular out-
come. For example, a Deal or No Deal contestant might think about a choice in terms
of how good she will feel about accepting the bank’s offer of $125,000 (even though
she could potentially win $500,000), how great she will feel if she wins the $500,000,
but also how bad she will feel if she doesn’t accept the bank’s offer and fi nds out there
is only $10 in her briefcase.
Note that while expected emotion provides information about probable emotional
outcomes of a decision, it doesn’t involve actually feeling an emotion. Because emotion
potentially provides information, this means that expected emotions can be part of a
utility approach, because an outcome that results in a positive emotion will likely be a
good outcome and one that results in a negative emotion will likely be a poor outcome
(Lowenstein et al., 2003; Wilson & Gilbert, 2003).
Immediate emotions are emotions that are experienced at the time a decision is
being made. There are two types of immediate emotions. Integral immediate emotionsTABLE 13.4 Contestant X’s Situation After Opening 21 Briefcases (the bank’s off er at
this point was $80,000)Opened (No Longer in Play) Remaining (Still in Play)$0.01 $5,000 $100
$1 $10,000
$5 $25,000 $400
$10 $75,000
$25 $100,000 $1,000
$50 $200,000
$75 $400,000 $50,000
$200 $500,000
$300 $750,000 $300,000
$500 $1,000,000
$750Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.