Эффект эвристики: роль эмоций в принятии решений.

Type of heuristic in which emotional response, or "affect" in psychological terms, plays a lead role

The affect heuristic is a heuristic, a mental shortcut that allows people to make decisions and solve problems quickly and efficiently, in which current emotion—fear, pleasure, surprise, etc.—influences decisions. In other words, it is a type of heuristic in which emotional response, or "affect" in psychological terms, plays a lead role. It is a subconscious process that shortens the decision making process and allows people to function without having to complete an extensive search for information. It is shorter in duration than a mood, occurring rapidly and involuntarily in response to a stimulus. Reading the words "lung cancer" usually generates an affect of dread, while reading the words "mother's love" usually generates a feeling of affection and comfort. The affect heuristic is typically used while judging the risks and benefits of something, depending on the positive or negative feelings that people associate with a stimulus. It is the equivalent of "going with your gut". If their feelings towards an activity are positive, then people are more likely to judge the risks as low and the benefits high. On the other hand, if their feelings towards an activity are negative, they are more likely to perceive the risks as high and benefits low.

The theory of affect heuristic is that a human being's affect can influence how he or she makes decisions. Research has shown that risk and benefits are negatively correlated in people's minds. This was found after researchers found that the inverse relationship between perceived risk and perceived benefit of an activity was linked to the strength of positive or negative affect associated with the activity as measured by rating the activity on bipolar scales (e. g. good/bad). This implies that people base their judgements of an activity or a technology not only on what they think about it, but also on how they feel about it. The affect heuristic gained early attention in 1980 when Robert B. Zajonc argued that affective reactions to stimuli are often the first reaction which occur automatically and subsequently influencing the way in which we process and judge information. The affect heuristic received more recent attention when it was used to explain the unexpected negative correlation between benefit and risk perception. Finucane, Alhakami, Slovic and Johnson theorized in 2000 that a good feeling towards a situation (i. e., positive affect) would lead to a lower risk perception and a higher benefit perception, even when this is logically not warranted for that situation.

It has been argued by researchers that people use affect heuristics as a first response to an issue, they rely on spontaneous affective reactions which make it more efficient than having to research and analyze external information. Slovic, Finucane, Peters and MacGregor (2005) contrast two modes of thinking: the analytic system and the experiential system. The analytic system, also referred to as the rational system, is thought that is considered to be slow and requires effort; it requires consciousness, probabilities, logical reasoning, and substantial evidence. The experiential system is the exact opposite. It is intuitive and mostly automatic which makes it more convenient for people because it does not require effort or consciousness. It relies on images, metaphors, and narratives which are then used to estimate the probability of a hazard. This is due to the experience of affect, in other words, a “gut feeling.” Multiple studies including the one done by Miller and Ireland (2005) show how "gut feeling" or intuitive decisions affect various executives and managers of many companies. Many of the individuals studied use intuition as an effective approach to making important decisions. The experimenters' goal is to evaluate the risk and benefits of using intuition. Their results show that this is a troublesome decision tool. Affective reactions that accompany judgements are not necessarily voluntary, but are automatic responses. Zajonc states that “one might be able to control the expression of emotion, but not the experience of it itself.” However, he also clarifies that feelings are not free of thought and that thoughts are not free of feeling.

Sometimes affective responses to certain stimuli are a result of a lack of sensitivity to other factors, for example, numbers. Slovic and Peters (2006) did a study on psychophysical numbing, the inability to discriminate change in a physical stimulus as the magnitude of the stimulus increases, and found that students more strongly supported an airport safety measure that was expected to save a high percentage of 150 lives at risk as opposed to a measure that was expected to save 150 lives. This is thought to have occurred because although saving 150 lives is good, it is somewhat harder to comprehend and thus the decision comes from the positive feeling associated with the higher percentage.

Research has been conducted in the influence that time plays in decision making. In two experiments, Finucane, Alhakami, Slovic and Johnson (2000) studied the affect heuristic under time pressure and the influence that providing risk and benefit information has on the affect heuristic. The researchers compared individuals under no time pressure and those with time pressure. They predicted that individuals under time pressure would rely more heavily on their affect in order to be more efficient in their responses whereas those under no time pressure would use more logic in their decision making. To do this, university students were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions (time pressure or no time pressure) and one of the two counterbalancing orders (risk judgements followed by benefit judgements or vice versa). They were then given a task in which they had to make judgements about the risk or benefit of certain activities and technologies. As predicted, individuals in the time pressure condition took less time to make risk judgements than did individuals in the no time pressure condition. In the second experiment, students again had to make judgements about certain activities, but this time were given additional information about the risk and benefits. Information was framed as being high risk, low risk, high benefit or low benefit. The researchers found that this additional information did in fact influence their judgements. They found that participants ignored the quantitative information and focused on the affect characteristics.

Health campaigns often use “fear appeals” to grab the attention of their audience. Fear appeals are a type of advertising that specifically uses methods of creating anxiety in the consumer which results in the consumer wanting to cure this fear by purchasing the product. In a study by Averbeck, Jones, and Robertson (2011), researchers look at how prior knowledge influences one's response to fear appeals. Surveys were distributed which manipulated prior knowledge as low or high and two different topics: sleep deprivation or spinal meningitis. Various scale were used to test how prior knowledge affects certain health related issues. Researchers found that individuals who had prior knowledge in a certain subject exhibited less fear and were least likely to fall prey to the affect heuristic as opposed to individuals that did not have prior knowledge who exhibited more fear and were more likely to fall prey. Another example of how fear appeals are used in marketing today is through the findings presented in the experiment by Schmitt and Blass (2008). They produced two versions of an anti smoking film. One contained high fear arousal and one did not. Out of the participants (46 non smoking students and 5 smoking students), those who viewed the high fear arousal version expressed stronger anti smoking behavioral intentions than those who viewed the low fear arousal version.

Research has shown that Americans are aware of climate change, but do not consider it to be a serious problem due to the lack of an affective response. Many people report as not having experienced the consequences of climate change or that it is a long term consequence that will not happen in the near future. Therefore, it is considered to be of lower priority and not much is done as a solution to global climate change.

Research on the affect heuristic had its origin in risk perception. Communicating risk is meant to improve the correspondence between the magnitude of the risk of an issue and the magnitude to which people respond to that risk. Affect, specifically negative affect, is an important method for increasing perceived risk considering its influences on perceived risk and thus has been utilized as essential for communicating risk to the public. Raising risk awareness is thought to be increased when risk information is presented in the form of frequences (e. g. “Within 40 years there is a 33% probability of flood”) or probabilities (e. g. “Each year there is a 1% probability of flood). This method is thought to evoke an affective response which then increases the availability of risk which results in greater perceived risk. The affect heuristic is certainly evident in product innovations we see in the market. The processes consumers use to weigh the potential risk and benefits associated with purchasing such innovations are in constant motion. A study by Slovic and King (2014) tries to explain this specific phenomenon. Their experiment addresses the extent to which feelings dominate early perceptions of new products. Participants were exposed to three innovations in pretest and posttest design. Through this study, they concluded that risks and benefits associated with innovations are related to the consumer's evaluations of the products.

Researchers have looked at the affective and experiential modes of thinking in terms of cancer prevention. Research has shown that affect plays a significant role in whether people choose to get screened for certain types of cancer. Current research is now looking into how to communicate the risks and benefits of cancer prevention and treatment options. So far research has shown that the way in which information is framed does play a role in the way in which the information is interpreted. Research has also shown that treatment options may not have significant meaning to patients unless it has an affective connection. It is for this reason that researchers are looking into using affective coding such as icon arrays to make numerical information easier to understand and process.

Research has been done on how smiling can cause affective responses and thus influence our opinions of others. An experiment by LaFrance and Hecht (1995) investigated whether a smiling target would elicit more leniency than those that do not. Participants judged a case of potential academic misconduct and were asked to rate a list of subjects. Materials included photos of a female target either showing a neutral expression, felt smile, false smile, or miserable smile. Researchers found that the student pictured as smiling received less punishment than did the student who did not smile despite the fact that the smiling student was not seen as less guilty. They did not find a significant difference between the different smiles. Smiling students were also rated as more trustworthy, honest, genuine, good, obedient, sincere, and admirable compared to the student that did not smile. To the previous studies evidence, there is further evidence on the effect of smiling on a person’s perception. They contain it in the experiment by Delevati and Cesar (1994). Brazilian undergraduates perceived a slide of a male and female person. Smiling faces were portrayed and non smiling faces were portrayed. The participants used 12 different adjectives to judge the portraits. Results showed those persons showing a smile received more favorable perceptions than those who did not. Generally speaking, a smiling person can produce warmer feelings in the perceiver than the non smiling person.

Researchers have studied how one's memory load increases one's chances of using the affect heuristic. In a study by Shiv and Fedorikhin (1999), participants were asked to either memorize a two digit number (low cognitive demand) or a seven digit number (high cognitive demand). Participants were then asked to enter another room where they would report their number. On the way there, they were asked for their preference for two snacks: chocolate cake (more favorable affect, less favorable cognition) or fruit salad (less favorable affect, more favorable cognition). Researchers predicted that participants given the seven digits to remember (high cognitive load) would reduce their deliberation process due to having to remember a large amount of information. This would increase the chances of these participants choosing the cake over the fruit salad due to it being the more affectively favorable option. This hypothesis proved true with participants choosing the chocolate cake 63% of the time when given a high cognitive load and only 41% when given a low cognitive load. In the same study they also tested the impulsiveness of the participants in moderating the effects of processing resources of choice and at the time they were asked for their preference for the two snacks high cognitive demand chose the chocolate cake 84.2%. This provides evidence that people's decisions can be influenced by affect heuristic in a relatively spontaneous manner from the stimulus, with little involvement of higher order cognitive demand.

Another common situation involving affect heuristic is where a strong, emotional first impression can inform a decision, even if subsequent evidence weight cognitively against the original decision made. In a study by Sherman, Kim and Zajonc (1998), they investigated how long the induced effects of an affective response could last. Participants were asked to study Chinese characters and their English meanings. Half of the meanings were positive (e. g. beauty) and the other half negative (e. g. disease). Participants were then tested on these meanings, which was followed by a task in which they were given pairs of characters and asked to choose which character they preferred. Researchers found that participants preferred the character with a positive meaning. In the same experiment, participants were given a new task where the characters were presented with a neutral meaning (e. g. linen) and participants were told that these were the true meanings of the character. The testing procedure was the same and despite exposing participants with the new meanings, their preferences in characters remained the same. Characters that were paired with positive meanings continued to be preferred.

While heuristics can be helpful in many situations, it can also lead to biases which can result in poor decision making habits. Like other heuristics, the affect heuristic can provide efficient and adaptive responses, but relying on affect can also cause decisions to be misleading.

Studies have looked at how the affect influences smoking behavior. Smokers tend to act experientially in the sense that they give little conscious thought to the risks before they start. It is usually as a result of affective responses in the moment that occur when seeing others partake in the behavior. Epstein (1995) found that there has been quite a bit of manipulation of consumers when it comes to packaging and marketing products. This is especially the case with tobacco companies. Research has shown that cigarette advertisements were designed to increase the positive affect associated with smoking and decrease the perceptions of risk. Therefore, seeing this advertisement could lead people astray to start smoking because of its induced appeal. In a study by Slovic et al. (2005), he released a survey to smokers in which he asked “If you had it to do all over again, would you start smoking?” and more than 85% of adult smokers and about 80% of young smokers (between the ages of 14 and 22) answered “No.” He found that most smokers, especially those that start at a younger age, do not take the time and think about how their future selves will perceive the risks associated with smoking. Essentially, smokers give little conscious thought to smoking before they start and it is usually after they have started smoking and have become addicted that they learn new information about health risk.