Temporal Patterns of Pleasant and Unpleasant Affect Following Uncertain Decision-making
Individual, Relational, and Contextual Dynamics of Emotions
ISBN: 978-1-78754-845-9, eISBN: 978-1-78754-844-2
Publication date: 24 September 2018
Abstract
In a computer-based experimental study, we explored intensity of pleasant and unpleasant emotional experiences (affect), following immediate outcomes of risky choices over time under three levels of uncertainty (80%, 50%, 20%). We found that the intensity of pleasant affect initially increased linearly before suddenly reducing after the seventh task, and then resumed the linear upward trend. In contrast, the intensity of unpleasant affect cyclically changed after every five decision tasks, displaying a wave-like pattern. Interestingly, the 50% probability (maximum information entropy) group demonstrated patterns quite different to the other two groups (20%, 80%). For pleasant affect, this group reduced in positive affect significantly more than the other two groups after the seventh decision task. For unpleasant affect, the 50% group displayed an increasing negative affect trend, while the other two groups displayed a reducing negative affect trend. In sum, our findings reveal different temporal patterns of pleasant emotions from correct decisions and unpleasant emotions resulting from wrong decisions. We conclude that, consistent with the self-organization theory, these differences reflect nonlinear changes in the emotional system to cope with the challenge of uncertainty (or entropy).
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgment
This research is supported by the Chinese Nature Science Fund (No. 71371029) and the Australian Research Council (DP0771661).
Citation
Li, Y. and Ashkanasy, N.M. (2018), "Temporal Patterns of Pleasant and Unpleasant Affect Following Uncertain Decision-making", Individual, Relational, and Contextual Dynamics of Emotions (Research on Emotion in Organizations, Vol. 14), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 3-25. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1746-979120180000014008
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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