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I'm Feeling Lucky: The Relationship Between Affect and Risk-Seeking in the Framing Effect

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Emotion
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Elaine Cheung
Elaine Cheung
Elaine Cheung
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Joseph A Mikels at DePaul University
Joseph A Mikels
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Abstract

Engagement in risky behavior has traditionally been attributed to an underestimation of the associated risks, but recent perspectives suggest that affective reactions toward a risky option may better explain risk-seeking than risk perception. However, the precise relationship between emotion and risk-seeking remains unclear. The current set of studies elucidates the relationship between emotion and risk-seeking in risky choice framing, using a gambling task. In Study 1, reliance on emotion was related to risk-seeking, but goals to regulate emotion mitigated these effects. In Study 2, positive affect was associated with risk-seeking in loss frames, but unrelated to risk aversion in gain frames. Collectively, these findings indicate a general role for emotion reliance on risk-seeking and a specific role of positive affect on risk-seeking in the loss trials of the framing effect.
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I’m Feeling Lucky: The Relationship Between Affect and Risk-Seeking in
the Framing Effect
Elaine Cheung
Northwestern University Joseph A. Mikels
DePaul University
Engagement in risky behavior has traditionally been attributed to an underestimation of the associated
risks, but recent perspectives suggest that affective reactions toward a risky option may better explain
risk-seeking than risk perception. However, the precise relationship between emotion and risk-seeking
remains unclear. The current set of studies elucidates the relationship between emotion and risk-seeking
in risky choice framing, using a gambling task. In Study 1, reliance on emotion was related to
risk-seeking, but goals to regulate emotion mitigated these effects. In Study 2, positive affect was
associated with risk-seeking in loss frames, but unrelated to risk aversion in gain frames. Collectively,
these findings indicate a general role for emotion reliance on risk-seeking and a specific role of positive
affect on risk-seeking in the loss trials of the framing effect.
Keywords: risk-seeking, framing effect, emotion, affect, decision making
Have you ever considered engaging in a risky activity, such as
riding a skateboard? The associated exhilaration is alluring, but the
associated risks pose a serious threat. What guides the decision to
step onto a skateboard? A student in our laboratory, Eli, recently
rode his skateboard into the lab and offered skateboarding lessons.
After an arduous day analyzing data, these lessons were highly
welcome. Eli left the lab feeling so positive he decided to attempt
new skateboarding tricks, subsequently spraining his ankle. This
anecdotal story suggests that emotions can influence our decision
to engage in a risky activity. When deciding to take a risk, in what
direction do our emotions guide us?
Affect in Risky Decision Making
Traditionally, risky decisions have been assumed to be based on
cognitive assessments of outcomes, with risk-seeking a result of
underestimating the associated risks (see Reyna & Farley, 2006;
Loewenstein, Weber, Hsee, & Welch, 2001, for reviews). How-
ever, affect has recently been theorized to play an integral role in
risky decision making. According to the risk-as-feelings model
(Loewenstein et al., 2001), individuals react to the prospect of risk
both cognitively and emotionally. Although the two reactions are
interrelated, they can diverge from one another. When this diver-
gence occurs, affective reactions are believed to supersede cogni-
tive assessments in influencing risky decision making.
Similarly, the affect heuristic (Slovic, Finucane, Peters, &
MacGregor, 2002) has been applied to risky decision making, such
that affective impressions have been posited to directly inform
individuals’ judgments of risks and benefits for a given option
(Slovic, Finucane, Peters, & MacGregor, 2004). Slovic and col-
leagues have suggested a dynamic relationship between affect and
judgments of risk and benefit, such that positive affect toward an
option is associated with lower perceptions of risk and higher
perceptions of benefits, and negative affect toward an option is
associated with higher perceptions of risk and lower perceptions of
benefit. This dynamic relationship has been observed and manip-
ulated in several studies examining the role of affective evalua-
tions on risk and benefit judgments in a variety of risky activities
(Alhakami & Slovic, 1994; Finucane, Alhakami, Slovic, & John-
son, 2000; Slovic et al., 2002, 2004).
Romer and Hennessy (2007) have applied the affect heuristic to
explain risk-taking in adolescence with their biosocial-affect
model. In this model, Romer and Hennessy explain risk-taking as
a function of affective and social processes. The model integrates
multiple influences on decision making to delineate the specific
processes involved in risk assessment and subsequent behavior.
More specifically, positive affect associated with a risky behavior
may lead to discounting associated risks and may thereby increase
the likelihood of engaging in that behavior. In other words, posi-
tive affect can override original dangerous or risky assessments.
Evidence supports this postulate in research on both adolescent
and adult smoking behavior (Romer & Jamieson, 2001; Slovic,
2001) and adolescent drug use (Romer & Hennessy, 2007). In this
research, positive affective evaluations were predictive of engage-
ment in risky activities, regardless of risk perception.
These lines of research on affect and risk-seeking have primarily
been descriptive in nature. The current research sought to empir-
ically elucidate the specific relationship between affect and risk-
seeking by assessing the influence of affect on decision making.
This article was published Online First April 25, 2011.
Elaine Cheung, Department of Psychology, Northwestern University;
Joseph A. Mikels, Department of Psychology, DePaul University.
This research was supported by National Science Foundation Research
Grant SES-1023206 awarded to Joseph A. Mikels. The authors thank the
Emotion and Cognition Laboratory at Cornell University for assistance in
data collection.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Elaine
Cheung, Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Swift Hall,
2029 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208-2710, or to Joseph A. Mikels,
Department of Psychology, DePaul University, Byrne Hall, 2219 North
Kenmore Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614-3504. E-mail: elainecheung2015@
u.northwestern.edu or jmikels@depaul.edu
Emotion © 2011 American Psychological Association
2011, Vol. 11, No. 4, 852–859 1528-3542/11/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0022854
852
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
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... In within-subjects' conditions, the sure option was framed as a gain or a loss. In line with earlier studies (Cheung & Mikels, 2011;Stark et al., 2017), the authors find that framing affected anticipatory emotions and these emotions in turn mediated the effect of framing on choice. Anticipated emotions, on the other hand, didn't play a significant role in explaining the relationship between framing and choice. ...
... The sure option was calculated using a utility function that accounts for different levels of risk preferences. Given prior evidence that stressed the importance of anticipatory emotions in gain and loss domain (Cheung & Mikels, 2011;Stark et al., 2017;Young et al., 2019), we had each participant in our study to make choices under gain and loss domains. Finally, prior studies employed only student samples (Davis et al., 2009;Kocher et al., 2014;Schlösser et al., 2013), whereas we used a nationally representative sample to test the generalizability of the findings. ...
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