
This study investigated how different emotions can influence risky decisions. The results showed that emotions had a greater impact on decisions related to uncertain situations (where clear information was lacking) and this effect was stronger in men. This suggests that emotions, especially in situations of ambiguity, may influence men and women differently when faced with risky decisions.
Incidental emotions are those that arise from situations or contexts not directly related to a specific task or decision, but end up influencing behavior or decision-making indirectly.
For example, feeling sad after a personal event can affect a person’s willingness to take risks in a financial decision. Studies show that men and women can experience and react to these emotions differently.
In general, men may be more susceptible to the effects of these emotions in risky decisions, while women may react differently, depending on the type of emotion involved.
These gender differences in how incidental emotions impact decision-making are an important area of study in psychology and behavioral economics.

This article, published by researchers at the University of Essex, UK, investigates how incidental emotions that arise in a given context can influence decisions in seemingly unrelated areas.
The main focus is to understand how these emotions impact choices involving risk and ambiguity. To better understand the impact of emotions on decision-making, the researchers conducted an experiment comparing two different ways of emotionally priming people.
In the first approach, they used a conventional stimulus, that is, something designed to evoke a specific emotion, such as fear. An example of this could be watching a scary video.
In the second approach, they used a more naturalistic stimulus, that is, something closer to the emotions we feel in everyday life, such as hearing worrying news, such as a terrorist attack or a tragedy.
This naturalistic stimulus tends to generate a mix of negative emotions, such as fear, sadness and anger, rather than a single emotion, as happens in the first case. The goal was to compare how these two forms of emotional preparation influence the way people make decisions, especially when they involve risk or uncertainty.
The research builds on a large body of literature demonstrating how incidental emotions can affect risk perceptions and decisions. Since the pioneering work of Johnson and Tversky in 1983, studies have shown that mood can influence how people perceive risk.

More recently, research in psychology and economics has explored how these emotions affect financially incentivized choices, indicating that risky decisions are not only rational but also influenced by prior emotional states.
A key innovation of this study is the use of emotionally rich, naturalistic stimuli rather than traditional methods such as film clips that elicit specific emotions.
Real-world events such as terrorist attacks can trigger a range of emotions, fear, anger, and sadness, which the authors argue better reflect the emotional complexities faced in everyday life.
The study sought to determine whether these more complex emotions have a different effect on risky decisions compared to simple, isolated emotions.
The researchers also tested whether the emotions generated by the different types of stimuli (directed or naturalistic) influenced participants’ financial choices.
The existence of carryover effects is tested by comparing evaluations of lotteries (risky and ambiguous) in the directed and naturalistic treatments relative to the corresponding evaluations in the control treatment.
They did this by comparing how participants evaluated "lotteries" (a way of choosing between options with different probabilities of winning) in three different conditions: after a targeted emotional stimulus (such as fear), after a naturalistic stimulus (with more complex emotions, such as those generated by real events), and in the control group (no emotional stimulus).

The lotteries evaluated by the participants were of two types: risky and ambiguous. In the risky lottery task, participants had a 50% chance of winning £12 or nothing, that is, the probability of winning was clear and defined.
In the ambiguous lottery task, participants did not know the exact probability of winning £12, making the decision more uncertain.
The idea was to observe whether the type of emotional stimulus (measured in both approaches, directed and naturalistic) influenced the participants' choices, comparing their responses in relation to the control group. In other words, the study sought to understand whether emotions generated by different types of stimuli altered the participants' willingness to make risky or ambiguous decisions.
The results of the study revealed that emotional transfer effects occur significantly, especially when participants were exposed to naturalistic stimuli.
The impact of emotions on decision-making was stronger when people faced ambiguous situations, that is, those where there was no clear and definitive information, than when they were dealing with well-defined risk situations, where the chances of success or failure were clearer.

Mean lottery evaluations broken down by gender. Focusing first on the risky evaluations in the left panel, we observe gender-specific treatment effects: for men, compared to the control, risky evaluations are lower in the targeted treatment and even lower in the naturalistic treatment. Female behavior, on the other hand, does not exhibit this pattern: risky evaluations are not significantly different from the control in the targeted and naturalistic treatments. This leads to the following main result: we observe carryover effects in risky decision making, and these effects are stronger for the naturalistic stimulus, but only men are susceptible.
Furthermore, the researchers noted that the effects of emotions on decisions were more pronounced in men than in women, indicating that men may be more influenced by emotions when making risky decisions.
This suggests that there may be a gender difference in how emotions affect people’s behavior when making choices related to risk and uncertainty.
By examining the emotional basis of these effects, the study found that while conventional stimuli increased reports of fear, there was no direct correlation between these emotions and risky behavior.
In the case of naturalistic stimuli, the strong emotional response did not translate directly into risky decisions, indicating that a mix of emotions can influence behavior in complex and interactive ways.
In conclusion, the study highlights that complex emotions, elicited by realistic events, can have a deeper and more varied impact on risky and ambiguous decisions.
This challenges the simplified view that isolated emotions, such as fear, are the main drivers of these decisions, suggesting that the richer and more realistic emotional context should be considered in future research on the impact of emotions on decision making.
READ MORE:
Do emotional carryover effects carry over?
Nikhil Masters, Tim Lloyd, and Chris Starmer
Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics. Volume 114, February 2025, 102312
Abstract:
Existing research has demonstrated carryover effects whereby emotions generated in one context influence decisions in other, unrelated ones. We examine the carryover effect in relation to valuations of risky and ambiguous lotteries with a novel focus on the comparison of carryovers arising from a targeted stimulus (designed to elicit a specific emotion) with those arising from a naturalistic stimulus (designed to produce a more complex emotional response). We find carryover effects using both types of stimuli, but they are stronger for the naturalistic stimulus and in the context of ambiguity, providing a proof of concept that carryover effects can be observed when moving away from highly stylised settings. These effects are also gender specific with only males being susceptible. To probe the emotional foundations of the carryover effect, we conduct analysis relating individual self-reports of emotions to valuation behaviour. Our results cast doubt on some previously claimed links between specific incidental emotions and risk taking.
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