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Little is known about the interplay between affective and cognitive processes of decision making within the bounded rationality perspective, in particular for the debate on adaptive decision making and strategy selection. This gap in the knowledge is particularly important as affect and deliberation may direct preferences in opposite directions. How do decision makers solve such dissonance? In this paper, we address this question by exploring the use of integral affect as a choice heuristic in comparison with and in conjunction to “take the best,” and weighted addition of attributes (WADD). We operationalize theories of reliance on affect in choice through a "Take the emotionally best" algorithm. Its predictive power is experimentally tested against other models, including mixed-sequential cognitive/affective procedures. We find that individual decisions are better predicted by a sequential combination of "Take the emotionally best" and "Take the best" with a slight dominance of the former. Conditions of cognitive/affective ambivalence, low discrimination ability and high complexity provide the cognitive architecture where such blended choice strategies predict decisions more precisely. This implies that reliance on integral affect may precede the use of cognitive cues following an ecological rationality perspective rather than supporting a kind of competition between affect and cognition as implied in current literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the affective factors underlying conflict behavior. Traditional conflict research assumes that when individuals face conflicts they follow a rational process, thus denying the role of emotion-relevant variables. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 358 undergraduate students from the University of Santiago de Compostela were classified into four different affective groups (happy, inactive, sad, and surprised) based on their actual emotional experience and asked to complete ROCI-II. ANOVA were conducted to test hypotheses. Findings – Results reveal that affective groups statistically differ in their self-reported conflict management styles. Positive moods and feelings have been found to be related to the preference for more cooperative strategies. Research limitations/implications – This study is exploratory in nature and since hypotheses were only partly supported, future research should address this topic in depth. Practical implications – It has been suggested that, in order to handle conflicts properly, individuals should take into account both their cognition and emotion. Originality/value – This paper sheds light on current research in the prediction of conflict behavior by examining the impact of affect out from the lab. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the consequences of mindset switching on behavioral choices in want/should conflicts. Building on the insights of the ego depletion literature, we propose that mindset switching depletes individuals’ self-control resources and therefore prompts the choice of want behavior, which provides immediate pleasure, over should behavior, which provides long-term utility. Four laboratory experiments with university students that stimulated individuals to switch mindsets were conducted to test our hypotheses. Experiment 1 demonstrated that switching between individualist and collectivist mindsets increased the subjects’ tendency to prefer popular magazines over scientific journals. Experiment 2 replicated the results by testing the relationship between an abstract/concrete mindset-switching task and want/should online behavioral choices. The mediating effect of ego depletion was also supported. Experiment 3 retested the main effect of language-switching on reading choices, and the mediating effect of ego-depletion. Experiment 3 also tested the moderating effect of the Need for Cognition, and eliminated the alternative explanation of cognitive fatigue. In Experiment 4, actual food choices were used as the direct measure of want/should behaviors to test the robustness of our findings. The results consistently supported our hypotheses that mindset switching has significant effects on behavioral choices in terms of overindulgence, such as increasing want behavior and thus foregoing should behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the prevention and resolution of conflicts in social contexts, an important step is to understand how different emotions and empathic traits are linked to punishment behaviors. Unfortunately, few paradigms exist to study these phenomena. Here, we developed the Inequality Game (IG) as an economic and verbal interaction paradigm in which participants are faced with an “unfair other” as opposed to a “fair other” and subsequently have the opportunity to engage in a range of social behaviors. These social behaviors include cooperative or competitive economic choices and nice or derogatory verbal behavior toward the unfair and fair other. Participants could thus engage in punishment or forgiveness behavior toward the unfair other as well as in cooperative or aggressive behavior toward the fair other. We validated the IG through multimodal measures comprising the assessment of personality traits, emotions (by means of facial expressions and self-reports), arousal (by means of skin conductance responses), physical effort (force exertion), and behavioral reactions. Second, we examined the influence of emotions and empathy-related traits on punishment behavior. With regard to emotions, we observed a positive relation between malicious joy and punishment behavior. This result highlights the role of reward-related mechanisms in favoring punishment behavior. In addition, different empathic traits had opposing effects on antisocial behavior. Whereas personal distress predicted aggressive verbal behavior, perspective taking and empathic concern predicted a reduction in punishment behavior. Empathic traits also modulated emotional experience and person evaluations, such that perspective taking was related to more positive affect (less frowning and more smiling) and a more favorable evaluation of the unfair other. The current data validate the IG, reveal that malicious joy is positively related to punishment behavior, and show that different types of empathic traits can have opposing effects on antisocial behavior as well as on related emotions and person evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decision-making competence in later adulthood is affected by declines in cognitive skills, and age-related changes in affect and experience can sometimes compensate. However, recent findings suggest that age-related changes in motivation also affect the extent to which adults draw from experience, affect, and deliberative skills when making decisions. To date, relatively little attention has been given to strategies for addressing age-related changes in motivation to promote better decisions in older adults. To address this limitation, we draw from diverse literatures to suggest promising intervention strategies for motivating older recipients' motivation to make better decisions. We start by reviewing the life-span developmental literature, which suggests that older adults' motivation to put effort into decisions depends on the perceived personal relevance of decisions as well as their self-efficacy (i.e., confidence in applying their ability and knowledge). Next, we discuss two approaches from the health intervention design literature, the mental models approach and the patient activation approach, which aim to improve motivation for decision making by improving personal relevance or by building self-efficacy or confidence to use new information and skills. Using examples from these literatures, we discuss how to construct interventions to motivate good decisions in later adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]