Paying attention to emotions pays off: emotion regulation training improves financial decision- making.

Traditional economic models postulate that emotions do not affect financial decision-making. If anything, emotions are depicted as hindering influences to adequate decision-making. Yet, recent evidence suggests that emotions are in fact important factors that could facilitate decision-making. Consequently, learning to regulate emotions effectively could help improve (financial) decision-making. Mindfulness training aims at improvements in emotion regulation, attention and awareness. Derived of its philosophical and religious roots, in the past decades, mindfulness has demonstrated significant effect when it comes to alleviating stress, reducing anxiety and depression (e.g., Segal, Williams, & Teasdale, 2002). Within the Pan-European research project xDelia, we investigated in a series of studies whether techniques from mindfulness-based therapies may also affect financial decision-making. In a series of three studies we examined whether mindfulness is associated with financial decision-making. First, the effects of a short mindfulness exercise was explored in students on financial decision-making in the Columbia Card Task (CCT; Figner, Mackinlay, Wilkening, & Weber, 2009). Second, several improvements were made to the design of study 1 and a stress induction was added to the CCT. Lastly, it was examined whether mindfulness was associated with enhanced performance in day traders in a trading simulation game (i.e. the Two Index Game; TIG). The results showed that mindfulness is an effective method to learn to regulate emotions and was associated with improvements in financial decision-making, both in lay decision-makers (i.e., students) and in professional decision-makers (i.e., day traders). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]