Harvard University, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Psychol Sci. 2013 Jan 1;24(1):72-9. doi: 10.1177/0956797612450302. Epub 2012 Nov 13.
We hypothesized a phenomenon that we term myopic misery. According to our hypothesis, sadness increases impatience and creates a myopic focus on obtaining money immediately instead of later. This focus, in turn, increases intertemporal discount rates and thereby produces substantial financial costs. In three experiments, we randomly assigned participants to sad- and neutral-state conditions, and then offered intertemporal choices. Disgust served as a comparison condition in Experiments 1 and 2. Sadness significantly increased impatience: Relative to median neutral-state participants, median sad-state participants accepted 13% to 34% less money immediately to avoid waiting 3 months for payment. In Experiment 2, impatient thoughts mediated the effects. Experiment 3 revealed that sadness made people more present biased (i.e., wanting something immediately), but not globally more impatient. Disgusted participants were not more impatient than neutral participants, and that lack of difference implies that the same financial effects do not arise from all negative emotions. These results show that myopic misery is a robust and potentially harmful phenomenon.
我们提出了一个现象，我们称之为近视的痛苦。根据我们的假设，悲伤会增加急躁情绪，并使人们产生一种近视的心态，即立即而不是以后获得金钱。这种心态反过来又会增加跨期折扣率，从而产生大量的财务成本。在三个实验中，我们随机将参与者分配到悲伤和中性状态条件下，然后提供跨期选择。在实验 1 和实验 2 中，厌恶情绪作为比较条件。悲伤显著增加了急躁情绪：与中位数中性状态的参与者相比，中位数悲伤状态的参与者为了避免等待 3 个月付款，会立即接受少 13%到 34%的钱。在实验 2 中，不耐烦的想法介导了这些影响。实验 3 表明，悲伤使人更偏向当下（即想要立即得到某些东西），但并不意味着全局上更急躁。厌恶情绪的参与者并不比中性参与者更急躁，这种差异意味着并非所有负面情绪都会产生相同的财务影响。这些结果表明，近视的痛苦是一种强大且潜在有害的现象。
