Centre for Social Psychology, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
University Psychiatric Clinics Basel, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
Cogn Emot. 2022 Sep;36(6):1218-1237. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2022.2084041. Epub 2022 Jun 2.
When individuals cannot make up their mind, they sometimes use a random decision-making aid such as a coin to make a decision. This aid may also elicit affective reactions: A person flipping a coin may (dis)like the outcome, and thus decide according to this feeling. We refer to this process as and to the aid as . We investigate whether using a catalyst may not only elicit affect but also result in more affect-based decision making. We used different online studies that examine affect-driven decisions by investigating scope insensitivity (indirect behavioural measure) and self-reported weight given to feelings versus reasons in hypothetical donation decisions. Study 1a showed that a catalyst (a lottery wheel) lead to more scope insensitive (i.e. affect-driven) donations. Study 1b included several changes and did not replicate these results. Study 2 (preregistered) examined scope insensitivity but did not replicate previous results; Study 3 (preregistered) looked at the weight given to feelings versus reason. Although catalyst (compared to control) participants descriptively reported relying more on feelings, this difference did not reach significance. In contrast to lay beliefs, results do not indicate support for the hypothesis that using a catalyst results in more affect-based hypothetical donation decisions.
当个人无法下定决心时，他们有时会使用随机决策辅助工具，如硬币来做出决定。这种辅助工具也可能引起情感反应：抛硬币的人可能喜欢或不喜欢结果，从而根据这种感觉做出决定。我们将这个过程称为情感决策，并将辅助工具称为催化剂。我们研究使用催化剂是否不仅会引起情感，还会导致更多基于情感的决策。我们使用了不同的在线研究，通过调查范围不敏感性（间接行为测量）和在假设的捐赠决策中自我报告的情感相对于理性的权重，来研究情感驱动的决策。研究 1a 表明，催化剂（彩票轮）导致更不敏感范围的（即情感驱动的）捐赠。研究 1b 包含了一些变化，但没有复制这些结果。研究 2（预先注册）检查了范围不敏感性，但没有复制之前的结果；研究 3（预先注册）研究了情感与理性的权重。尽管催化剂（与对照组相比）参与者描述性地报告说更依赖于情感，但这种差异没有达到显著性。与普遍看法相反，结果并不支持使用催化剂会导致更多基于情感的假设捐赠决策的假设。
