Judgment and Decision-Making

The interplay of emotions and human physiology as the foundation of human Emotion and decision-making

My research in this area investigates the intersection of emotion and human physiology in the context of decision-making. First, I was inspired by Adam Smith's theory of moral sentiment (1759), which posited that morality is beyond our deliberation and something that is innate. I seek to identify cognitive, affective, and physiological factors that influence one's moral decision-making. Second, I examine the effect of emotion and human physiology on one's social, political, and economic decision-making. 

Emotions and decisions in the real world: What can we learn from quasi-field experiments? (PLoS ONE, 2020)

Most of what is known about how emotions influence decision-making is based on laboratory experiments. This paper argues for an alternative quasi-field experiment methodology, in which participants complete experimental tasks after as-if-random real-world events determine their emotional state. We begin by providing the first critical review of this emerging literature. Our review shows that real-world events provide emotional shocks that are at least as strong as what can ethically be induced under laboratory conditions. However, most previous quasi-field experiment studies use statistical techniques that may result in biased estimates. We propose a more rigorous approach, and illustrate it using two studies of how negative emotion affects risk-taking behavior. In Study 1, undergraduate students completed a risk elicitation task immediately after learning their midterm exam grades. In Study 2, sports fans completed risk-elicitation tasks immediately after watching high-stakes NFL games. Overall, we argue that that the quasi-field experiment methodology represents a promising direction for research on emotions and decision-making.

Social distance, trust and getting “hooked”: A phishing expedition (Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2019)

Phishing is a message-based computer attack sent to deceive and exploit recipients via email. Phishing is a problem for organizations because getting “hooked,” or tricked into acting on behalf of the sender, can put sensitive personal and organizational data at risk. In this research, we draw from several theoretical perspectives concerning social distance and trust as an exploitable resource to provide evidence that, even in contexts where actual social distance and intentions are nearly impossible to determine, people look to category-based signals of social distance to establish trust, which increases the likelihood of deception. We present the results of a validation study and a randomized field experiment in which we sent phishing emails to all employees of an insurance company.

Different physiological reactions when observing lies vs. truths: Initial evidence and an intervention to enhance accuracy (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2019)

Humans consistently face the challenge of discerning liars from truth-tellers. Hundreds of studies in which observers judge the veracity of laboratory-created lies and truths suggests this is a difficult task; in this context, lie-detection accuracy is notoriously poor. Challenging these findings and traditional methodologies in lie-detection research, we draw upon the somatic marker hypothesis and research on interoception to find that: (1) people experience physiological reactions indicating increased sympathetic arousal while observing real, high-stakes lies (vs. truths), and (2) attending to these physiological reactions may improve lie-detection accuracy. Consistent with the tipping point framework, participants demonstrated more physiological arousal and vasoconstriction while observing real crime liars versus truth-tellers, but not mock crime liars versus truth-tellers (Experiment 1; N = 48). Experiment 2 replicated this effect in a larger sample of participants (N = 169). Experiment 3 generalized this effect to a novel set of stimuli; participants demonstrated more physiological arousal to game show contestants who lied (vs. told the truth) about their intention to cooperate in a high-stakes economic game (N = 71). In an intervention study (Experiment 4; N = 428), participants were trained to attend to their physiological signals; lie-detection accuracy increased relative to a control condition. Experiment 5 (N = 354) replicated this effect, and the addition of a bogus training condition suggested that increased accuracy was not simply attributable to self-focused attention. Findings highlight the limitations of relying on laboratory-created lies to study human lie-detection and suggest that observers have automatic, physiological reactions to being deceived.

Emotions and the micro-foundations of commitment problems in international politics (International Organization, 2017)

While emotions are widely regarded as integral to the “behavioral approach” to International Relations (IR), a host of fundamental problems have delayed the integration of affective influences into traditional models of IR. We do so by focusing on commitment problems, a body of work that contains strong theoretical predictions about how individual decision-makers will and should act. Across two lab experiments, we use a novel experimental protocol that includes a psychophysiological measure of emotional arousal (skin conductance reactivity) to study how individuals react to changes in bargaining power. While we find support for one key pillar of IR theory — individuals do reject offers when they expect the opponent’s power to increase — we also find that physiological arousal tampers with individuals’ ability to think strategically in the manner predicted by canonical models. We also present a followup experiment that mimics the elements of institutional solutions to commitment problems and find support for their efficacy on the individual level. Our novel findings suggest that when individuals face large power shifts, emotional arousal short-circuits their ability to “think forward and induct backwards,” suggesting that emotionally-aroused individuals are less prone to commitment problems.

The physiology of (dis)honesty: Does it impact health? (Current Opinions in Psychology, 2016)

Research suggests that dishonest acts may be embodied. That is, when a person anticipates, or acts, dishonestly, the choice or behavior is not only reflected in the mind but also in the brain and body. While recent summaries of virtuous acts suggests that truth, altruism, and fairness confer a suite of psychological and health benefits to the benefactor, we suggest that lying, cheating, and stealing may do the opposite. We review the neuroscience, psychophysiology, and endocrinology of dishonesty and suggest that, over time, such behavior may be bad for our health.

Hormones and ethics: Understanding the biological basis of unethical behavior (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2015)

Globally, fraud has been rising sharply over the last decade, with current estimates placing financial losses at greater than $3.7 trillion annually. Unfortunately, fraud prevention has been stymied by lack of a clear and comprehensive understanding of its underlying causes and mechanisms. In this paper, we focus on an important but neglected topic—the biological antecedents and consequences of unethical conduct—using salivary collection of hormones (testosterone and cortisol). We hypothesized that pre-performance cortisol levels would interact with pre-performance levels of testosterone to regulate cheating behavior in 2 studies. Further, based on the previously untested cheating-as-stress-reduction hypothesis, we predicted a dose–response relationship between cheating and reductions in cortisol and negative affect. Taken together, this research marks the first foray into the possibility that endocrine-system activity plays an important role in the regulation of unethical behavior. 

Physiological arousal and political beliefs (Political Psychology, 2014)

It is by now well known that political attitudes can be affected by emotions. Most earlier studies have focused on emotions generated by some political event (e.g., terrorism or increased immigration). However, the methods used in previous efforts have made it difficult to untangle the various causal pathways that might link emotions to political beliefs. In contrast, we focus on emotions incidental (i.e., irrelevant) to the decision process, allowing us to cleanly trace and estimate the effect of experimentally induced anxiety on political beliefs. Further, we build upon innovative new work that links physiological reactivity (Hatemi, McDermott, Eaves, Kendler, & Neale, 2013; Oxley et al., 2008a) to attitudes by using skin conductance reactivity as a measure of emotional arousal. We found that anxiety—generated by a video stimulus—significantly affected physiological arousal as measured by tonic skin-conductance levels, and that higher physiological reactivity predicted more anti-immigration attitudes. We show that physiological reactivity mediated the relationship between anxiety and political attitudes.

Rainmakers: Why bad weather means good productivity (Journal of Applied Psychology, 2014)

People believe that weather conditions influence their everyday work life, but to date, little is known about how weather affects individual productivity. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we predict and find that bad weather increases individual productivity and that it does so by eliminating potential cognitive distractions resulting from good weather. When the weather is bad, individuals appear to focus more on their work than on alternate outdoor activities. We investigate the proposed relationship between worse weather and higher productivity through 4 studies: (a) field data on employees’ productivity from a bank in Japan, (b) 2 studies from an online labor market in the United States, and (c) a laboratory experiment. Our findings suggest that worker productivity is higher on bad-, rather than good-, weather days and that cognitive distractions associated with good weather may explain the relationship. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our research.

Leadership is associated with lower levels of the stress (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012)

As leaders ascend to more powerful positions in their groups, they face ever-increasing demands. As a result, there is a common perception that leaders have higher stress levels than nonleaders. However, if leaders also experience a heightened sense of control— a psychological factor known to have powerful stress-buffering effects—leadership should be associated with reduced stress levels. Using unique samples of real leaders, including military officers and government officials, we found that, compared with nonleaders, leaders had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol and lower reports of anxiety (study 1). In study 2, leaders holding more powerful positions exhibited lower cortisol levels and less anxiety than leaders holding less powerful positions, a relationship explained significantly by their greater sense of control. Altogether, these findings reveal a clear relationship between leadership and stress, with leadership level being inversely related to stress. 

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