Hancock, E. N. , McCloy, R. & Beaman, P.
Psychology Department, The University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom
Affective state prior to and during decision-making plays an important role in determining the level of risk people are willing to take. However few studies have taken an emotion-specific approach to exploring this. This study explored the role of two negative emotions, shame and guilt, on risky decision-making behaviour. Fifty-four undergraduate psychology students were assigned to either a state shame induction, state guilt induction or a neutral control group, they then took part in a gambling task, designed to assess risky decision-making (the Iowa Gambling Task; Bechara, et al., 1994). The results showed that state guilt induction significantly increased risky decision-making in comparison to the neutral control group, however the shame induction had no effect on level of risky decision-making compared to control participants. These findings provide support for the key role played by current affective states in risky decision-making. They also highlight the importance of adopting an emotion-specific approach to this research area, as two arguably similar emotions were found to have very different effects on risky decision-making behaviour.