Easy Losses or Hard Wins: Emotionality Obscuring the Positive Outcomes Associated with Frequent Losses

Abstract

Iowa Gambling Task studies have shown that individuals with intact emotional processing learn to prefer advantageous decks over disadvantageous decks. Recent research, however, has shown that the decision making of healthy participants is driven not only by the overall outcome but also by the loss frequency. Providing an alternative perspective on the effect of loss frequency, we look at the role of intensified emotional experiences of the outcomes on the ability to identify Iowa Gambling Task decks. We hypothesize that incongruence between the overall outcome and the loss frequency (i.e. advantageous deck with frequent losses and disadvantageous deck with infrequent losses) will impair decision making due to emotional mismarking. We test our hypothesis by using the original design and a modified design in which we decompose the four decks in order to get a better understanding of behavior related to each deck separately, independent of confounding parameters. In a series of three studies, we show that the increased emotionality impairs the ability to identify the incongruent advantageous deck due to misleading negative emotional feedback. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.