Abstract
The human mind tends to excessively discount the value of delayed rewards relative to immediate ones, and it is thought that “hot” affective processes drive desires for short-term gratification. Supporting this view, recent findings demonstrate that sadness exacerbates financial impatience even when the sadness is unrelated to the economic decision at hand. Such findings might reinforce the view that emotions must always be suppressed to combat impatience. But if emotions serve adaptive functions, then certain emotions might be capable of reducing excessive impatience for delayed rewards. We found evidence supporting this alternative view. Specifically, we found that (a) the emotion gratitude reduces impatience even when real money is at stake, and (b) the effects of gratitude are differentiable from those of the more general positive state of happiness. These findings challenge the view that individuals must tamp down affective responses through effortful self-regulation to reach more patient and adaptive economic decisions.
Highlights
These older and contemporary views both maintain that the appropriate selection of long-term gains over smaller, sooner ones requires decision makers to overcome affective responses (Berns et al, 2007; Frank, 1988; Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999)
(1670/2001) may capture it best in stating, “In their [humans’] desires and judgments of what is beneficial, they are carried away by their passions, which take no account of the future or anything else . . . .” Supporting this view, recent work has shown that increases in the intensity of experienced sadness exacerbate people’s impatience (Lerner, Li, & Weber, 2013)
Lerner & Keltner, 2001) confirmed that participants induced to feel gratitude reported significantly elevated feelings of gratefulness compared to participants induced to feel happy, F(1, 47)=34.08, p
Summary
These older and contemporary views both maintain that the appropriate selection of long-term gains over smaller, sooner ones requires decision makers to overcome affective responses (Berns et al, 2007; Frank, 1988; Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999). Research on emotion and decision-making has shown that predictions based solely on the positive or negative valence of affective states are often problematic (DeSteno, Petty, Rucker, Wegener, & Braverman, 2004; Lerner & Keltner 2000, 2001). Unlike global positive or negative affect, discrete emotions (e.g., gratitude, sadness) correspond to specific challenges and, shape subsequent decisions and behaviors in accord with their respective functional goals (DeSteno, 2009; Lerner & Keltner 2000; 2001; Han, Lerner & Keltner, 2007). Whereas sadness has been shown to increase impatience, disgust, though negative, does not influence patience, as disgust’s goal of contamination avoidance is less relevant to resolving tradeoffs between immediate and future rewards (Lerner et al, 2013)
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