Abstract
The reliance on feelings when judging risks and benefits is one of the most fundamental valuation processes in risk perception. Although previous research suggests that the affect heuristic reliably predicts an inverse correlation between risk and benefit judgments, it has not yet been tested if the affect heuristic is sensitive to elicitation method effects (joint/separate evaluation) and to what extent individual differences in cognitive abilities may mediate the risk–benefit correlation. Across two studies we find that (1) the risk–benefit correlation is stable across different elicitation methods and for different domains (e.g., social domain, sensation-seeking domain, health domain, economic domain) and (2) the strength of the inverse correlation is tied to individual cognitive abilities—primarily cognitive reflection ability.
Highlights
For a long time, the general view was that human decision making was a matter of rational, cognitive processing in which alternatives were exhaustively explored and calculated upon (Västfjäll and Slovic, 2013)
We examine whether the affect heuristic in risk judgment can be captured using activities from various different domains and whether the affect heuristic is sensitive to elicitation method effects
We calculated each individual’s risk and benefit ratings across the 64 items to establish an individual correlation coefficient. This correlation coefficient can be construed as an index of individual inclination to use the affect heuristic
Summary
The general view was that human decision making was a matter of rational, cognitive processing in which alternatives were exhaustively explored and calculated upon (Västfjäll and Slovic, 2013). Recent developments during the past decades have led researches to increasingly acknowledge the role that affective states play in human decision making (Loewenstein et al, 2001; Västfjäll et al, 2016). This has led to the development of various forms of dual-process theories (e.g., Sloman, 1996; Stanovich and West, 2000) of decision making. Deliberative analyses are certainly important in many decision-making circumstances, reliance on affect and emotion as sources of information tends to be a quicker, easier, and more efficient way to navigate in a complex, uncertain, and sometimes dangerous world (Schwarz and Clore, 1988). Risk has been suggested to be perceived and acted upon in two ways: (1) risk-as-analysis, in which risk judgments are driven by logical reasoning and deliberation and (2) risk-as-feelings, in which judgments of risk are the result of momentary and intuitive reactions to averse events and dangers
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