Incidental Emotions Research Articles

Determinants of shared and idiosyncratic contributions to judgments of faces.

Recent work has shown that the idiosyncrasies of the observer can contribute more to the variance of social judgments of faces than the features of the faces. However, it is unclear what conditions determine the relative contributions of shared and idiosyncratic variance. Here, we examine two conditions: type of judgment and diversity of face stimuli. First, we show that for simpler, directly observable judgments that are consistent across observers (e.g., masculinity) shared exceeds idiosyncratic variance, whereas for more complex and less directly observable judgments (e.g., trustworthiness), idiosyncratic exceeds shared variance. Second, we show that judgments of more diverse face images increase the amount of shared variance. Finally, using machine-learning methods, we examine how stimulus (e.g., incidental emotion resemblance, skin luminosity) and observer variables (e.g., race, age) contribute to shared and idiosyncratic variance of judgments. Overall, our results indicate that an observer's age is the most consistent and best predictor of idiosyncratic variance contributions to face judgments measured in the current research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Integral Emotions and Incidental Emotions of Consumers in Impulse Buying Behavior Online

Integral Emotions and Incidental Emotions of Consumers in Impulse Buying Behavior Online

Incidental negative emotions and tourist destination preferences: A choice model during lockdown

AbstractIncidental and discrete emotions can influence tourist decision‐making and their preferences for destinations with different types of attractions and activities. In this explorative study, we apply a choice model and the cognitive appraisal theory of emotion to examine the influence of those negative emotions that emerged during Australia's lockdown on tourists' anticipated destination preferences. We find that negative emotions were influenced by both pre‐lockdown emotions and lockdown conditions. Negative emotions exert a significant impact on tourists' selection of destinations and influence their attitudes toward social distancing measures. Travel motivations and gender also affect tourist preferences. Finally, we address the theoretical implications of this study regarding the impact of incidental emotions on travel preferences and make practical suggestions to practitioners on providing targeted products and adjusting management and marketing strategies.

Judgments of sex trafficked women: The role of emotions.

This study examined how incidental emotions influence decisions to arrest or release sex trafficking survivors. Community members (N = 984) completed an autobiographical memory task invoking disgust, sympathy, or no emotion and read case facts from United States v. Bell (2014) varying whether the survivor had a prior history of sex work and whether she came from a vulnerable or nonvulnerable background. Participants in the vulnerable condition believed that the survivor was less able to resist the trafficker's proposal. Furthermore, women but not men made to feel disgust believed that she should have resisted. Regarding arresting the survivor for prostitution versus releasing her for services, invoking either incidental disgust or sympathy, but especially disgust, triggered feelings of disgust, which in turn predicted an arrest decision. Finally, our data supported a moderated mediation model in which the belief that the survivor should have been able to resist the trafficker predicted a greater probability of an arrest judgment. Furthermore, participants in the vulnerable condition believed that the survivor had less ability to resist, and they disfavored her arrest. However, this was only true when we invoked no emotion. When we invoked disgust, vulnerability ceased to have this moderation effect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

How do you happen to feel? The effect of certainty–uncertainty appraisals of incidental emotions on consumer affective forecasting error

AbstractConsumers frequently forecast how their choices will make them feel in future consumption situations. One possible influence during such affective forecasting is their current emotional state. Although the impact of incidental emotions on consumer decision making is well established, limited research has examined the impact of incidental emotions on affective forecasting. The purpose of the present research is to contribute to the understanding of the effects of certainty–uncertainty, as a key appraisal dimension of incidental emotions, on the process and outcome of affective forecasting. The results of four experimental studies demonstrate that experiencing uncertainty associated incidental emotions, such as fear and hope, during affective forecasting, leads to smaller forecasting error compared with experiencing certainty emotions, such as anger and happiness. Furthermore, heuristic processing, as a result of the certainty versus uncertainty appraisals, plays a mediating role in the effect of certainty–uncertainty on forecasting error. The findings of the present research extend the effects of the certainty–uncertainty appraisals in the context of consumer affective forecasting and elucidate the impact of incidental emotions on decision making.

Do incidental positive emotions induce more optimistic expectations of decision outcomes? An empirical study from the perspective of event-related potential.

Previous research has found that incidental emotions of different valences (positive/negative/neutral) influence risky decision-making. However, the mechanism of their influence on psychological expectations of decision outcomes remains unclear. We explored the effects of different incidental emotions on the behavioral, psychological, and electrophysiological responses of individuals in risky decision-making through a money gambling task using a one-way (emotion type: positive, negative, neutral emotions) between-subjects experimental design. Individuals with positive emotions had significantly greater risk-seeking rates than those with negative emotions during the decision selection phase (p<.01). In the feedback stage of decision outcomes, individuals showed stronger perceptions of uncertainty in the decision environment under gain and loss feedback compared with neutral feedback, as evidenced by a more positive P2 component (i.e., the second positive component of an event-related potential). Positive emotions produced greater than expected outcome bias than neutral emotions, as evidenced by a more negative FRN component (i.e., the feedback-related negativity component). Our results suggest that positive emotions increase individuals' psychological expectations of decision outcomes. This study provides new empirical insights to understand the influence of incidental emotions on risky decision outcome expectations.

Risk-taking propensity and emotional intelligence: an emotional version of the balloon analogue risk task (BART)

IntroductionIt is well known that emotions guide decision-making processes in risk contexts. Several studies in the literature have showed the influence of emotions on risk-taking using the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART).ObjectivesThe aim this research was to investigate the influence of emotional intelligence (EI) levels on the impact of emotions in risk-taking propensity assessed by the BART.MethodsTo this end, we developed a variant of the BART in wich each balloon displayed a face with an emotional expression: happiness, fear, or neutral. EI was assessed from the performance-based ability model by the MSCEIT. The sample consisted of 120 participants (Mage = 21.52; 80% women).Results A repeated measures ANOVA revealed a higher tendency to take risks when happy faces were presented, compared to the fear and neutral conditions. Moreover, participants with higher levels of EI showed a lower tendency to take risks across all emotional conditions. This relationship was particularly strong in the fear faces.ConclusionsOur findings support the effect of incidental emotions on risk-taking and suggest the role of EI as a protective factor for risk engagement.Disclosure of InterestNone Declared

Uncovering the relationship between incidental emotion toward a disaster and stock market fluctuations: Evidence from the US market

Despite having potentially important implications, there has been little research on the relationship between the public's incidental emotion and the stock market. To that end, we construct a valence-based measure of incidental emotion using BERTweet's sentiment analysis and empirically investigate the association between collective incidental emotion toward the COVID-19 pandemic and the U.S. stock market. We employ multivariate time series autoregressive models to test the relationship between emotion polarity and stock market returns or trading volumes. The results reveal that societal sentiment toward the pandemic has a significant effect on the returns of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500. In contrast, the macro-level emotion does not significantly affect the return for NASDAQ 100. The findings also suggest a significant association between incidental emotion and trading volumes. We conduct a battery of sensitivity tests that further support our conjecture. The study underscores the robust role of incidental emotion in investment decision-making, highlighting its significance as a distinctive feature that should be incorporated into financial decision support systems.

Is all anger created equal? A meta-analytic assessment of anger elicitation in persuasion research.

Although veritable libraries have been written about anger, the practical and theoretical understanding of its effects has been somewhat hampered by the difficulty of experimentally manipulating this emotion. Thus, key questions related to methodological precision and theoretical clarity remain, specifically with regard to whether and how anger induction techniques may interact with various moderators and elicit other co-occurring emotions in the process. Addressing this gap, a meta-analysis of 31 experimental studies in persuasion offers insights regarding the effect of anger elicitation on felt anger and its sensitivity to a host of theoretically meaningful moderators, as well as the relationship between anger induction and the arousal of other incidental emotions. Findings broadly affirm the complexity of anger as a contested emotion and offer new insight into methodological considerations and theoretical nuances of anger elicitations to be taken into account in persuasion research. These results should be interpreted with the caveat of an exclusive focus on persuasion and a Western-centric corpus of studies, further accenting the need to diversify and expand research into emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotion-matched in-vehicle assistants: an exploration in regulating drivers' incidental emotions and enhancing takeover performance and situational awareness

Emotion-matched in-vehicle assistants: an exploration in regulating drivers' incidental emotions and enhancing takeover performance and situational awareness

Deciphering Decision Making: The Interplay of Mood States and Decision Styles

Recent theories of Decision- Making have advocated the role of emotions in the cognitive processes of decisions. One such approach is the EIC model (Lerner et al., 2015) which posits – mood to indirectly affect decision making by impacting current emotions, indicating individual’s overall emotional states to indirectly influence cognitive decision processes. The study aimed to understand the role of emotions on decision making and the nuances that underlie it. The 6 main hypothesis of the paper focused on evaluating whether incidental emotions via current emotions affect decision making significantly or do decision styles have a stronger significant effect on decision making. The paper used a mixed method design where the qualitative data was collected via interviews and thematic analysis and labels were attuned via open coding that helped in triangulation and pattern generation. Tools used were the YDMC, Mood induction videos of OPENLAV Database, Decision Style questionnaire (DSQ), Ryff’s well-being scale and an Interview schedule. A purposive sampling was done to obtain the sample (N=29) for the pre-test post-test design. Results for the quantitative data concluded that sad and angry incidental mood had significant effects on FR1 and FR2 (Resistance to Framing and Sunken costs) of YDMC and, that happy mood had no significant effect on risk perception. The decision styles that have been seen to dominate were Vigilant followed by Dependent and Spontaneous style. For qualitative data, based on the dominant responses for the entire sample an Interactive Hexagonal map was constructed. STB (Self -thoughts &amp; Beliefs), FP (Futuristic perspective), CE (Current experiences), EE (Environmental ‌effects), and PEx (Past experiences) were the dominant pattern connections found for the current sample. Thus, Incidental Mood had a significant effect on Resistance to Framing and Sunken costs whereas had no significant effect on Consistency with Risk Perception. Future work on the nuances of mood on decision-making can help determine the affective, cognitive, and neuropsychological models of decision-making where neural correlates could help delve deeper in these higher cognitive and emotional processes.

Do you follow your head or your heart? The simultaneous impact of framing effects and incidental emotions on investment decisions

This study is situated in an investment context and explores how the effect of framing (gain versus loss framing) changes the impact of incidental emotions (fear and excitement) on behavioral and physiological outcome measures. While existing literature has found that the effects of framing and incidental emotions both impact decision-making independently, the present study extends this literature to test the simultaneous influence of both gain and loss framing, which has been previously neglected. Sixty participants were randomly divided into groups induced with different incidental emotions (fear/excitement/control). They were asked to make investment choices on thirty investment scenarios by choosing between a safe and a risky investment option presented towards either possible gains or losses associated with financial investments.Our findings suggest that the interplay of framing and incidental emotions does indeed produce novel effects beyond those described in the current literature. For example, participants in the “fear group” prefer more risky investment options in the gain scenarios than participants in the “excitement group”. Most importantly, the interaction between the effects of framing and excitement makes participants myopic about the advantages of risky investment options, whereas the same interaction shows a reverse effect in participants experiencing fear.

Get the happiness out-An online experiment on the causal effects of positive emotions on giving.

Our study provides new evidence on the impact of positive emotions on voluntary contributions to public goods in a natural setting. Using a lab-in-field experiment, we induce positive incidental emotions randomly and analyze their effects on donations using a dictator game with multiple beneficiaries. Although we find no significant overall effect of positive incidental emotions on donation levels, our results show a significant shift in the allocation of donations towards the host charity. These findings shed light on the complex role of emotions in donation behavior and can provide valuable insights for organizations seeking to increase charitable giving.

Emotions and financial risk‐taking in the lab: A meta‐analysis

AbstractThis paper is a meta‐analysis of experimental studies dealing with the impact of incidental emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, and anger) on financial risk‐taking, so as to explain traditional heterogeneity of outcomes in the literature. After devising a standard search strategy and including studies that comply with a list of eligibility criteria, we code 114 effect sizes at the treatment level from 26 selected articles, and a battery of moderator variables representing design and sample characteristics. Meta‐regressions with adjusted predictions find causal impact of fear on risk aversion, albeit to a small extent. On the contrary, average null effects characterize happiness, sadness, and anger. It also turns out that when studies provide financial incentives, country‐level individualism moderates the relationship between emotions and risk‐taking by increasing risk propensity. We discuss possible interpretations of our findings.

Wounding pride and infusing affect: the ambivalent emotional experience of checkout charity

Purpose This study aims to apply the Wounded Pride/Spite model (integral emotions which occur during the donation request) and the Affect Infusion model (incidental emotions primed before encountering the checkout charity request) to check out charity to understand the interactive effects of positive and negative emotional responses. Furthermore, the moderating role of a positive or negative shopping experience is examined. Design/methodology/approach In Study 1, 518 customers participated in an online survey using a controlled scenario describing checkout charity exchanges. In Study 2, 274 students participated in a similar online scenario but were primed with a positive or negative shopping experience. Data were analyzed through structural equation modeling using Mplus v8. Findings Checkout charity is laden with affective experiences that simultaneously produce positive and negative emotions. Customers who are involved with charities and perceive it acceptable for companies to elicit charitable support are more likely to experience feelings of pride and joy during a point-of-sale donation request. However, negative affective responses are more complicated, as personal support of nonprofits was not enough to reduce feelings of guilt and anger during a donation request. Furthermore, in Study 2, the authors discover that as integral emotions influence customers’ affective states during a checkout charity encounter, incidental emotions garnered from the customer’s shopping experience serve as a moderating role in increasing positive affect and mitigating negative affect, highlighting the importance of the holistic shopping experience. Finally, in Study 2, the incongruent reaction of high positive and high negative affect was linked to decreased donation intentions, further emphasizing the importance of creating positive shopping experiences and identifying customers who perceive it to be acceptable for companies to elicit charitable support. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to apply these dual theoretical explanations to checkout charity, contributing an affective and customer-based understanding to complement prior work on marketing strategy. The findings both uphold and extend research in this area, providing novel support for the role of the customer in determining the success of checkout charity.

How gratitude shapes acceptance of questionable consumer behavior: the mediating role of self-righteousness

PurposeA growing literature shows that (integral) emotions arising in response to firm transgressions may influence consumer punishment. However, incidental emotions (which are unrelated to the decision at hand) can also be powerful drivers of consumer decision-making and could influence responses to firm transgressions. This paper aims to examine the role of incidental gratitude, as compared to incidental pride and a control condition, in shaping the acceptance of questionable consumer behavior toward a transgressing firm and the mediating role of self-righteousness in this regard.Design/methodology/approachFour experimental studies are conducted to examine the effect of gratitude, as compared to pride and a control condition, on the acceptance of questionable consumer behavior against a transgressing firm. Further, this research tests the underlying mechanism and a boundary condition of the predicted effect.FindingsThe results show that consumers experiencing gratitude, as compared to pride and a control condition, judge a questionable consumer behavior directed against a transgressing firm as less acceptable. These different emotion effects are found to be explained by self-righteousness. The findings also demonstrate that an apology by the firm attenuates the effect of emotions on consumer response toward the transgressing firm.Research limitations/implicationsThe present research contributes to the literature on consumer punishment by identifying the role of incidental emotions in determining self-righteousness and ethical judgments. The research focuses on and contrasts the effects of two specific positive emotions – gratitude and pride.Practical implicationsThis paper offers managerial implications for firms involved in a transgression by highlighting the potential of gratitude. Notably, the findings of this research suggest that gratitude activation via marketing communications may help firms mitigate the negative effects of transgression events.Originality/valueThe present research provides a novel perspective on when and how positive emotions, such as gratitude and pride, can differentially and systematically influence ethical judgment toward a transgressing firm.

Affective Design Analysis of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): A User-Centric Perspective

Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) has successfully solved the black box paradox of Artificial Intelligence (AI). By providing human-level insights on AI, it allowed users to understand its inner workings even with limited knowledge of the machine learning algorithms it uses. As a result, the field grew, and development flourished. However, concerns have been expressed that the techniques are limited in terms of to whom they are applicable and how their effect can be leveraged. Currently, most XAI techniques have been designed by developers. Though needed and valuable, XAI is more critical for an end-user, considering transparency cleaves on trust and adoption. This study aims to understand and conceptualize an end-user-centric XAI to fill in the lack of end-user understanding. Considering recent findings of related studies, this study focuses on design conceptualization and affective analysis. Data from 202 participants were collected from an online survey to identify the vital XAI design components and testbed experimentation to explore the affective and trust change per design configuration. The results show that affective is a viable trust calibration route for XAI. In terms of design, explanation form, communication style, and presence of supplementary information are the components users look for in an effective XAI. Lastly, anxiety about AI, incidental emotion, perceived AI reliability, and experience using the system are significant moderators of the trust calibration process for an end-user.

The Influencing Mechanism of Incidental Emotions on Risk Perception: Evidence from Event-Related Potential

Incidental emotions would lead to accidents by influencing risk perception. However, few works of research further studied how incidental emotions affect risk perception at the neurological level. Before the experimental task, we used video clips for emotion elicitation. Then, the event-related potential (ERP) technique was used to obtain data on the risk perception process. The results showed that: compared to neutral emotion, the participants' average reaction time was significantly shorter in positive and negative incidental emotion. Under negative incidental emotion, individuals overestimated risk and had a more significant deviation in risk perception; the amplitude of P2 and N2 components increased, and the amplitude of LPP component decreased under negative incidental emotion. Under positive incidental emotion, individuals' correct-response rate was higher. These findings indicated that incidental emotions affected the mid-term risk analysis stage and the late risk judgment stage of risk perception. In the mid-term risk analysis stage, individuals processed high-risk information with a negativity bias which led to stronger cognitive conflict, while individuals assessed risks more accurately due to a larger attentional span under positive incidental emotions. In the late risk judgment stage, individuals under negative incidental emotion devoted few attentional resources to risk information which led to a risk judgment deviation. In contrast, individuals had a more detailed cognitive process of risk information under positive incidental emotion. On these bases, this paper confirmed the influence of incidental emotions on risk perception and established an emotional information-processing model. This study provided a reference for emotional interventions to facilitate accident prevention.

Brand Foreignness and Anger Decrease Purchase Intentions of Ethnocentric Consumer for National Icon Products

The marketing literature lacks a thorough understanding of how emotions change purchase intentions of ethnocentric consumers' when there are two different nationality signals about the product evaluated (i.e., product nationality signal vs brand nationality signal). To address this gap, we focus on how ethnocentric consumers' purchase intentions for national icon products (product nationality signal) change due to emotional states. Drawing on signaling theory, social identity theory, and the psychology literature on emotions, we carried out an empirical study (mixed-design ANOVA) with ethnocentric consumers to test whether anger and sadness change purchasing intentions for fictitious brands across two different product types (national icon product vs non-national icon product). The regression analysis indicates that when ethnocentric consumers are induced to feel anger, their purchase intentions for national icon products decrease significantly when the product has a foreign brand image. Because incidental anger triggers stereotypical reasoning, angry ethnocentric consumers seem to focus on brand image rather than the product class (i.e., national icon products) signaling a nation’s heritage. Our study displays the powerful impact of the incidental emotions on the ethnocentric consumer judgment and decision making regarding the brand quality and purchase intention for brands with foreign vs domestic images.

Community and aftershock: New venture founding in the wake of deadly natural disasters

The entrepreneurship literature has advanced our understanding of how natural disasters affect new venture founding in their wake. However, despite providing valuable insights, most existing studies focus on theoretical mechanisms that, explicitly or implicitly, invoke material losses or do not hone in on the theoretical effect of human losses caused by these events. This is an important omission because the social psychology literature suggests that individual reactions to human death are not only stronger than (i.e., higher in scale), but qualitatively different (i.e., infinitely stronger) from, those involving other types of losses. The present study addresses this oversight by drawing from the social psychology literature on the emotive and cognitive heuristics (e.g., the incidental emotion and availability biases) induced by human death and developing and testing a theory of how the death toll caused by natural disasters decreases new venture founding by inducing irresolvable uncertainty. Moreover, the study draws from research on how strong pre-disaster local participation in voluntary associations—by increasing the social, symbolic, cultural and material resources in a community—protects against such negative effects. Contributions to both the post-disaster venturing and the broader resiliency literatures are discussed.Executive summaryNatural disasters are on the rise, and the United Nations predicts that these phenomena will pose the single most important threat to social, political and economic stability in the upcoming decades. Entrepreneurship holds great promise for helping regions recover from the havoc wreaked by these events. However, much of the existing entrepreneurship research has not focused sufficiently on how the human death toll caused by natural disasters affects subsequent new venture creation. This is an important question because the existing psychology literature suggests that human death elicits disproportionately high negative individual reactions, which may lead prospective entrepreneurs in afflicted regions to stop or delay their plans to start new ventures, precisely at the time when those ventures are needed the most to help with regional recovery. This study fills this gap by examining how the death toll caused by natural disasters affect new venture creation in counties in the United States between 1991 and 2018. The study finds that the death toll caused by natural disasters in a county has a negative effect on post-disaster venturing in that county, but that strong pre-disaster participation in voluntary associations (e.g., the Girl Scouts, parent teacher associations, etc.) protects against this effect because it allows communities to work together to overcome the challenges posed by these deadly events. This last result highlights the importance that policymakers at every government level and local communities realize the critical role that local participation in voluntary associations prior to deadly disasters can have in fostering entrepreneurship after such events, thereby accelerating regional recovery.