A change in the science of decision -making

Let raw emotions motivate financial decisions resembles a disaster recipe. But Jennifer Lerner, the professor of public policy, decision and management of Thornton F. Bradshaw, noted that anger went well, at least for men, in a game of computerized games.

LERNER and the National Institutes of Health Scientist Rebecca Ferrer (a former student) co-for a set of experiences using the analog ball risk task, in which participants earn more money each time they add air to a virtual ball, but lose all this if they go too far and burst the ball.

When the males were ready for anger, they took greater risks and left with portfolios larger than neutral emotional men or angry women.

Unlike previous studies that have demonstrated the causal effects of anger at reducing risk perceptions and reducing the probability of taking protective measures in men and women, these experiences have focused on the real behavior of risk – revolutionizing that anger has led more daring bets, mainly in men.

The correlation of gender and emotion is always slippery, noted Lerner. After all, you cannot have random adults to the category of men and women, not to mention whether the differences are due to biology, socialization, culture or something else. But the results raise interesting questions about how gender, emotions and risks meet in high issues environments such as entrepreneurship or the stock market, she said.

“There is an interesting great debate on the question of whether men are more risks in general, which our work only partially approaches,” said Lerner. “He only examines the role of anger in the taking of financial risks and the differences between the sexes.”

Wanting that the results are included in a broader context, she highlighted two points.

“The question of whether risk taking is good or bad depends entirely on the situation,” said Lerner. “We have designed our studies to reward risk taking, but there are many real situations where caution would be a better strategy.

“In addition, while men and women can differ on average in the way anger influences their financial risk taking, in most decisions, there is more variation within each sex than between the sexes. So, knowing that someone’s sex will tell you less about their decision -making than understanding their individual traits or social / cultural context.”

The emotion was massively sub-studied as a decision-making factor, according to Lerner. “Even if” she said, “if you ask people on the street,” which is important to understand in decision-making, “they often say” emotion “.”

His work plays a role in a recent change – studies examining how emotion affects decision -making has increased considerably, recognizing that emotion can be adaptive or unsuitable.

More generally, emotion now appears in the emerging models of the brain, the mind and the behavior.

In other words, science catches up with the generalized use of emotion to shape behavior in marketing campaigns. In the studies led by students, Lerner’s Lab examined public health campaigns emotionally designed to communicate the risks associated with tobacco consumption.

A study, led by Charlie Dorison, Ph.D., revealed that the induction of certain types of sadness can turn around, inadvertently increasing smoking. Another, led by Ke Wang, Ph.D., has revealed that gratitude can play a powerful role in encouraging the cessation of smoking. The two studies come from a broader flow of work in the Lerner laboratory to examine the ways whose emotion influences appetitive risk behaviors (for example, smoking, vaping, game).

In Lerner’s own life, being well informed of the risk gave him something very precious: his daughter. As a child, Lerner received a diagnosis of lupus. Among other effects of autoimmune disease, she was told that she should never have biological children. The risk of miscarriage was high and his health could be serious. She considered adoption, but quickly learned that having lupus would considerably reduce the chances that it was ever selected as an adoptive parent.

Lerner could have let generalized fear guide his decision to have a child. Instead, she and her husband dug medical research.

Their plan was to examine the feelings shaped by the warnings of doctors and common beliefs before looking carefully at the real risks. Was their fear accessory or integral? How much uncertainty could they tolerate comfortably?

“We have just analyzed everything, all the scientific studies we could find,” said Lerner. “And we decided, given where my health was at the time and the drugs on which I was, we could accept the risks.” Two months ago, this baby – now grown – ranked from the university.

Professionally, Lerner studies risk in a variety of fields, including health, economics, national security and (more recently) climate change.

She sits on several councils and councils, in particular the board of directors of the forecast research institute, a non -profit organization that is trying to develop methodologies to quantify the risk of existential threats (for example, AI buyout). She thinks that decision -making skills are essential life skills for everyone and should be taught at a young age.

For this reason, it also volunteers as an ambassador of the Alliance for Decision Education, a non -profit organization offering free access to decision -making programs for kindergarten schools to the 12th year. A large part of her own teaching time is devoted to professionals from around the world who work in roles at high intensity of decision -making – “financial analysts to firefighters”, as she says – in an executive training course she teaches.

“In today’s world, the ability to take advantage of information effectively is a crucial competence,” she said. “This means being clear about how to estimate uncertainty, how to judge your confidence in these estimates and how to recognize myriad – a bad or useless – emotions can shape judgments. These are not only tools for managers or analysts – they are for all of us.”

This story is published with the kind authorization of the Harvard Gazette, Official Journal of Harvard University. For more new academics, visit Harvard.edu.