The Emotionally Intelligent Decision Maker: Emotion-Understanding Ability Reduces the Effect of Incidental Anxiety on Risk Taking

• Published in: Psychological science Vol. 24; no. 1; pp. 48 - 55
• Main Authors: Yip, Jeremy A., Côté, Stéphane
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.01.2013; Sage Publications; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Ability; Adaptation, Psychological; Affectivity. Emotion; Anxiety; Anxiety - psychology; Aptitude; Association; Behavioural psychology; Bias; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition. Intelligence; Comprehension; Decision Making; Decision making. Choice; Emotion; Emotional expression; Emotional Intelligence; Emotional states; Emotions; Experiments; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Intelligence; Investors; Judgment; Male; Personality psychology; Personality traits; Personality. Affectivity; Psychological effects; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Recognition (Psychology); Risk; Risk assessment; Risk reduction; Risk taking; Social psychology; Understanding; Young Adult; emotion control; anxiety; emotions; decision making; risk; emotion understanding; emotional intelligence; Ability; Human; Affect affectivity; Emotional intelligence; Decision making; Cognition; Personality; Emotion emotionality; Risk taking; Comprehension; Experimental study; Anxiety
• ISSN: 0956-7976; 1467-9280
• DOI: 10.1177/0956797612450031

In two experiments, we examined how a core dimension of emotional intelligence, emotion-understanding ability, facilitates decision making. Individuals with higher levels of emotion-understanding ability can correctly identify which events caused their emotions and, in particular, whether their emotions stem from events that are unrelated to current decisions. We predicted that incidental feelings of anxiety, which are unrelated to current decisions, would reduce risk taking more strongly among individuals with lower rather than higher levels of emotion-understanding ability. The results of Experiment I confirmed this prediction. In Experiment 2, the effect of incidental anxiety on risk taking among participants with lower emotion-understanding ability, relative to participants with higher emotion-understanding ability, was eliminated when we informed participants about the source of their anxiety. This finding reveals that emotion-understanding ability guards against the biasing effects of incidental anxiety by helping individuals determine that such anxiety is irrelevant to current decisions.