Emotions and decisions in the real world: What can we learn from quasi-field experiments?

Researchers in the social sciences have increasingly studied how emotions influence decision-making. We argue that research on emotions arising naturally in real-world environments is critical for the generalizability of insights in this domain, and therefore to the development of this field. Given...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPloS one Vol. 15; no. 12; p. e0243044
Main Authors Bhanot, Syon P, Chang, Daphne, Lee Cunningham, Julia, Ranson, Matthew
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Public Library of Science 16.12.2020
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subjects
Algorithms
Biology and Life Sciences
Decision Making
Design
Domestic violence
Emotional factors
Emotions
Experiments
Field tests
Football
Humans
Laboratories
Literature reviews
Methods
Models, Statistical
Physical Sciences
Physiology
Polls & surveys
Psychological aspects
Psychological research
Quasi-experimental studies
Research and Analysis Methods
Research methodology
Risk taking
Social aspects
Social Sciences
Statistical analysis
Statistical methods
Statistics
United States
United States > US
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Summary:Researchers in the social sciences have increasingly studied how emotions influence decision-making. We argue that research on emotions arising naturally in real-world environments is critical for the generalizability of insights in this domain, and therefore to the development of this field. Given this, we argue for the increased use of the "quasi-field experiment" methodology, in which participants make decisions or complete tasks after as-if-random real-world events determine their emotional state. We begin by providing the first critical review of this emerging literature, which shows that real-world events provide emotional shocks that are at least as strong as what can ethically be induced under laboratory conditions. However, we also find that most previous quasi-field experiment studies use statistical techniques that may result in biased estimates. We propose a more statistically-robust approach, and illustrate it using an experiment on negative emotion and risk-taking, in which sports fans completed risk-elicitation tasks immediately after watching a series of NFL games. Overall, we argue that when appropriate statistical methods are used, the quasi-field experiment methodology represents a powerful approach for studying the impact of emotion on decision-making.
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Competing Interests: Matthew Ranson is an employee of a commercial company, athenahealth (and formerly Abt Associates). However, neither athenahealth or Abt Associates provided salary support for Matthew related to this work (the bulk of Matthew’s work on the project predates his commercial affiliations), nor did the organizations play any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. This commercial affiliation for Matthew Ranson also does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. None of the additional authors (Syon Bhanot, Daphne Change, or Julia Lee) have competing interests that relate to this work, financial or otherwise. Similarly, none of the study authors have outside affiliations or interests that influenced any aspect of study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0243044