Running Head: EMOTIONAL MARKETPLACE The Emotional Marketplace Anny Dow Yale ...

116 Pages·2016·0.61 MB·English

Running Head: EMOTIONAL MARKETPLACE

The Emotional Marketplace

Anny Dow

Yale University

Advisors:

Dr. Gregory Samanez-Larkin

Dr. June Gruber

Author Note

Anny Dow, Program in Cognitive Science, Yale University.
This research was supported in part by the Psi Chi Undergraduate Research Grant and the
Silliman College Mellon Undergraduate Research Grant.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Anny Dow, Yale
University, New Haven, CT 06520.
Contact: [email protected]
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Abstract

The current research investigates how people construe emotional experiences in
economic terms through the use of modified experimental economic paradigms. We conducted
three exploratory studies to examine how motivated individuals are to achieve distinct emotions,
and how these motivations change with temporal delays and social contexts. In Study 1, we used
a willingness to pay (WTP) paradigm asking participants to allocate a fixed “emotional budget”
between specific positive and negative emotions. In Study 2, we expanded our investigation by
exploring discount rates for positive and negative emotions using a modified version of a delay-
discounting questionnaire. In Study 3, we used a dictator game to examine social decision-
making regarding emotions. Together, these studies explore new approaches for investigating
emotional preferences, demonstrating how people assign value to different emotions and how
motivated they are to achieve or avoid them.
Keywords: Emotion; Decision-Making; Consumerism; Well-Being
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Table of Contents

I. Introduction 5
II. The Economics of Emotion 6
III. Measuring Emotional States 8
IV. The Present Investigation 11
V. Study 1: Emotional “Spending” in the Present 12
Method 15
Data Collection and Aggregation 15
Participants 16
Self-Report Measures 16
Procedure 19
Results 19
Positive Emotion Condition 19
Negative Emotion Condition 20
Combined Emotion Condition 21
Baseline Correlations 22
Discussion 23
VI. Study 2: Delay of “Emotional” Gratification 28
Method 31
Participants 31
Procedure 31
Results 32
Expanded Study 2 33
Discussion 34
VII. Study 3: Emotions and Dictator Games 36
Method 40
Participants 40
Procedure 40
Results 41
Dividing Emotions with Player 2 41
Dividing Emotions with Closest Friend 42
Dividing Emotions with Tradeoffs 42
Correlations between WTP and Dictator Games 42
Discussion 44
VII. General Discussion 48
Moderating Factors of Emotional Preferences 49
IX. Limitations and Future Directions 52
X. References 58
XI. Appendix 88
Survey Questions 90
Study 1 90
Study 2 91
Study 3 102
Self-Report Questionnaires 108
Mental Health Groupings 108
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Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS) 108
Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) 109
Hypomanic Personality Scale (HPS-20) 110
Altman Self-Rating Mania Scale (ASRM) 112
Beck Depression Inventory Short Form (BDI-SF) 113
Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) 115
Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) 116

List of Tables

1 Study 1: Descriptive Statistics for WTP to Experience Positive Emotions 72
2 Study 1: Descriptive Statistics for WTP to Avoid Negative Emotions 73
3 Study 1: Descriptive Statistics for WTP to Experience Positive and Avoid 74
Negative Emotions (Combined)
4 Study 2: Results of T-tests and Descriptive Statistics for Emotional Discount 75
Rates by Group
5 Study 2: Correlations Between Individual Difference Questionnaires and 76
Discount Rates for Non-clinical Population
6 Study 2: Correlations between Individual Difference Questionnaires and 77
Discount Rates for Clinical Population
7 Study 3: Descriptive Statistics for Difference Scores for Dividing Emotions 78
with Player 2
8 Study 3: Descriptive Statistics for Difference Scores for Dividing Emotions 79
with Closest Friend

List of Figures

1 WTP Judgments and Confidence Intervals for Experiencing Positive Emotions 80
2 WTP Judgments and Confidence Intervals for Avoiding Negative Emotions 81
3 WTP Judgments and Confidence Intervals for Experiencing Positive and 82
Avoiding Negative Emotions (Combined)
4 Discount Rates for Experiencing Joy 83
5 Discount Rates for Avoiding Sadness 84
6 Difference Scores in Minutes for Dividing Emotions with Player 2 85
7 Difference Scores in Minutes for Dividing Emotions with Closest Friend 86
8 Difference Scores in Minutes for Dividing Emotions with Tradeoffs 87
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The Emotional Marketplace

If money could buy happiness, how much would people pay for it? People spend
thousands of dollars every year to experience certain emotions—buying tickets for roller coaster
rides to feel excitement, exotic vacation getaways to feel relaxed, or for insurance to feel less
anxiety. Like money, emotion is a representation of value, offers utility to the consumer, has
costs and benefits, and serves as a common currency in judgments and decisions (Clore, 2005;
Peters et al., 2006; Montague & Berns, 2002). While the field of behavioral economics has
examined the important role of emotions in economics, little research has been done on how
people construe emotions directly in financial terms. Given that people are motivated not by
money itself, but by the underlying value it represents (Clore, 2005), and almost all satisfaction
comes from emotional experiences (Elster, 1996), we are interested in investigating how
individuals map monetary value onto the underlying value of specific positive and negative
emotions. Across a series of studies, we will systematically investigate how much people value
experiencing specific emotions, and how these values change across time and context.
A wealth of research has demonstrated the critical role of emotions in shaping our
judgments and decisions. Emotions exert causal effects on the quality of our relationships (e.g.,
Ekman, 2007; Graham et al., 2008; Gottman & Levenson, 1986; Lopes, Salovey, & Straus,
2003), economic choices (e.g., Lerner et al., 2003; Rick & Loewenstein, 2008), political and
policy choices (e.g., Lerner, Small, & Loewenstein, 2004; Small & Lerner, 2008); creativity
(e.g., Fredrickson, 1998; 2001; Isen et al., 1987), motivation (e.g., Frijda, Manstead, & Bern,
2000), mental health outcomes (e.g., Kring, 2010; Gross & Thompson, 2007; Gruber, Mauss, &
Tamir, 2011), and overall well-being (e.g., Ryff & Singer, 1998). But while researchers have
explored the relationship between different emotions and measures of global well-being
(Kuppens, Realo, & Diener, 2008), we know little about which emotions people think will have
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the greatest influence on happiness and health outcomes, and which emotions they are
consequently more likely to pursue or avoid (Lau, White, & Schnall, 2013). Scholars have
explained this distinction as the difference between decision utility (actual choice based on
predicted emotional experience) and experienced utility (what people actually feel) (Kahneman,
2000). This differentiation is important because there are often discrepancies between people’s
predicted experiences—which consequently impacts their decisions, and their actual experiences
(Wilson & Gilbert, 2003). Given that emotions have such a crucial effect on decision-making,
behavior, and health, an investigation into how people think about and choose to pursue or avoid
certain emotions may offer insight into optimal strategies for regulating distinct emotions and
maximizing global well-being. These exploratory studies may also allow us to construct more
nuanced theories regarding the cognitive and motivational mechanisms underlying affect
valuation.
The Economics of Emotion
Just as there is a monetary economy, there is an affective economy, which we refer to as
the “emotional marketplace.” There are a number of parallels between the behavior of money
and emotion. For example, depressions and inflations can occur not only with monetary tokens
of value but also with affective tokens of value (Clore, 2005). Monetary resources are scarce in
economic depressions; similarly, emotional resources are often scarce in psychological
depressions. In economic inflations, the relationship between representations of value and actual
value becomes distorted; likewise, when more emotional currency (e.g. dopamine) is produced
than is justified, the feelings lose value, potentially causing individuals to seek more powerful
affective experiences (e.g. gambling, taking drugs, engaging in other risky activities). Another
possible parallel is affective hoarding (Clore, 2005); just as a scarcity of money can lead to
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hoarding in the monetary economy, exacerbating the scarcity, an emotional shortage can lead
people to reduce their emotional investments, further diminishing emotional rewards.
Additionally, both money and emotion can serve as common currencies in decision-
making. Research in neuroeconomics provides insight into the relationship between emotion and
money by demonstrating how the brain evaluates rewards. Subjective values of money and
emotion are both encoded on a common neural scale by the same neurobiological valuation path
(Montague & Berns, 2002; Izuma, Saito, & Sadato; 2008; Saxe & Haushofer, 2008; Levy &
Glimcher, 2012). Specifically, single-unit recordings in animals and human fMRI studies
(Monosov & Hikosaka, 2012; Smith & Huettel, 2010) suggest that reward-related computations
take place in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), and that vmPFC activity reflects both
the subjective value of rewards and the exchange rate between rewards in different domains
(Kable & Glimcher, 2007; Chib et al., 2009; Rangel & Hare, 2010; Levy & Glimcher, 2011;
Levy & Glimcher, 2012). Importantly, the vmPFC not only encodes the value of external
rewards, but also the value of emotional stimuli (Goel & Dolan, 2001), offering support for the
idea that the vmPFC tracks the value of rewards by a domain-general value signal. These
findings support the idea of a “common neural currency” for reward (Montague & Berns, 2002),
since distinct rewards—such as money and emotional states—can be compared. Behavioral
research has also suggested that emotions can serve as a common currency facilitating the
evaluation of gambles with many different outcomes (Connolly & Butler, 2006).
Individuals may have trouble with the idea of “economizing” or pricing emotions. For
example, trying to exchange money for love is largely looked down upon (Clore, 2005).
However, given that economics is concerned with maximizing human satisfaction in the face of
scarce resources, and almost all human satisfaction comes from emotional experiences (Elster,
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1996), trying to understand monetary spending without taking affective goals into account would
involve overlooking one of the most important motivators of decision-making. Thus, we hope to
critically investigate how motivated individuals are to achieve different emotions, using
experimental paradigms to further understand how individuals evaluate emotional costs and
benefits.
Measuring Emotional States
In the past, economists largely neglected the study of emotions due to their lack of a
uniform metric. However, many psychologists have argued that discrete emotions exist and each
has measurable properties (Tomkins, 1962; Ekman & Friesen, 1971; Izard, 1971).
Correspondingly, emotion researchers have proposed a number of theories for measuring the
emotional states that people experience and value. Tsai, Knutson, and Fung (2006) developed the
Affect Valuation Theory (AVT), which aims to explain differences in how people ideally want to
feel and how they actually feel. Carstensen (1993) proposed the Socioemotional Selectivity
Theory, maintaining that limitations on perceived time lead to motivational shifts that direct
attention to emotional goals. Harmon-Jones et al. (2011) argued that attitudes toward emotions
are organized in a discrete emotions framework—in which individuals have distinct attitudes
toward discrete emotions—and also predicted that attitudes toward discrete emotions should
predict emotion situation selection. For example, people who greatly dislike embarrassment will
be more likely to avoid situations that could potentially arouse embarrassment; conversely,
people with a greater liking for awe will be more likely to approach situations that arouse awe
than people for whom awe is not as valued. Based on these theories, given that individuals
indicate differences between how they actually and ideally want to feel, have motivational
differences, have differing attitudes toward distinct emotions, and make behavioral choices in
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line with these attitudes, our research will investigate how people assign value to discrete
emotions. Although people’s ideal affect and the importance they assign to certain emotions may
fluctuate based on the environment and situation, people generally retain an idea of how they
want to feel that holds across situations (Tsai, 2013). As ideal affect is mostly stable, it follows
that people can be asked to evaluate different emotions without pronounced moment-to-moment
shifts caused by external variables.
So far, past studies have measured ideal emotional states by asking participants to
indicate how much they want to experience or avoid experiencing certain emotions (Augustine et
al., 2010; Kampfe & Mitte, 2009; Rusting & Larsen, 1995; Tsai, Knutson, & Fung, 2006).
However, it may be useful to consider not just how people evaluate distinct emotions, but how
motivated they are to achieve them, even when it involves the investment of additional resources
like money or time. Economists often investigate peoples’ preferences as revealed through
choice; analyzing market data can be used to identify preferences and estimate price-response
functions (Breidert, Hahsler, & Reutterer, 2006). However, when goods are not openly
exchanged in the marketplace and purchasing data is not available, stated preferences can be
used as an effective substitute (Kahneman et al., 1993). In these situations, people are asked how
much they would be willing to pay (WTP) to obtain something positive or to avoid something
negative.
It follows that emotional experiences could also be quantified using a similar method.
Unlike behavior and revenues, emotions are difficult to measure and quantify, but by applying
experimental economic paradigms to emotional considerations, we can begin investigating how
people assign value to emotions. According to Lau, White, and Schnall (2013), there are a
number of reasons why WTP judgments may offer advantages over traditional Likert scale
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ratings as a metric for evaluating emotions. First, using the WTP approach accounts for
opportunity costs associated with decision utility. In real life, all activities have trade-offs. When
participants are asked to price and spend money on emotional experiences, they need to forgo the
opportunity of spending that sum on alternative goods; Likert scales do not capture these
opportunity costs and trade-offs. Second, the WTP approach more clearly reveals relative
preferences. Asking participants to quantify emotional experience using monetary values enables
measurable, scaled comparisons between distinct emotions. The WTP measure allows us to not
only determine whether experiencing happiness is valued more than experiencing awe, but helps
us quantify this preference. Furthermore, while individuals using a Likert scale could report both
disgust and anger as “extremely undesirable,” such a response would not reveal their relative
preferences for the emotions. Third, this approach extends current understanding of affect
valuation by making emotional experiences comparable with other common consumption
domains. In comparison to more ambiguous response scales used in past attempts to capture
affect valuation, the WTP approach offers a closer approximation of real choices people make in
search of specific emotional experiences in their daily lives. By having participants assign value
to emotions and other consumption behaviors using a common metric, the WTP approach serves
as a more ecologically valid measure for assessing how individuals value emotional experiences
relative to other types of rewards and punishments.
Asking people to price emotions may seem unintuitive as emotions are not objective and
quantifiable in the same way that money is. However, an experimental study conducted by Lau,
White, and Schnall (2013) provided preliminary evidence that people are capable of assigning
monetary value to emotional experiences; they demonstrated that participants can in fact use a
WTP approach to differentiate their preferences for specific emotions. In the study, participants