The Effects of Sadness Versus Gratitude on Economic Decision Making and Addictive Behavior

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

The Appraisal-tendency framework (ATF) in emotion science describes how different emotions act to color the decisions an individual makes, even about things unrelated to the events or circumstances that induced the emotion. ATF correctly predicts, for example, that the experience of sadness makes people willing to pay more to acquire standard economic goods and services. The current research tests predictions of ATF regarding willingness to engage in pro-social behavior and decisions about consumption of addictive substances, for which emotions may have different, and potentially stronger, effects. The results of this research will contribute to our deeper understanding of the influence of affect on choice, as well as having potentially broad implications for the design of interventions to address substance abuse problems. The Principal Investigators will conduct five experiments that test whether experimentally inducing sadness or gratitude can alter simple altruism, cooperation, cigarette valuation, and sunk cost effects regarding cigarette consumption, and whether gratitude can counteract the effects of sadness. ATF predicts that sadness and gratitude will have diverging effects on pro-social behavior and addictive behavior, with gratitude increasing prosociality and reducing cigarette consumption and sadness doing the opposite.