Pleasure in decision‐making situations: politics and gambling

Abstract

This work investigates whether pleasure influences political and gambling decisions. Participants received two questionnaires. On Questionnaire 1, they rated the pleasure/displeasure of a series of items: social and political issues in Experiment 1, winning bets in Experiment 2, and losing bets in Experiment 3. On Questionnaire 2, they indicated the items that they would actually choose in real life. Their choices were then compared with their hedonic ratings on Questionnaire 1. Results showed that participants tended to choose those items they had most highly rated for pleasure on Questionnaire 1. In all cases, the selected outcomes were higher than chance, and thus tended to maximize pleasure, but were significantly lower than the maximum possible, indicating the presence of non-hedonic criteria. The tendency to maximize pleasure was independent of age, gender, political opinions, and gambling propensity in real life. The results of all three experiments support the hypothesis that decisions are made predominantly, though not exclusively, in the hedonic dimension of conscious experience. A fourth experiment was set to answer a methodological question: a delay of 77 ¡ 3 days was placed between Questionnaires 1 and 2. The results were similar to those of Experiments 1-3, thus answering the concern.

Impact of Self-Framing on Decision Making: Timing Matters

“…A clear limitation in studies of framing effects in which choice options are framed by the experimenter is the inability to predict the type of hedonic frame a decision maker is using spontaneously when encoding choice options (Pacherie, 2011). However, there has been a small amount of research on self-framing in which it has been reported that choice based on the decision maker's subjective framing has resulted in a preference for positive frames rather than negative frames (Bonniot-Cabanac & Cabanac, 2009). Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore the effect of self-framing on participants' choice.…”

“…Over the past years, an increasing number of researchers have pointed out the lack of research to examine how decision makers spontaneously frame choice outcomes and risk information (Bonniot-Cabanac & Cabanac, 2009;He, Guan, Kong, Cao, & Peng, 2014;Peng, Jiang, Miao, Li, & Xiao, 2013). The studies of self-framing have high ecological validity because choice options are commonly framed by the decision makers themselves in real life (Wang, 2004).…”

Do Government Officials Decide More Rationally than the Rest of us?

“…In addition, their views were similar to those of a group of citizens drawn from the general population who were tested with the same methods, in previous studies on different aspects of decision making (Bonniot-Cabanac & Cabanac, 2009;Cabanac & Bonniot-Cabanac, 2007;Ramírez et al, 2005). Area of responsibility did not seem to affect the decision-making process, although hedonicity clearly influenced decision making in all cases.…”