Ivana Baldassarre

Deciding with (or without) the Future in Mind: Individual Differences in Decision-Making

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of propensity to risk taking, impulsivity, and present versus future orientation in decision-making under ambiguity. One hundred and four healthy adults were administered the computer versions of the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). They then completed the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11) and the Consideration of Future Consequences Scale (CFC-14). Results indicated that high scores on the BIS-11 Non-Planning impulsivity scale, the CFC-14 Immediate scale, and the BART result in poorer performance on the IGT. In addition, the results of regression analysis showed also that the BART total score was the most powerful predictor of performance on the IGT. The study revealed that individuals who are more prone to risk, less likely to plan ahead carefully, and more oriented to the present, rather than to the future, performed worse on the IGT.

Helpful Contextual Information Before or After Negative Events: Effects on Appraisal and Emotional Reaction

This study investigated the effect of helpful contextual information, presented before and after a negative event, on modifying appraisal and emotional reaction. Through the scenario technique, a basic situation of negative outcome (in health or hobby domain) entailing appraisal of high responsibility and low remediability (control condition) was manipulated by adding—separately or together—two types of contextual information able to modify the two appraisal dimensions: knowing that other people shared the same outcome (sharing) and knowing that it was possible to remediate the negative outcome (remedy possibility). In half scenarios, the information was presented before the event, and in the other half after the event. We expected that sharing and remedy possibility would selectively affect the two appraisal dimensions which in turn would selectively affect the emotions chosen to assess emotional reaction. We also expected that the event-preceding information would be more effective than the event-following information. On the whole, the results corroborated our predictions but also revealed unexpected effects that have been discussed.

Are Emotions Reliable Predictors of Future Behavior? The Case of Guilt and Other Post-action Emotions

This study had two goals: 1) to establish the relative importance of the violation of a moral norm and of the damage done to another person in the genesis of guilt and other post-action emotions; 2) to investigate if the post-action emotions are reliable predictors of future behavior in conditions similar to the ones that elicited them the first time. Through the scenario technique, four typical antecedents of guilt were built, in which the intentionality of the norm violation and of the damage to others were manipulated. In all scenarios the protagonist acted in such a way as to elicit guilt and the other emotions that participants were asked to assess. Thus, we presented a similar situation happening a few months later in which he had to choose whether to behave in the same way as he had behaved previously or in the opposite way. We expected that: (1) moral emotions would stimulate a different behavior from the previous one, whereas selfish emotions should lead to repeat the same behavior; (2) emotions should influence future behavior in an indirect way, through the cognitive mediation of thoughts preceding the decision; (3) the norm violation would have analogous relevance in eliciting guilt to harming another person. On the whole, the results corroborated our predictions, with some exceptions that were discussed.

Negative Mood Effects on Decision Making among Potential Pathological Gamblers and Healthy Individuals

In this study we investigated the effects of negative mood on decision making among potential pathological gamblers and healthy individuals. More specifically, we examined whether the two groups exhibited the same or different pattern of choice when being in a negative emotional state. To that end, participants were induced with negative mood through the emotional event recall technique and subsequently presented with four scenarios about monetary decision making. For each scenario they were asked to choose an option among four possibilities: two options were cautious and two risky. Results showed that negative mood affected healthy individuals and potential pathological gamblers in the opposite way: the former made more cautious choices, while the latter made more risky choices.

The Influence of Positive and Negative Emotions on Physiological Responses and Memory Task Scores

The present paper report results of a preliminary study devoted to investigate whether and how different induced emotional states influence physiological responses and memory task scores. Physiological responses, such as skin conductance (SCL) and heart rate (HR) values were measured from 32 university students, before, during and after they were elicited by video stimuli. The considered stimuli were able to induce positive, negative and neutral emotional states. The specific physiological activation patterns were identified and correlated with memory task scores, computed using the “Anna Pesenti” Story Recall Test (SRT).

Contextual Information and Reappraisal of Negative Emotional Events

In this study the effect of the contextual-information induced reappraisal on modifying the emotional response elicited by failure has been investigated. To an academic or job setting failure (control condition) it has been added one of two types of contextual information (knowing that many other people failed the same task and knowing that it would be possible to try the failed task again) affecting three dimensions of failure appraisal: responsibility, sharing, and remediability. In an experimental condition both information were added. Four hundred and eighty undergraduates participated in this study. The experimental design was a 2 (negative emotional event) x 4 (contextual information) between-subjects design. The first variable was included in the design as covariate. We expected that generalized failure should imply a decrease of responsibility and an increase of sharing, the possibility of retrying should imply an increase in the remediability, and that the presence of both types of information should produce all the abovementioned effects. Our findings substantially corroborated the hypotheses.

Instruction and belief effects on sentential reasoning

Research in human reasoning has gathered increasing evidence that people tend to reason on the basis of contextualized representations, thus making conclusions compatible with previous knowledge and beliefs, regardless of the logical form of the arguments. This experiment aimed at investigating whether and to what extent sentential reasoning (i.e.reasoning based on compound sentences formed with connectives such as if/then, and, or) was sensitive to the phenomenon of belief effects, under different instruction sets. In a 3×2×2 mixed design (with the last variable as a within-subjects variable), connective sentence (conditional, conjunction and incompatible disjunction), instruction set (logical vs. pragmatic), and statement believability (high vs. low) were varied. Results showed that conjunctions were affected by both instruction set and statement believability, conditionals were affected only by statement believability, whereas no effect of experimental manipulation was found on incompatible disjunctions. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.