How do big events like natural disasters impact everyday behavior? This research project studies how individual and societal judgment and decision behavior is influenced by feelings and emotion in the aftermath of a major natural disaster. On December 27, 2004 a Tsunami struck southern Asia and East Africa resulting in over 150,000 lives lost. Southern Asia is a popular tourist resort, especially for Scandinavian travelers. One Scandinavian country, Sweden (pop. 9 million), had an unusually large number of tourists visiting the area at the time of the disaster. As a result, more than twelve hundred Swedes were killed or are missing. The Tsunami disaster is therefore the biggest national tragedy in Sweden in the last hundred years. A consequence of this tragedy, and the media attention it received and still receives, is that many Swedes feel deeply involved and saddened (e.g., a "national mood"). We propose that change in a nation's mood can have a profound impact on people's judgment and decision behavior. The aim of this project is to test research hypotheses about how affect experienced by a whole nation can influence risk perceptions, evaluative judgments, judgments about the future, and the decision strategies people use to mitigate their negative feelings. The national mood experienced in the aftermath of the Tsunami provides a unique possibility to test the research hypotheses in a whole population. Data will be collected in surveys, experiments, and through analyses of secondary objective data (consumption before and after the Tsunami disaster). The proposed studies will help to advance our basic understanding of how affect and feelings influence judgment and decision making, as well as to indicate how feelings tied to big events like natural disasters impact subsequent risk and decision behavior.
