How do people make judgments and decisions about the intensity of different emotions experienced over time? How, for example, do people decide upon the allocation of resources toward mitigating different frightening risks they learn about over time? Do they devote more to preventing the kinds of bad things they have recently experienced intense emotion about rather than those that might be more likely but that they have not so recently experienced intensely? Similarly, how do they decide upon the allocation of charitable funds among different distressing humanitarian needs? Do they give more to causes that have distressed them recently rather than some time ago? This research will extend preliminary studies demonstrating that people exhibit an intensity bias when they make such temporal emotional comparisons, judging immediate emotions to be more intense, all else equal, than previous emotions.
Nine studies will test the hypothesis that people exhibit an intensity bias because (a) they judge emotional intensity based on the accessibility of detailed information about different emotions experienced over time, and (b) information about immediate emotions is usually more accessible than information about previous emotions. The studies will test, for example, the prediction that people judge risks of terrorism that happen to arouse immediate anxiety to be more dangerous and worthy of mitigation than equivalently severe risks that happen to have aroused previous anxiety. The studies will also test the prediction that people judge humanitarian suffering that happens to arouse immediate distress as more severe and worthy of charitable resources than humanitarian suffering that happens to have aroused previous distress. The proposed studies will advance basic scientific knowledge regarding the interplay between emotion, judgment, and decision-making. Understanding these processes will enable citizens and policy makers to make more informed decisions.
