Reading report. Lerner et al.’s “Emotion and Decision Making”

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Reading Report
Lerner et al.’s “Emotion and Decision Making” is crucial in helping one to understand how emotions influence people’s judgments. In particular, individuals have to decide on various things in their daily lives. Herbert Simon, a Nobel laureate, believes that for one to understand the human rationality theory, it is vital to know the roles of emotions when making judgments or decisions. The research on how emotions affect decision making doubled between 2004 and 2007. Moreover, the scholarly publications on the same topic increased from 2007-2011. In other words, it means that psychologists realized that emotions significantly affect the decisions that people make in their daily lives. The paper summarizes, analyzes, and gives opinions about the primary themes on the emotional impacts on decision making and judgment.
The first theme depicts that integral emotion affects people’s abilities to decide rationally. To illustrate, integral emotions arise from individuals’ judgment on something (Lerner et al. 802). In my opinion, people with these types of emotions are likely to make decisions that they might regret later in their lives. Integral emotions might lead to biased decisions. For example, some people might be afraid of flying and instead perceive road transport as the safest mode. However, the former has fewer death rates than the latter. The second primary theme focuses on the effect of incidental emotions on decision making. These emotions are carried over from one occurrence to another (Lerner et al. 803). That is the reason why some bosses pass on anger from one employee to others who are not involved in a particular situation. Apparently, individuals who are in good moods are optimistic while those in bad attitudes come up with pessimistic resolutions.
Emotional valence significantly influences the choices and decisions that people make. For instance, sadness, disgust, and anger are emotions of similar valence. In reality, individuals with either of these feelings have a high likelihood of making irrational decisions. In most cases, angry people make bad judgments since they do not allow themselves to see things in the right dimension. When it comes to theme number four, it portrays how emotions shape individuals’ decisions through the content of their thought. At this juncture, an angry person has a high level of control and certainty. On the contrary, a fearful individual has a low sense of certainty and control (Lerner et al. 807). The latter group does not engage in risky behaviors as compared to the former wh...