A Bias Toward Short-Term Thinking in Threat-Related Negative Emotional States

Abstract

Some decisions must be made repeatedly and have consequences that change depending on how often each alternative is chosen. Such temporally extended decisions are pervasive and important, and often involve short-term/long-term tradeoffs. Can unrelated emotion and stress influence such decisions? In negative emotional states involving threats, people should favor what is better at the time regardless of possible long-term consequences. Supporting this hypothesis, in Experiment 1, college students randomly assigned to see aversive images repeatedly made choices that had better short-term but poorer long-term effects, and so earned less money than students shown neutral images, effect size r = .71. In Experiment 2, students reporting stress about impending exams showed a similar bias, r=.53.Thehypothesis and results are relevant to decision making, delay of gratification, distributed choice, and self-control.