title: Choice processing in emotionally difficult decisions.
abstract: Choice conflicts between one's important values may cause negative emotion. This article extends the standard effort-accuracy approach to explaining task influences on decision processing by arguing that coping goals will interact with effort minimization and accuracy maximization goals for negatively emotion-laden decision tasks. These coping goals may involve both a desire to process in a thorough, accurate manner and a desire to avoid particularly distressing aspects of processing. On the basis of this extended framework, the authors hypothesized and found in 3 experiments that decision processing under increasing negative emotion both becomes more extensive and proceeds more by focusing on one attribute at a time. In particular, increased negative emotion leads to more attribute-based processing at the beginning of the decision process. The results are inconsistent with views that negative emotion acts only as an incentive or only as a source of decision complexity.
authors.affiliation: Marketing Department, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 19104-6371, USA. maryfran@marketing.wharton.upenn.edu
authors.forename: M F
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Luce
authors.forename: J R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Bettman
authors.forename: J W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Payne
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D001364:Awareness; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003073:Cognitive Dissonance; D003657:Decision Making; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation