The Effect of Negative Emotions in Decisions

Over the last four decades the topic of emotions and decision-making has gained relevance among psychologists. This paper presents a selective, qualitative review of the influence of the negative emotions fear, anger, sadness and disgust on the domains of judgement, choice and decision-making.

For this purpose it brings together traditional and contemporary theories from the field of emotion and decision-making and, building on this, reviews highly recognized and accepted research works that have concentrated on outcome effects. Negative emotions turned out to constitute major influence on judgement, choice and decision-making. The review of outcome effects has indicated that, in many cases, emotions of the same valence but with different appraisals can exert opposing effects on the decision outcome.