Abstract
The ways that emotions affect the perception of risk are grounded in a conception of emotion as involving appraisals, feelings, and preparations for behavioral and cognitive action that are manifest on biological, individual, and social levels of analysis. Because these components are evoked and modulated in accordance with goal-relevant properties of the environment, emotions typically adjust responses, including the perception of risk, in ways that are functional. This chapter explicates this approach to emotions and describes how it is employed in the two major theories of how emotions influence risk perception. One, the appraisal-tendency framework, accounts for how emotional appraisals and action tendencies modify the perception of risk. The other, feelings-as-information theory, accounts for how emotional feelings may serve as a heuristic for a person’s overall assessment of situational risks and benefits.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Tranel, D., & Damasio, A. R. (1997). Deciding advantageously before knowing the advantageous strategy. Science, 275, 1293–1295.
Blanchette, I., & Richards, A. (2010). The influence of affect on higher level cognition: A review of research on interpretation, judgement, decision making and reasoning. Cognition and Emotion, 24, 561–595.
Chandler, J. J., & Pronin, E. (2012). Fast thought speed induces risk taking. Psychological Science, 23, 370–374.
Clore, G. L. (1992). Cognitive phenomenology: Feelings and the construction of judgment. In L. L. Martin & A. Tesser (Eds.), The construction of social judgments (pp. 133–163). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. New York: Grosset/Putnam.
Dunn, B. D., Dalgleish, T., & Lawrence, A. D. (2006). The somatic marker hypothesis: A critical evaluation. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 30, 239–271.
Finucane, M. L., Alhakami, A., Slovic, P., & Johnson, S. M. (2000). The affect heuristic in judgments of risks and benefits. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 13, 1–17.
Fischhoff, B., Gonzalez, R. M., Lerner, J. S., & Small, D. A. (2005). Evolving judgments of terror risks: Foresight, hindsight, and emotion. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 11, 124–139.
Frijda, N. H. (1986). The emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Han, S., Lerner, J. S., & Keltner, D. (2007). Feelings and consumer decision making: The appraisal-tendency framework. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 17, 158–168.
Isen, A. M., & Patrick, R. (1983). The effect of positive feelings on risk taking: When the chips are down. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 31, 194–202.
Johnson, E. J., & Tversky, A. (1983). Affect, generalization, and the perception of risk. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 20–31.
Kappas, A. (2011). Emotion and regulation are one! Emotion Review, 3, 17–25.
Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Emotion and adaptation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lerner, J. S., & Keltner, D. (2000). Beyond valence: Toward a model of emotion-specific influences on judgment and choice. Cognition and Emotion, 14, 473–493.
Lerner, J. S., & Keltner, D. (2001). Fear, anger, and risk. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 146–159.
Lerner, J. S., Gonzalez, R. M., Small, D. A., & Fischhoff, B. (2003). Effects of fear and anger on perceived risks of terrorism: A national field experiment. Psychological Science, 14, 144–150.
Lerner, J. S., Li, Y., Valdesolo, P., & Kassam, K. S. (2015). Emotion and decision making. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 799–823.
Loewenstein, G., & Lerner, J. S. (2003). The role of affect in decision making. In R. J. Davidson, K. R. Scherer, & H. H. Goldsmith (Eds.), Handbook of affective sciences (pp. 619–642). New York: Oxford University Press.
Loewenstein, G., & Mather, J. (1990). Dynamic processes in risk perception. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 3, 155–170.
Loewenstein, G., Weber, E. U., Hsee, C. K., & Welch, N. (2001). Risk as feelings. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 267–286.
Lutz, C. (1988). Unnatural emotions: Everyday sentiments on a Micronesian atoll and their challenge to western theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Maner, J. K., & Gerend, M. A. (2007). Motivationally selective risk judgments: Do fear and curiosity boost the boons or the banes? Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 103, 256–267.
Parrott, W. G. (2002). The functional utility of negative emotions. In L. F. Barrett & P. Salovey (Eds.), The wisdom in feeling: Psychological processes in emotional intelligence (pp. 341–359). New York: Guilford Press.
Parrott, W. G. (2007). Components and the definition of emotion. Social Science Information, 46, 419–423.
Parrott, W. G. (2014). Feeling, function, and the place of negative emotions in a happy life. In W. G. Parrott (Ed.), The positive side of negative emotions (pp. 273–296). New York: Guilford Press.
Parrott, W. G., & Schulkin, J. (1993). Psychophysiology and the cognitive nature of the emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 7, 43–59.
Raghunathan, R., & Pham, M. T. (1999). All negative moods are not equal: Motivational invluences of anxiethy and sadness on decision making. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 79, 56–77.
Scherer, K. R. (1984). On the nature and function of emotion: A component process approach. In K. R. Scherer & P. Ekman (Eds.), Approaches to emotion (pp. 293–317). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Schwarz, N., & Clore, G. L. (1983). Mood, misattribution, and judgments of well-being: Informative and directive functions of affective states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 513–523.
Slovic, P. (1987). Perception of risk. Science, 236, 280–285.
Slovic, P. (1999). Trust, emotion, sex, politics, and science: Surveying the risk-assessment battlefield. Risk Analysis, 19(4), 689–701.
Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (1990). The past explains the present: Emotional adaptations and the structure of ancestral environments. Ethology and Sociobiology, 11, 375–424.
Von Neumann, J., & Morgenstern, O. (1944). Theory of games and economic behavior. New York: Wiley.
Zeelenberg, M., Beattie, J., Van der Pligt, J., & De Vries, N. K. (1996). Consequences of regret aversion: Effects of expected feedback on risky decision making. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 65, 148–158.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Parrott, W.G. (2017). Role of Emotions in Risk Perception. In: Emilien, G., Weitkunat, R., LĂĽdicke, F. (eds) Consumer Perception of Product Risks and Benefits. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50530-5_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50530-5_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-50528-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-50530-5
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)