Abstract
Even though several studies have shed light on the effect of emotions on cognitive processes such as decision-making, research on naturalistic decision-making has so far been virtually silent on the issue of emotions. The aim of the present research was to investigate how affect states influence the performance of a group of proficient decision-makers, police officers, in the ability to detect armed targets. Specifically, the aim of this research was to investigate the impact of arousal, valence and content of IAPS pictures on rapid decision-making in a shooting task performed under high level of pression and in risky condition. Three versions of a first person shooting tasks (FPST) were performed, manipulating emotional and arousing contents of visual stimuli. Two groups of subjects, civilians and police officers, were presented with the three FPST that varied for pictorial stimuli presentation before the task. Pictorial stimuli were used to elicit specific emotions and to investigate the effect on participants’ performance confronting results for their inter-group performance in the three versions of the task (task 1 vs task 2 vs task 3) and between-groups performance (civilians vs. police officers). Subjects had to perform a task where a rapid decision to shoot or not was requested. Measures of perceptive sensitivity (d’), response bias (c) and reaction times were detected and measured. Findings were consistent with the hypothesis that affective modulation influences response bias activation and performance and that content of stimuli amplifies the effect size. Moreover, whereas police officers resulted able to better control the effect of arousing stimuli and negative affect states than civilians, their latencies were longer, a strategy that could be dangerous and resulting in becoming the victim in an hypothetical shooting incident.
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Luini, L.P., Marucci, F.S. Prediction–Confirmation Hypothesis and Affective Deflection Model to account for split-second decisions and decision-making under pressure of proficient decision-makers. Cogn Tech Work 17, 329–344 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-015-0328-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-015-0328-0