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Instrumental or emotional evaluations: what determines preferences?
1Institut für Psychologie: Methodik-Diagnostik-Evaluation, Universität Bremen, Germany. boehm@zfn.uni-bremen.de
Acta Psychologica
|September 1, 1996
Summary
Situational context affects decision-making by altering the influence of emotional versus instrumental evaluations. Public contexts emphasize instrumental factors, while private contexts lean towards emotional considerations.
Area of Science:
- Decision Science
- Cognitive Psychology
- Behavioral Economics
Background:
- Decision-making involves complex evaluations.
- Instrumental and emotional utilities are key evaluative aspects.
- Situational context may modulate their relative impact.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate the separability of instrumental and emotional utilities.
- Test how situational context influences their impact on preferences.
- Examine the role of justification demands in public contexts.
Main Methods:
- Multidimensional preference analysis.
- Individual differences scaling analysis.
- Regression analyses to predict preferences.
- Experimental manipulation of private vs. public contexts.
Main Results:
- Two key dimensions emerged from preference analysis.
- A second dimension differentiated between public and private contexts.
- Higher subject weights for the second dimension in the public context group.
- First dimension mapped emotions; second mapped instrumental evaluations.
Conclusions:
- Instrumental and emotional evaluations both significantly predict preferences.
- Their relation to preferences is indirect.
- Situational context, particularly justification demands, influences the weighting of these evaluations in decision-making.
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