Research

The Role of Affect and Emotions in Judgments and Decisions

Our research has identified a number of different ways in which affect and emotions influence different kinds of judgments and decisions. Much of this research involves affective reactions to threat. For example, when a country experiences an external threat this often triggers "rally round the flag" effects, and our research has shown that this rally effect is primarily the result of anger in reaction to the threat, rather than anxiety.

More recent research has explored the consequences of affect and emotions for health-related decisions. This research has found (for example) that when anxiety about a health threat is low, patients' treatment preferences are driven by knowledge about the treatment, but when anxiety is high patients generally want to maximize their care regardless of how much they know. Moreover, patients' positive vs. negative feelings about screening tests, such as prostate cancer screening, are driven primarily by two critical factors: 1) anxiety about the health threat, and 2) the perceived benefits of testing (e.g. "will this test save my life?"). Interestingly, perceived benefits are much more influential than perceived risks (e.g. "will this test cause me serious harm?"). This means that patients may want a screening test so long as they view it as potentially beneficial, even when the harms are both severe and relatively likely.

Selected Publications

  • Scherer, L.D., Shaffer, V., Caverly, T., Scherer, A., Zikmund-Fisher, B., Kullgren, J. & Fagerlin, A. (in press). The Role of the Affect Heuristic and Cancer Anxiety in Responding to Negative Information About Medical Tests. Psychology and Health Special Issue: Emotions, Health Decision Making and Health Behavior.
  • Dillard, A.J., Scherer, L.D., Ubel, P.A., Alexander, S. & Fagerlin, A. (2017). Anxiety symptoms prior to a prostate cancer diagnosis: Associations with knowledge and openness to treatment. British Journal of Health Psychology. DOI: 10.1111/bjhp.12222
  • Shaffer, V.A., Focella, E.S., Scherer, L.D., Zikmund-fisher, B.J. (2016). Reducing Affective Forecasting Errors with Targeted, but Not Representative, Experience Narratives. Patient Education and Counseling, 99, 1611-1619.
  • Hoerger, M., Scherer, L. D., & Fagerlin, A. (2016). Affective forecasting a medication decision making in breast cancer prevention. Health Psychology, 35, 594-603.
  • Dillard, A., J., Scherer, L. D., Ubel, P. A., Smith, D. M., Zikmund-Fisher, B. J., McClur J. B., Greene, S., Stark, A. & Fagerlin, A. (2013). Breast cancer anxiety's associations with responses to a chemoprevention decision aid. Social Sciences and Medicine, 77, 13-19.
  • Lambert, A. J., Scherer, L. D., Schott, J. P., Olsen, K. R., Andrews, R., O'Brien, T. & Zisser, (2010). Rally effects, threat, and attitude change: An integrative approach to understanding the role of emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 886-903.
  • Lambert, A.J., Eadeh, F., Peak, S., Scherer, L., Schott, J.P., & Slochower, J. (2014). Towards a greater understanding of the emotional dynamics of the mortality salience manipulation: Revisiting the "affect free" claim of Terror Management Theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 655-678.