BazermanMoore

96 Chapter 5: Motivational and Emotional Influences on Decision Making
they continue to believe in their own fairness and objectivity. Auditors can manage to
find ways to excuse the questionable accounting practices of a valuable client, yet believe
that their conclusions are consistent with generally accepted accounting practices
(Moore, Tetlock, Tanlu, & Bazerman, 2006). CEOs can find ways to feed their egos and
fill their pockets at the expense of firm shareholders while believing that they are acting
in the best interests of those shareholders. Medical doctors can accept gifts from pharmaceutical
manufacturers while believing that their clinical judgment has not been
biased. And politicians can accept generous campaign contributions that they believe
will not influence their votes. For lies to legally qualify as fraud, the person telling the
lie must know that it is false at the time he or she says it. As always, the most effective
lies are those we ourselves believe. In Chapter 7, we will discuss the ethical implications
of decision-making biases in greater detail.
EMOTIONAL INFLUENCES ON DECISION MAKING
In recent decades, researchers have made important progress toward understanding
how specific emotions influence our judgments. This research began by examining the
effects of positive and negative moods. For instance, evidence suggested that a good
mood increases reliance on heuristics and results in more biased judgments (Bodenhausen,
Kramer, & Suesser, 1994). Park and Banaji (2000) found that a good mood
increases reliance on stereotypes, while a bad mood decreases reliance on stereotypes.
Other research has suggested that unhappy people might be less likely to exhibit positive
illusions than happier people (Alloy & Abramson, 1979). A number of scholars
have suggested that bad moods may trigger more deliberative (System 2) thought processes
that could reduce biases in judgment (Forgas, 1995). Yet Bodenhausen, Gabriel,
and Lineberger (2000) have shown that sad people are more affected by anchors than
are people in a more neutral state, and as a result, make worse decisions. Clearly, the
early, broad conclusion linking negative moods to greater decision-making accuracy
was incorrect.
Specific Emotions
Researchers have identified a small set of basic emotions, including happiness, sadness,
fear, disgust, and anger, whose expressions are the same across cultures (Ekman, 1992).
Each of these emotions activates a set of feelings and appraisal tendencies that prepares
us to respond to the world in a certain way. For instance, fear makes our minds sensitive
to risks and prepares our bodies to flee (Lerner & Keltner, 2001). Disgust focuses
our attention on physical contamination and motivates us to purge ourselves of contaminating
agents (Rozin, Haidt, & McCauley, 1999). Sadness focuses attention on the
self, leading people to ruminate more, and motivates them to seek change (Cryder,
Lerner, Gross, & Dahl, 2007). Anger is a particularly interesting emotion, because
although it is negative, it shares many features with happiness, including increased
confidence, increased feelings of power, and decreased sensitivity to risk (Lerner &
Tiedens, 2006).