BazermanMoore

CHAPTER
FIVE
Motivational and Emotional
Influences on Decision Making
Mark Merrill was a compulsive gambler. He knew he had a problem, and so in 1996 he
entered a clinic for compulsive gamblers. He also put himself on Indiana’s so-called ‘‘selfexclusion
list,’’ which allows people to ban themselves from entering casinos—a permanent
and irrevocable action. Nevertheless, Merrill was able to enter the Trump Indiana casino in
Gary, Indiana, and go gambling. In December 1998 and January 1999, he robbed two
banks in order to pay his gambling debts. After Merrill was caught and convicted of bank
robbery, he filed a $6 million lawsuit against the Trump Indiana casino, charging the casino
with failure to enforce the self-exclusion list. An Indiana court ruled in favor of the
casino, arguing that Merrill could not sue the casino for failing to protect him from himself
(Bauer, 2006).
In the past, most behavioral decision research, like the economic research that it so
often criticizes, viewed decision making as a cognitive process. More recently, however,
researchers have begun to attribute many of the errors that people make to motivational
and emotional influences. In this chapter, we consider situations in which we make
decisions that are inconsistent with our long-term interests because of a temporary motivation
to pursue some tempting alternative, whether due to addiction, hunger, sexual
arousal, or some other transitory passion.
Specifically, we will focus on four categories of motivational and emotional influences
on decision making. The first section describes the tension between doing what we
want to do and doing what we think we should do, as illustrated by the story of Mark
Merrill’s gambling addiction. The second section examines some of the ways in which
our desires bias our judgments, cajoling us into believing what we want to believe. In
the third section we discuss self-serving ways in which people interpret fairness. The
fourth section explores precisely how our emotional states influence our judgment.
WHEN EMOTION AND COGNITION COLLIDE
In Homer’s The Odyssey, Ulysses was confronted with a problem during his long voyage.
He knew that he would soon encounter the Sirens, female enchanters who lured
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