The Effect of Fear on Effort & Reward Decision-Making

Abstract

The feeling-is-for-doing and affect-as-information models seem to predict contradictory conclusions about how emotions influence decision-making. But the theories may not be contradictory, perhaps emotional tags are too universal. Emotional tags do not consider how high/low arousal influences individual effort/reward sensitivity. This study examines how much participants considered the costs and benefits when pumping balloons to earn points of monetary value. It compares how this was affected by the fearful sounds they heard. This experiment also shows how participants evaluated their own arousal/valence states. Eye-tracking technology was utilized to provide data about attention and information processing times. This will be done to strengthen the claim about how effect affects effort/reward decision-making. Research such as this can help practitioners use mood arousal states as information to create tailored pharmaceutical and behavioral therapy interventions and predict patient behavioral patterns.