Katharina Buczek
When you’re afraid, do you make different financial decisions? A new study suggests that our response might be dependent on gender.
Recent findings from research conducted in Italy indicate that instilling fear in women leads them to devalue future outcomes more than men, prioritizing immediate monetary gains instead. Yet, men’s decisions concerning monetary rewards remained unaffected by their emotional state.
Decision-making involves selecting one path of action from several available choices. This cognitive process commonly begins with recognizing a problem or a decision-making juncture. Then, individuals gather and scrutinize pertinent information.
Afterward, people weigh the potential consequences of different options, taking into account aspects like advantages, drawbacks, expenses, and individual values or inclinations. This assessment frequently entails comparing the probable effects of each alternative, utilizing either intuitive assessment or structured, methodical approaches.
However, an individual’s decision-making process can be influenced by their emotional state, cognitive biases, societal influences, and previous experiences. These things shape the perceived attractiveness of various options.
So, in routine decision-making scenarios, people often encounter dilemmas involving trade-offs between immediate and delayed benefits and drawbacks. Frequently, they also find themselves deliberating between holding out for a larger yet later reward or selecting a smaller, instant gratification.
For instance, people may choose between investing in their retirement fund or using their extra savings on a sooner vacation. Or, they may deliberate between going to school and potentially earning a larger future income or going straight to work for a lower wage.
Regardless of the specifics, this assessment of weighing and determining whether it’s more advantageous to await a greater reward or embrace a smaller one immediately is known as “delay discounting.”
So, the researchers sought to investigate the impact of emotions and gender on delay discounting. To do this, they conducted an online experiment in which participants were exposed to movie clips known to elicit particular emotions. Then, the team had the participants engage in a computerized task that involved hypothetical monetary rewards.
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