Anger and the science of decision-making

I just listened to the NPR Science Friday podcast on "The Science of Decision-Making" with Jennifer S. Lerner from the Harvard Decision Science Laboratory as well as others, discussing the way that behavioral- and neuro-economics are changing the orthodox views of rationality in the marketplace. Lerner mentioned a paper, "Portrait of The Angry Decision Maker: How
Appraisal Tendencies Shape Anger's
Influence on Cognition" that I had to go and look up — and I'm glad I did. It's a fascinating look at the role of irrationality on decision-making, and a damning rebuttal of the idea of rationality in the marketplace.

This paper reviews the impact of anger on judgment and decision making. Section I
proposes that anger merits special attention in the study of judgment and decision mak-
ing because the effects of anger often diverge from those of other negative emotions.
Section II presents an Appraisal-Tendency Framework for predicting and organizing
such effects. Section III reviews empirical evidence for the uniqueness of anger's rela-
tions to judgment and decision making. Section IV connects the Appraisal-Tendency
Framework to associated mechanisms and theories. Drawing on the evidence, Section
V presents the question of whether anger should be considered a positive emotion. It
also proposes the hypothesis that anger will be experienced as relatively unpleasant and
unrewarding when reflecting back on the source of one's anger but experienced as rela-
tively pleasant and rewarding when looking forward. Section VI synthesizes the evi-
dence into a new portrait of the angry decision maker.

Portrait of The Angry Decision Maker: How
Appraisal Tendencies Shape Anger's
Influence on Cognition (HTML)

Portrait of The Angry Decision Maker: How
Appraisal Tendencies Shape Anger's
Influence on Cognition (PDF)