Heart Strings and Purse Strings - Carryover Effects of Emotions on Economic Decisions

Aug 26, 2026

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The study examines how specific emotions carry over to economic judgments that involve real financial consequences. Disgust induced by an earlier, normatively irrelevant context lowered both selling and choice prices and removed the endowment effect, consistent with appraisal-tendency theory. Sadness also carried over, reducing selling prices but raising choice prices, producing a reverse endowment effect. Results show that incidental emotions can shape decisions even when money is at stake and that emotions with the same valence may drive opposite outcomes.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages6

Reading Time15 min

AccessFree to download

Experiment Overview

Hypotheses

PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE # Heart Strings and Purse Strings:Carryover Effects of Emotions on Economic Decisions Author(s):Jennifer S.Lerner,Deborah A.Small and George Loewenstein Reviewed work(s): Source:Psychological Science,Vol.15,No.5(May,2004),pp.337-341 Published by:Sage Publications,Inc.on behalf of the Association for Psychological Science Stable URL:http://www.jstor.org/stable/40063984 Accessed:08/03/201308:55 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms &Conditions of Use,available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars,researchers,and students discover,use,and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive.We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship.For more information about JSTOR,please contact support@jstor.org. Sage Publications,Inc.and Association for Psychological Science are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to Psychological Science. ⑩ # Heart Strings and Purse Strings Carryover Effects of Emotions on Economic Decisions Jennifer S.Lerner,Deborah A.Small,and George Loewenstein Carnegie Mellon University unrelated situations,whereas fear does the opposite(Lerner,Gonzalez,Small,&Fischhoff,2003;Lerner &Keltner,2001). ABSTRACT—We examined the impact of specific emotions on theendowment effect,the tendency for selling prices to exceedbuying or “choice”prices for the same object.As predicted byappraisal-tendency theory,disgust induced by a prior,irrele-vant situation carried over to normatively unrelated economicdecisions,reducing selling and choice prices and eliminating theendowment effect.Sadness also carried over,reducing sellingprices but increasing choice prices—producing a"reverse en-dowment effect"in which choice prices exceeded selling prices.The results demonstrate that incidental emotions can influencedecisions even when real money is at stake,and that emotions ofthe same valence can have opposing effects on such decisions. Among the many recent studies that document carryover effects ofspecific emotions,none examined their impact on behavior with fi-nancial consequences.This gap is significant,for two reasons.First,including financial consequences provides a stronger test of theemotional-carryover hypothesis.It may he that emotions have ittleimpact when real money is at stake.Second,the field of behavioraleconomics(i.e.,the application of psychological insights to econom-ics)has been strongly influenced by cognitively focused research ondecision making,but has been largely untouched by decision re-searchers'recent interest in emotions.The study presented here wasintended to bridge this gap. Two decades of research document the tendency for incidental emo-tion to color normatively unrelated judgments and decisions(for re-views,see Forgas,1995;Loewenstein &Lerner,2002;Schwarz,1990).Early research found that positive emotions trigger more op-timistic assessments than negative emotions,whereas negative emo-tions trigger more pessimistic assessments than positive emotions,even if thc source of the emotion has no relation to the target judg-ments (Johnson &Tversky,1983).More recent research has demon-strated the importancc of examining specific emotions in addition toglobal (positive-negative)feclings(Bodenhausen,Sheppard,&Kra-mer,1994;DeSteno,Petty,Wegcncr,&Rucker,2000).Experimentsreveal that emotions not only arise from but also elicit specific ap-praisals(Keltner,Ellsworth,&Edwards,1993;Lerner &Keltner,2001;Tiedens &Linton,2001),as predicted by appraisal-tcndencytheory (Lerner &Keltner,2000).Although tailored to help the in-dividual respond to the event that evoked the emotion,such appraisalspersist beyond the eliciting situation,becoming an implicit lens forinterpreting subsequent siluations.For example,fear arises from andevokes appraisals of uncertainty and lack of individua

FAQs

How does the study test carryover effects of emotions on economic decisions?

It uses a 3×2 between-subjects design that crosses an emotion manipulation (neutral, disgust, sadness) with an ownership manipulation involving sell and choice conditions.

What effect does disgust have on selling and choice prices?

Disgust reduces both selling and choice prices and eliminates the endowment effect, where selling prices normally exceed buying/choice prices for the same object.

What effect does sadness have compared with disgust?

Sadness lowers selling prices but increases choice prices, creating a reverse endowment effect in which choice prices exceed selling prices.

Aug 26, 2026

Upload by Himbo