The effect of natural affect on availability and anchoring heuristics
Open Access
Author:
Hosseinpour, Helia
Area of Honors:
Psychology
Degree:
Bachelor of Science
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Karen Gasper, Thesis Supervisor Kenneth Levy, Thesis Honors Advisor Richard Alan Carlson, Faculty Reader
Keywords:
Mood Heuristic Happiness Sadness Saliency
Abstract:
This study evaluated the extent to which naturally arising feelings of happiness and sadness influenced people’s use of the availability and anchoring heuristics. In the first study, I examined the hypothesis that happy moods would increase the use of the availability heuristic, and sad moods increase the use of the anchoring heuristic. In the second study, I sought to replicate the first study and examined whether saliency moderated these effects and the extent to which they arouse for both state and trait feelings. The results were inconsistent with prior literature. For instance, the data from Study 1 indicated that as positive mood increased, people used the anchoring heuristic more, rather than less. In Study 2, instead of sadness reducing the use of the availability heuristic, as state sadness increased, so too did the use of availability heuristic. Also, high happiness and high sadness together, creating a state of ambivalence, decreased people’s use of the anchoring heuristic. Though the results of these studies were contradictory with extant literature, they highlight the need to conduct more research examining naturally occurring moods might operate.
