Feeling

Cognitive psychology

Communication

Neuroscience

Social psychology

Interpretation (philosophy)

Expected utility hypothesis

Cognition

Subjective expected utility

Economics

Computer science

Psychology

Prospect theory

Artificial intelligence

Mathematical economics

Programming language

Finance

Perspective (graphical)

Affect (linguistics)

Psychological Bulletin

Virtually all current theories of choice under risk or uncertainty are cognitive and consequentialist. They assume that people assess the desirability and likelihood of possible outcomes of choice alternatives and integrate this information through some type of expectation-based calculus to arrive at decision. The authors propose an alternative theoretical perspective, the risk-as-feelings hypothesis, that highlights the role of affect experienced at the moment of decision making. Drawing on research from clinical, physiological, and other subfield of psychology, they show that emotional reactions to risky situations often drive behavior. The risk-as-feelings hypothesis is shown to explain a wide range of phenomena that have resisted interpretation in cognitive-consequentialist terms.

Risk as feelings.