Affect Intensity and Risk Preference in Life-Saving Decisions

The current studies investigated the influence of affect intensity on risk preference in life-saving decisions. Results from 4 experiments found that people are more risk-seeking when affect intensity is higher. This effect occurs in both gain and loss framing conditions (Study 2 and Study 3) and is robust in both between-subject design (Studies 1-3) and within-subject design (Study 4). The effect holds for saving human lives (Study 1 and Study 4), as well as for saving animal lives (Study 2 and Study 3). The results generalize from laboratory hypothetical settings (Studies 1-3) to simulations of a fire emergency (Study 4). Finally, the results from American samples (Studies 1-3) are replicated using a Chinese sample (Study 4). In addition, Study 5 demonstrates that the manipulations used in these experiments have an effect on affect intensity while not influencing alternative explanatory variables. The effect size for risk preference rises and falls with the effect size for manipulations.