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The Role of Emotions in Probability Evaluations
{Information about the probability of an event is a fundamental component of our everyday life and affects how certain we feel when making a decision or predicting the future. Often, probabilistic uncertainty is communicated as risk, for example when a tracking app tells us about our risk of being infected with COVID-19. Previous research has demonstrated that risk perceptions are affected by emotional states: emotion-specific appraisal patterns, among them uncertainty appraisals, influence evaluations of risk and modulate risk reducing behaviour. At the core of risks are probabilities and evaluating probability distributions is fundamental to assessing risks. Yet, how emotions affect people\textquoterights basic evaluations of probabilities is an open question. I present research on a) the relationship between anxiety, subjective evaluations of uncertainty and quantitative estimates of neutral probabilistic events during the Coronavirus-pandemic and b) people\textquoterights evaluations of probabilistic uncertainty (entropy) in different experimentally induced emotional states (anxiety, pride and anger).}
@misc{item_3258607, title = {{The Role of Emotions in Probability Evaluations}}, booktitle = {{Abstracts of the Psychonomic Society}}, abstract = {{Information about the probability of an event is a fundamental component of our everyday life and affects how certain we feel when making a decision or predicting the future. Often, probabilistic uncertainty is communicated as risk, for example when a tracking app tells us about our risk of being infected with COVID-19. Previous research has demonstrated that risk perceptions are affected by emotional states: emotion-specific appraisal patterns, among them uncertainty appraisals, influence evaluations of risk and modulate risk reducing behaviour. At the core of risks are probabilities and evaluating probability distributions is fundamental to assessing risks. Yet, how emotions affect people\textquoterights basic evaluations of probabilities is an open question. I present research on a) the relationship between anxiety, subjective evaluations of uncertainty and quantitative estimates of neutral probabilistic events during the Coronavirus-pandemic and b) people\textquoterights evaluations of probabilistic uncertainty (entropy) in different experimentally induced emotional states (anxiety, pride and anger).}}, volume = {25}, pages = {193}, year = {2020}, slug = {item_3258607}, author = {Bertram, L and Nelson, J and Schulz, E} }