Effects of Induced Mood on Attention and Decision Strategies in Risky Choice

The effects of induced incidental moods on patterns of information search and decision outcomes were investigated in a risky choice task with mixed-domain problems. Viewing of short videos was used to induce either happy or sad mood in participants, who then made choices between pairs of options consisting of a probabilistic gain coupled with a probabilistic loss. Eyetracking measures of information search, specifically frequencies of transitions between key aspects of the decision alternatives, were analyzed and related to use of heuristic or analytic compensatory strategies. Data were also gathered in a control condition, where participants were instructed to use an EV-calculation strategy, a prototypical integrative compensatory strategy. Results showed significant differences in choices and attention transitions between the EV-instruction and the induced mood conditions, but minimal differences between the happy and sad induced mood conditions. Participants in the induced mood conditions showed relatively more evidence of heuristic strategy use, but analytic strategies remained the modal strategy in all conditions. Importantly, key types of attention transitions were shown to reliably predict the frequency of observed choices consistent with optimal (EV- maximizing) and certain heuristic strategies.