Abstract
Two studies showed that emotion expressions serve as cues to the expresser’s willingness to take risks in general, as well as in five risk domains (ethical, financial, health and safety, recreational, and social). Emotion expressions did not have a uniform effect on risk estimates across risk domains. Rather, these effects fit behavioral intentions associated with each emotion. Thus, anger expressions were related to ethical and social risks. Sadness reduced perceived willingness to take financial (Study 1 only), recreational, and social risks. Happiness reduced perceived willingness to take ethical and health/safety risks relative to neutrality. Disgust expressions increased the perceived likelihood of taking a social risk. Finally, neutrality increased the perceived willingness to engage in risky behavior in general. Overall, these results suggest that observers use their naïve understanding of the meaning of emotions to infer how likely an expresser is to engage in risky behavior.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 655314 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Frontiers in Psychology |
| Volume | 12 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jun 2021 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.Keywords
- emotion expression
- risk taking
- social perception
- risk domain
- person perception