Quantification of emotions in decision making

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to quantify emotions in decision making by combining rational utility with emotional attractiveness, enabling better modeling of real-world choices that deviate from traditional utility theory.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to quantify emotional influences alongside rational utility in decision making, validated with empirical data.

Findings

Quantitative evaluation of emotions is feasible at the aggregate level.

The approach outperforms standard expected utility theory in realistic behavioral scenarios.

Empirical data supports the effectiveness of combining rational and emotional features.

Abstract

The problem of quantification of emotions in the choice between alternatives is considered. The alternatives are evaluated in a dual manner. From one side, they are characterized by rational features defining the utility of each alternative. From the other side, the choice is affected by emotions labeling the alternatives as attractive or repulsive, pleasant or unpleasant. A decision maker needs to make a choice taking into account both these features, the utility of alternatives and their attractiveness. The notion of utility is based on rational grounds, while the notion of attractiveness is vague and rather is based on irrational feelings. A general method, allowing for the quantification of the choice combining rational and emotional features is described. Despite that emotions seem to avoid precise quantification, their quantitative evaluation is possible at the aggregate level. The analysis of a series of empirical data demonstrates the efficiency of the approach, including the realistic behavioral problems that cannot be treated by the standard expected utility theory.