Happy to Wait

“Emotions have historically received a bum rap from decision researchers” write economists John Ifcher and Homa Zarghamee. In a forthcoming paper called Happiness and Time Preference: The Effect of Positive Affect in a Random-Assignment Experiment, they address the tricky and oft-ignored role of emotion in decision-making. Their study measured whether positive affect impacts time preference – that is, whether people are more patient when they’re happy. They found that people are indeed more willing to wait when they’re in a good mood. As an individual’s rate of time preference affects the actual decision they make, knowing the relationship of short term emotions to time preference points to how to nudge individuals to make long term decisions instead of short-term ones. [%comments]