In Sion, can an unrelated emotion steer a decision?
A manager may approach a decision feeling worried or irritated for reasons unrelated to the matter at hand. The management question is specific: how can we prevent this passing state from unknowingly becoming a judgement about an option's risk or value?
What the literature establishes
Jennifer S. Lerner and Dacher Keltner (2001, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) show that fear and anger do not lead to the same risk judgements: fear is associated with more pessimistic estimates, and anger with more optimistic estimates. Their research combines individual differences with experimental manipulations. Labelling both emotions simply as “negative” therefore obscures a distinction that matters for understanding decisions.
When emotion changes perceived value
Jennifer S. Lerner, Deborah A. Small and George Loewenstein (2004, Psychological Science) induced emotions unrelated to a transaction and then observed changes in buying and selling prices in an experimental task. Sadness increased buying prices and reduced selling prices, whereas disgust reduced both. An incidental emotion can therefore influence the economic valuation of an object that did not cause it.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that decisions should be made without emotion, or always postponed until one feels calm. These studies establish neither the feasibility nor the general superiority of such a rule. For SHR's “Emotional Intelligence” programme, the learning objective can be more focused: distinguishing what an emotion signals about the issue from what it carries over from another situation. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot promise
These findings do not directly measure the quality of decisions in a hydropower plant, a healthcare department or a wine business. Nor do they establish that a pause or a decision checklist is enough to eliminate emotional carryover. The proposed check should therefore focus first on documenting reasons, not on claiming emotional neutrality.
A practical check in Sion
In Sion, SHR can propose an exercise involving non-urgent decisions: hydropower maintenance schedules, healthcare service organisation, wine-industry supplier selection or the planning of an Alpine tourism offering. Over two weeks, record an initial preference and its criteria for each decision, then review them the next day, noting whether any new information has emerged; the emotional state remains a private note, not collected by the employer. The indicator is the proportion of preferences changed without new information among the decisions reviewed, with the work-related reasons for each change retained. This rate does not prove an emotional effect, but makes instability in judgement observable and open to examination, without delaying safety or patient-care decisions. To go further: explore the Emotional Intelligence training in Sion in the canton of Valais, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Emotional Intelligence in Sion
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