HKS Affiliated Authors
Thornton F. Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy, Decision Science, and Management
Excerpt
Excerpt
The Financial Costs of Sadness. Jennifer S. Lerner, January 2013, Paper. "We hypothesized a phenomenon that we term myopic misery. According to our hypothesis, sadness increases impatience and creates a myopic focus on obtaining money immediately instead of later. This focus, in turn, increases intertemporal discount rates and thereby produces substantial financial costs. In three experiments, we randomly assigned participants to sad- and neutral-state conditions, and then offered intertemporal choices. Disgust served as a comparison condition in Experiments 1 and 2..." May require purchase or user account. Link