Citation

McElroy T, Seta JJ, Waring DA. J. Behav. Decis. Mak. 2007; 20(3): 223-240.

Affiliation

Appalachian State University, USA; University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/bdm.551

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Historically, research examining the influence of individual personality factors on decision processing has been sparse. In this paper we investigate how one important individual aspect, self-esteem, influences imposition and subsequent processing of ambiguously, negatively or positively framed decision tasks. We hypothesized that low self-esteem individuals would impose a negative frame onto ambiguous decision problems and would be especially sensitive to negatively framed decision tasks. In Study 1 we utilized a self-framing procedure and demonstrated that HSE participants were evenly divided in the hedonic valence they self-imposed whereas LSE participants were more likely to self-impose a negative frame. When these differences were accounted for, HSE and LSE participants were equivalent in risk seeking/avoiding choices. Study 2 used a risky-choice framing task and found that LSE individuals were especially sensitive to the negative frame. Study 3, provided converging evidence and generalization of these findings to a reflection tasks involving money.