Reunion of Summer Institute on Emotion and Decision Making

In July 2004, George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon University and Roy Baumeister of Florida State University convened a five-week institute on emotion and decision making for twenty young scholars in the fields of psychology and economics. The purpose of the meeting was to expose junior academics to leaders in the field and to inspire future interdisciplinary research among participants. Many attendees have since decided to collaborate on joint projects. With support from the Foundation, the group will reconvene in July 2005 in Berkeley, California for a conference and to plan a volume reporting this research.

The book, tentatively titled Do Emotions Help or Hurt Decision Making? will be organized into four subject areas. One set of chapters will argue that emotions can help individuals make beneficial decisions, such as when a person is motivated to be more productive by the good feeling he has after completing an objective. In the second section, the authors will claim that emotions handicap decision making ability, as when fear prompts people to avoid making decisions altogether. Other chapters will argue that whether emotion impairs or improves judgment depends on context. A final group of papers will focus on the theoretical underpinnings of research in this field.