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Incidental Affect, Facial Expressions, And Risk, Michael M. Shuster

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Emotional facial expressions are potent social signals that can change people’s feeling states and shape judgments of targets that are unrelated to the expressions. Whether they originate from other individuals or advertisements in the environment, facial expressions are undoubtedly one of the most prominent emotional stimuli. Thus, there is a great need to examine how facial expressions can influence potentially consequential judgments and decisions that involve uncertain or risky prospects, as such decisions are greatly impacted by emotion.

The domains of finance and health could particularly benefit from such an examination. In the financial domain, expressions of other individuals could …