Psychology Commons^™

Comparing Two Perspectives For Understanding Decisions From Description And Experience, Sandra S. Kauffman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

When trying to make sense of uncertain situations, we might rely on summary information from a description, or information gathered from our personal experience. There are two approaches that both attempt to explain how we make risky decisions using descriptive or experiential information—the cognitive-based explanation from the description-experience gap, and the emotion-based explanation from the somatic marker hypothesis (SMH). This dissertation brings together these two approaches to better understand how we make risky decisions.

Four options were presented, with options differing in terms of advantageousness and riskiness. How easy or difficult it was to consciously comprehend the reward structure, or …