First Name:
Ryan
Last Name:
Wright
Major Department:
Psychology
Thesis Director:
Andrew Smith
Date of Thesis:
May 2013
The desirability bias (or wishful thinking) referrers to a situation when an individual’s desire for an outcome inflates their optimism that the desired result will occur. The desirability bias is often tested using the marked-card paradigm. Participants are asked to make dichotomous outcome predictions, wherein they have a desire for one of the outcomes over the other. An abundance of past research has shown that mood influences judgments and decision-making. As the act of making an outcome prediction requires both judgment and decision-making, we hypothesized that mood would influence the size of the desirability bias. Specifically, we hypothesized that participants in a happy mood condition would display more bias, and those in a sad mood condition would display less bias. To test this, we manipulated people’s mood by having them watch happy, sad, or neutral video clips. Then, they went through a computerized version of the marked-card paradigm. Overall, we found that people exhibited a desirability bias. However, our hypothesis was not supported because the size of the desirability bias was not influenced by people’s mood. We concluded that though mood does influence other types of judgments and decisions, it does not appear to influence the desirability bias.