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In this study, we tested the somatic marker hypothesis (SMH) by using an adaptation of the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) in which the emotional context associated with primary inducers was systematically manipulated. In this modified version of the IGT, a picture of either a happy face or a fearful face was presented after each feedback. Critically, the expression of the face was either congruent or incongruent with the feedback delivered. Analyses of participants' choices revealed that the congruency of the emotional context with the feedback affects performance on the IGT: The ability to choose advantageously increases when the emotional context is congruent with feedback (i.e., happy faces after rewards and fearful ones after punishments), whereas this ability is impaired with an incongruent emotional context (i.e., fearful faces after rewards and happy faces after punishments). These findings provide evidence that decision making under ambiguity is driven by emotion-related signals, as postulated by the SMH., (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.)

Dual-process theories have suggested that emotion plays a key role in the framing effect in decision-making. However, little is known about the potential impact of a specific positive or negative emotional context on this bias. We investigated this question with adult participants using an emotional priming paradigm. First, participants were presented with positive or negative affective pictures (i.e., pleasant vs. unpleasant photographs). Afterward, participants had to perform a financial decision-making task that was unrelated to the pictures previously presented. The results revealed that the presentation framed in terms of gain or loss no longer affected subjects' decision-making following specific exposure to emotionally pleasant pictures. Interestingly, a positive emotional context did not globally influence risk-taking behavior but specifically decreased the risk propensity in the loss frame. This finding confirmed that a positive emotional context can reduce loss aversion, and it strongly reinforced the dual-process view that the framing effect stems from an affective heuristic belonging to intuitive System 1.