Affect and Cognition in Managerial Decision Making: A Systematic Literature Review of Neuroscience Evidence

Emotions and decision-making in boardrooms-a systematic review from behavioral strategy perspective

This systematic review examines the influence of emotions on strategic decision-making in business context, from the perspective of behavioral strategy. We examined 1,227 articles from two databases (Web of Science and PsycInfo), and after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, the final sample resulted in 43 articles. Our systematic review focuses on the role of emotions in strategic decision-making as well as the decision-making process itself. This systematic review explores research using a variety of approaches and a combination of theoretical and empirical perspectives brought by the literature. It aims to address three main questions: how board members' emotions influence their decision-making; what insights behavioral strategy provides on the emotional aspect of strategic decision-making; and what are the main theories linking emotions to strategic decision-making in the business context. The results demonstrate how emotions can affect the quality of decisions and imply that conflict resolution and emotional intelligence are relevant skills for making strategic decisions. This analysis supports the need for incorporating emotional insights into strategic planning methods by considering agreeable and divergent points of view.

Real-time extended psychophysiological analysis of financial risk processing

We study the relationships between the real-time psychophysiological activity of professional traders, their financial transactions, and market fluctuations. We collected multiple physiological signals such as heart rate, blood volume pulse, and electrodermal activity of 55 traders at a leading global financial institution during their normal working hours over a five-day period. Using their physiological measurements, we implemented a novel metric of trader’s “psychophysiological activation” to capture affect such as excitement, stress and irritation. We find statistically significant relations between traders’ psychophysiological activation levels and such as their financial transactions, market fluctuations, the type of financial products they traded, and their trading experience. We conducted post-measurement interviews with traders who participated in this study to obtain additional insights in the key factors driving their psychophysiological activation during financial risk processing. Our work illustrates that psychophysiological activation plays a prominent role in financial risk processing for professional traders.