The intertemporal choice behaviour. The role of emotions in a multi-agent decision problem

Abstract

Decision Neuroscience has shown positive and negative side of emotions in intertemporal choices. Psychological evidences, indeed, point out anomalies (impulsivity modifies the discount function of each individual) and the false consensus effect which increases the degree of consensus in a multi-agent decision problem. An experiment (Engelmann and Strobel 2004) demonstrates that the relevance of the false consensus effect depends on the difficulty of the information retrieval, so the underlying mechanism is an information processing deficiency rather than egocentricity. We demonstrate that emotions can not cause anomalies in a cooperative strategic interaction because information is explicit.