The Influence of Decision Context and Comparability on Judgements of Gain and Loss

Whether positive and negative affects exist independently (Cacioppo & Berntson, 1994) or coexist (Russel, 1980) has been heavily debated in psychological research. Recent work by McGraw et al. (2010) has supported the view of independent positive and negative utilitarian decision functions. Specifically that gain and loss expected judgements, in response to a mixed monetary gamble, are processed in isolation (bipolar scales) and do not induce decision biases. However, when the judgement options are forced into the same contextual space (unipolar scales), prompting direct comparisons, they induce loss-averse judgements. In contrast, we propose an alternative explanation based on decision- content comparability. Specifically, comparable decision attributes fuel the gain and loss comparisons (inducing loss averse judgements). Moreover, our results showed that facilitating decision content comparability (DCC) (monetary gamble-monetary worth evaluation) produces loss aversion regardless of whether gains and losses are considered in isolation. Accordingly, impeding DDC produces a decline in loss aversion.