Emotional response in a disjunction condition

This study investigated the emotional response in a disjunction condition. Participants were presented with a hypothetical three-condition scenario in which they imagined that they had submitted their application for admission to two universities. In the two conditions of certainty, the participants imagined that they were either accepted by University A or rejected by University A. In the uncertain condition, the participants imagined that they did not know whether they had been accepted or rejected by University A. These three conditions formed a disjunction condition. The results suggested that the participants felt less happy under the uncertain condition than under the two conditions of certainty, regardless of whether the information presentation was non-transparent (Experiment 1A) or transparent (Experiment 1B) and regardless of whether the options in the two conditions of certainty were similar (Experiment 2A) or substantially discrepant (Experiment 2B and Experiment 3). Experiment 3 further demonstrated that, consistent with the hedonic hypothesis, preferential choices (which constitutes a disjunction effect) are based on emotional responses in the disjunction condition. The underlying processes of the emotional response in the disjunction condition and its relation to the literature on risk and uncertainty aversion are discussed.