Epistemic motivation, negative emotional arousal and predecisional information processing

It has been demonstrated that negative emotional arousal reduces the amount of information used in judgment tasks. We hypothesize that it should similarly increase the tendency to simplify predecisional information processing in a multiattribute choice task, which could be described as a use of a simple strategy. However, it is possible that the motivation to avoid cognitive closure modifies the relation between negative emotional arousal and the simplification of information processing, and results in the use of complex decision strategies. The results obtained in two consecutive experiments support both hypotheses: under arousal participants use simple decision strategies to a greater extent. Moreover, under both negative emotional arousal and motivation to avoid cognitive closure they tend to use more complex decision rules.